[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 18 (Tuesday, February 3, 2015)]
[House]
[Pages H708-H709]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PRESIDENT OBAMA'S BUDGET

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, this is the week where the President 
submits his budget. We are seeing a great deal of conversation about 
many of the provisions. One area that I am pleased has been greeted 
with positive reaction is his emphasis on infrastructure, on rebuilding 
and renewing America.
  This is a debate that is very important. It is long overdue to focus 
in on solutions. It is an area of potential agreement: the need to 
address the fact that America is falling apart while we are falling 
behind, somewhere on the order of 25th in the world rankings. Where 
once we had the finest infrastructure in the world, that is no longer 
the case.
  The American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a grade of ``D.'' It 
is going to cost $2.2 trillion by 2020 to be able to bring us up to 
standard. The longer we wait, the worse the situation.
  It is costing each American $323 a year, on average, in damage to 
their cars because of inadequate infrastructure, to say nothing of 
thousands of lives lost because of unsafe road conditions and the 
potential disruption of business and commerce.
  Americans are spending millions of hours a year trapped in traffic. 
America's highways--which are how we deliver products to stores, to 
factories--are increasingly congested, causing increased costs due to 
delay.
  The President's proposal is a bit complicated. It deals with other 
tax provisions that virtually everybody thinks are a long shot, at 
best, to be enacted.

                              {time}  1015

  This is part of the pattern the administration has had in the past: 
offering up things that, in theory, would make a difference but that 
are unlikely. Usually they are pronounced dead on arrival. Likewise, 
the proposals of some of my Republican friends for their approaches, 
wrapping it into their version of tax reform, have been consistently 
declared not possible.
  We have one, simple, commonsense approach that should be taken--it 
was highlighted again today in an editorial in The Washington Post. It 
has also been written about in The New York Times, in the LA Times, in 
USA Today, in Bloomberg View, in papers large and small across the 
country--to raise the gas tax. It has not been raised in 22 years, and 
in that time, it has lost a significant portion of the purchasing power 
while America's needs grow.
  For 60 years, the gas tax has formed the backbone of how we deal with

[[Page H709]]

America's infrastructure finance. The user pays--people who benefit the 
most pay the most--and it served us well for over half a century.
  But over the course of the last 10 years, it is no longer adequate. 
The fixed amount that hasn't been increased, the erosion due to 
inflation, increasing the fuel efficiency of vehicles all combine to 
mean that we are falling short of the mark. We have been required to 
transfer over $60 billion from the general fund just to maintain our 
already inadequate levels of funding, and the current patch expires in 
May. The clock is ticking. There are opportunities to make a 
difference.
  It is interesting. It is not just the newspaper editorial writers who 
focus on this as the simplest, most effective, commonsense approach. We 
are finding in the other body a number of Senators, including 
Republican Senators, who indicate that they are open to finally 
addressing and updating the gas tax.
  My colleague on the Ways and Means Committee, Jim Renacci from Ohio, 
wrote a very insightful article in a recent issue of Roll Call. He made 
the case for our moving forward with increasing the user fee to be able 
to maintain our roads and bridges, highlighting the costs and 
consequences.
  Mr. Speaker, there is an opportunity for us to move forward. This 
does not have to be something that is complicated or partisan. This is 
something that Ronald Reagan in 1982 called upon the Congress to do, 
where he in his Thanksgiving Day address asked for the Congress to more 
than double the gas tax. Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan did it. We can 
do it today. I strongly urge my colleagues to address this simple, 
commonsense approach and help us rebuild and renew America.

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