[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 22]
[House]
[Page 29843]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




A GREEN LIGHT FOR THE REAUTHORIZATION OF THE SURFACE TRANSPORTATION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Madam Speaker, this is one of those rare occasions 
where Congress can put everything together for a holiday gift for 
Americans. People in this city and across the country are obsessed with 
the concern to create jobs. It is appropriate and imperative that we do 
so. All the objective evidence suggested that the economic recovery 
package made a huge difference, but not enough.
  As my friend and colleague Mr. DeFazio, from the Transportation and 
Infrastructure Committee, has documented, the economic recovery package 
had only 4 percent of its funds dedicated for infrastructure, but it 
created 25 percent of the jobs. Mr. Oberstar, and Subcommittee Chair 
DeFazio, have been working for 3 years on the reauthorization of the 
biggest infrastructure package that we will look at--the Surface 
Transportation Act. The evidence is that they are, literally, just 
weeks away from the opportunity to bring this legislation to the floor.
  At the same time, we see the consensus building, at least on the 
Democratic side of the aisle and with the administration, that it is 
time to revisit efforts to revitalize the economy, that the original 
economic recovery package simply wasn't big enough considering the 
problems that we were facing. There is an opportunity to take unused 
TARP money, part of the hundreds of billions of dollars that was set 
aside, to help the financial sector recover after it brought our 
economy to, literally, the brink of collapse.
  Well, we've seen at least that area stabilize. Some of the money is 
being repaid, and the balance is not likely to be needed for an 
economic emergency like we saw last year. So we should be able to take 
a significant portion of that unused TARP money and, rather than 
sending it to Wall Street, sending it instead to Main Street, perhaps 
to your street to be able to front-load the reauthorization of the 
Surface Transportation Act to be able to have 6-year funding certainty.
  This is a very important opportunity that we should not lose because, 
at a time when we are concerned about deficits in the Federal budget, 
there is a yawning deficit in the highway trust fund which simply is 
not going to be able to meet the current needs of America's highways 
and transit projects, let alone its future. At the same time, there is 
an opportunity for us to improve the Federal balance sheet. There is 
support for the concepts of having user fees that are available to be 
able to shore up those trust funds that fund infrastructure.
  For instance, the administration has placed in its budget the 
reimposition of the Superfund tax--a tax on the polluters who created 
these toxic problems all across America, a tax that expired years ago. 
The previous folks who ran this place would not allow us even to 
consider its reenactment. Well, it's in the President's budget, which 
is one example of where a simple action--having polluters pay--will be 
able to have the economic activity of cleaning up Superfund sites while 
we are shoring up the Federal budget.
  Madam Speaker, if we move forward with the reauthorization of the 
Transportation Act, if we deal with water infrastructure, if we beef up 
our economic recovery efforts, and reenact a Superfund tax, we will 
have an opportunity to invest in America's future and to put millions 
of Americans back to work. Unlike other areas of expenditure, this is 
truly an investment in America's future, which will generate other 
economic activities and will help the long-term fiscal health of our 
Nation while we strengthen our families and our communities.
  I hope there is a green light for floor time for the Transportation 
bill. I hope there is a commitment to front-load the Transportation 
bill with TARP money and that we can get a Transportation bill passed 
next month and on its way to the Senate so we can put America back to 
work.

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