[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 110 (Tuesday, July 15, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H6224-H6225]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             NO DEVOLUTION

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, you have heard the term ``reinvent the 
wheel.'' We have some people around here who want to un-invent the 
wheel. The Tea Party--``small government at any cost''--radicals have 
what they think is a brilliant new idea. It is called ``devolution.''
  We will devolve the duty, the obligation, and the funding of the 
national transportation system to the 50 States. Oh, what a great idea. 
Well, no. Actually, we tried it in the last century. It failed pretty 
miserably. Here it is: 1956. This is the brand spanking new Kansas 
Turnpike. Oklahoma said they would build--oh, they ran out of money, so 
Oklahoma didn't build their section. Kansas did. For 3 years, cars 
crashed through the barrier at the end of this and landed in Emil 
Schweitzer's farm field. That is devolution. They want to go back to 
that.
  Dwight David Eisenhower said, no, that is not acceptable. He passed a 
bill for a national transportation system, funded by a user fee, and 
the highway got completed.
  Now we want to go back to that era? We want to compete with the world 
by spending less on transportation, by having less Federal 
coordination, and by passing a pathetic Band-Aid bill today with 
pretend money that will limp us through the next 9 months?
  No. We need a substantial investment in our national transportation 
system--putting millions of people back to work, making us first class 
again, and competing with the rest of the world. No devolution.

[[Page H6225]]



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