[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 17285-17286]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       FISCAL CLIFF NEGOTIATIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. As I speak on the floor today, the Republicans are in 
conference with Speaker Boehner, talking about and getting an update on 
the so-called ``fiscal cliff'' negotiations. There seems to have been 
some progress.
  A number of us are opposed to the idea of reducing further the 
already inadequate COLA granted to seniors on Social Security, but in 
some other areas there does seem to have been some meaningful progress. 
I was particularly pleased to hear that the White House is insisting 
that infrastructure investment needs to be part of this negotiation.
  A third of our deficit is due to chronic high unemployment in the 
United States of America. If we could put people back to work, a third 
of the deficit goes away. What if we put them to work rebuilding our 
crumbling infrastructure? There are 150,000 bridges in America that 
need substantial repair or replacement. Forty percent of the pavement 
on the National Highway System doesn't just need resurfacing. It needs 
to be dug up; it needs new roadbed. And there is a $70 billion backlog 
on transit systems in this country, replacing worn, outmoded equipment. 
Those are manufacturing jobs, energy jobs--jobs not only in 
construction, but in many other areas; and they spill over into small 
business and the general economy.

                              {time}  1030

  We also need to build an efficient 21st century infrastructure. It's 
about 27,000 jobs for every billion dollars we invest. Now, 
historically we haven't borrowed money to make these investments. We

[[Page 17286]]

have paid for our infrastructure with fees and taxes--principally the 
gas tax, but others, but the Federal gas tax hasn't changed since 1993. 
In 1993, you paid $1.11 for a gallon of gas and 18.4 cents went to 
build our national infrastructure. This last year in my district, 
people paid over $4.40 for a gallon of gas and 18.4 cents went to 
rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.
  We've lost more than a third of the purchasing power of the highway 
trust fund just due to inflation. Over the next 2 years we will borrow 
$18 billion just to tread water with the highway trust fund, and if we 
want to tread water over the next 10 years we'll borrow another $110 
billion. Will that happen in deficit-obsessed Washington, D.C.? Not 
likely. Does that mean quicker deterioration of our infrastructure? 
Does that mean we forego the jobs? Perhaps not.
  If we just simply indexed the existing Federal gas tax set in 1993 at 
18.4 cents to highway cost construction inflation and improved fleet 
fuel economy--so that you don't lose ground because people purchase 
less gas--we could, over the next decade, save $128 billion--deficit 
reduction--and have an additional increment on top of that to begin to 
catch up with the huge backlog in our crumbling infrastructure in this 
country and put millions of people to work. It seems a very sensible 
solution: deficit reduction, jobs, and sound infrastructure. I hope 
those on the other side of the aisle will be receptive to the proposals 
from the White House for this needed investment.
  This isn't the stupid stimulus bill that threw everything but the 
kitchen sink at the economy. Many things were not well spent. Four 
percent of that money went to infrastructure investment; over 40 
percent went to stupid tax cuts that didn't put anybody back to work.

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