[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 5]
[House]
[Pages 6279-6280]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       A PLAN TO SUPPORT OUR ECONOMY AND OUR INFRASTRUCTURE NEEDS

  (Mr. BLUMENAUER asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, John McCain has famously said that he 
doesn't know much about economic issues. But it's paradoxical that the 
Republican presidential candidate's idea for helping a troubled economy 
is to put people out of work and make traffic congestion worse and 
freight movement harder.

[[Page 6280]]

  His proposal to stop collecting the gas tax will cut critical funding 
that keeps commuters, freight and our economy running. And when the 
trust fund is moving into deficit for the first time in our history he 
will only make that problem worse.
  It will also lead to the loss of over 300,000 highway-related jobs, 
while there's no evidence that huge oil companies will cut their prices 
when they get this gas tax ``Holiday''. It is the worst kind of 
pandering to mortgage the future to serve current political needs.
  Instead, it's time for our presidential candidates to talk about 
their vision, their plan to support our economy and our infrastructure 
needs.

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