[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 81 (Thursday, May 17, 2018)]
[House]
[Pages H4143-H4144]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




AMERICA NEEDS A COORDINATED 21ST CENTURY NATIONAL TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it is Infrastructure Week. You can tell 
from all of the activity across the country: all of the rebuilding of 
the 140,000 bridges that need repair or replacement; the 40 percent of 
the national highway system that has failed to the point where we have 
to rebuild the whole thing, not just resurface it; and the $100 billion 
backlog in transit. It is all--well, actually, none of that is 
happening.
  In fact, despite the President being right here and talking about a 
$1.5 trillion plan--wow, a big surprise, up by $500 billion--during the 
State of the Union, the net result of what this President and this 
administration have done is actually to reduce spending on 
infrastructure and put forward a paper plan that would say you are on 
your own.
  It is called devolution; that is, we are going to say to the States 
and the territories: It is your obligation to build a national 
coordinated transportation infrastructure.
  This is a grand new idea from some of the rightwing think tanks: Make 
the States do it.
  How is that going to work?
  Well, actually, it is not a new idea. We tried it once before. 
Actually, we tried it by default until we had the Eisenhower plan, a 
Republican President, to build a national highway system.
  This was the net result of devolution: Kansas, Oklahoma; you build 
it, we will build it.
  Well, Kansas built it.
  What is this?
  Oh, that is the State line.
  This is Oklahoma: Sorry, we don't have the money to build and 
continue that beautiful new freeway--1956.
  For 3 years, cars crashed through a wooden barrier they built at the 
end at the State line into Amos Sweitzer's farm field until we had a 
national transportation plan, from a Republican President, funded by a 
user fee, a gas tax, to build out the system nationwide.
  And then it was Ronald Reagan who said: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. 
We can't just have highways. We need to have transit to serve our 
Nation's largest cities and our hubs.
  So we added transit into this.
  That is all well and good. We built a system that was the envy of the 
world 40 years ago, 30 years ago, maybe even 25 years ago. Since then, 
it has been crumbling with neglect.
  We haven't raised the Federal gas tax since 1993: 140,000 bridges 
need repair or replacement; $100 billion backlog in transit, just to 
build out to a state of good repair for what we have and not even give 
people new transit options to get out of the congestion and the 
traffic.
  We are wasting billions of dollars a year, wasting fuel from people 
sitting in gridlock all around the country. They are damaging their 
cars through potholes, and they don't have the transit options that 
were promised to them.
  So what is going on? Well, it seems like the Republicans love to talk 
about it. Oh, they just love to talk about infrastructure. Everybody 
loves to talk about it--we are going to fill those potholes; we are 
going to build those bridges; we are going to take care of you--but 
they refuse to fund it. That is the bottom line.
  We need to fund an ambitious new national infrastructure plan: 
transit, roads, bridges, highways, harbors and ports, wastewater, clean 
water, and the list goes on and on and on.
  You can't be a great nation if your people are mired in gridlock, if 
your roads are potholed, if your harbors are silted in, if your jetties 
are failing, if your wastewater systems are 50 years

[[Page H4144]]

old and can't take any new capacity and actually are polluting our 
rivers, and clean water is not available to people in some of the 
largest cities in the United States of America.
  Where is the Federal partner? There is no Federal partner with the 
Republicans in charge. Let the States do it. Let's devolve this 
obligation to the States. That is their solution: The States should pay 
for it.
  Well, it didn't work in the fifties. How the heck is that going to 
work in the 21st century?
  Even if one State decides now to increase capacity to move freight--
say California wants to move all of the freight that comes into Los 
Angeles out of California to the rest of the Nation where it is going 
and bring the goods in to export from there, how is that going to work 
when you get to the Nevada State line and there is a two-lane road--or 
no road--on the other side?
  This is an abject failure, and it is time for Congress to act. If the 
Republicans won't act, maybe we need to replace them with a party that 
will act to rebuild America and make us competitive in the world for 
the 21st century, not devolution. We need a Federal partnership. We 
need Federal investment. We need a coordinated 21st century national 
transportation system.

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