[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 18158]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE HIGHWAY TRUST FUND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Arizona (Mr. Flake) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FLAKE. This week, the Senate is expected to approve an $8 billion 
bailout of the highway trust fund. We already passed that in the House 
here in July, and at that time, myself and 36 other Members opposed it. 
At the time, we were backed by both the administration and by the 
Secretary of Transportation.
  For years, Congress has known that the highway trust fund was losing 
its purchasing power. The Federal law gas tax of 18.4 cents has not 
been increased since 1993, and high fuel efficiency standards have 
meant fewer fill-ups. Then, of course, earlier this summer, fewer 
vacations were taken; fewer miles were driven. That means less money 
for the highway trust fund, but this concern has gone back for years. 
In fact, when we did the 2005 highway bill, there were many who stood 
up and who said we're authorizing more projects, more funding than we 
will have in the highway trust fund, but what did we do? We didn't take 
any action to solve the problem. Instead, we more than tripled the 
number of earmarks in SAFETEA-LU, which was the last highway 
authorization program that we did in 2005 for the 5-year period that 
we're now in.
  So here we are 3\1/2\ years later, just a year before our next 
reauthorization, and we're out of money to cover the projects that 
we've authorized, but contrary to the example we've seen throughout 
this Congress, a bailout shouldn't be the answer to every shortfall. No 
effort, for example, has been made to rescind any of the 6,300 earmarks 
that were in the highway trust fund, of course, the most famous of 
which was the bridge to nowhere. That money was rescinded or at least 
the authorization to spend on that project was taken away by the 
Congress, but we've made no effort on any of the other 6,300 earmarks 
in the bill. We need to do so.
  The Secretary of Transportation had indicated earlier this summer 
that, if we were to take funding from the earmarks that have not yet 
been funded in the bill, it could relieve the pressure that we now have 
on the highway trust fund, but we haven't done it. Instead, we're 
simply saying go ahead and fund all of those transportation museums and 
all of those projects that have very little or nothing to do with 
moving people. We're saying go ahead and fund them. We'll just take the 
money from the Treasury now instead of from the highway trust fund. 
That is a very, very dangerous precedent to set. Whenever you load up a 
bill with 6,300 earmarks, the process of logrolling takes effect. 
That's why you only had, I believe, eight votes against the highway 
bill back in 2005 and, I think, only three votes against it in the 
Senate. It's because, if you lard it up enough and if you have enough 
buy-in, very few people will vote against it or will oppose it.
  If you start taking money from the general fund and if you don't have 
any kind of ceiling that was provided at least by the highway trust 
fund, then Katy Bar the door when it comes to spending. There's no 
ceiling. There's no discipline. We can not get in this position where 
we're robbing from the general fund to fund highway projects delineated 
by Members of Congress but earmarked by Members of Congress, because 
there will simply be no discipline on the process.
  So I would urge the President to take the position that we shouldn't 
take money from the general fund, to veto this legislation when it 
comes, and I would urge the House as we prepare to reauthorize the 
highway bill just a year from now to take a different approach--to look 
at public-private partnerships and other methods--so we simply don't 
get in the position where we have thousands and thousands and thousands 
of earmarks that mean we have a bill that we can't fund and where we 
will again be robbing from the general fund to fund these projects.

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