[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 1483-1484]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




     REJECT THE AMERICAN ENERGY AND INFRASTRUCTURE JOBS ACT OF 2012

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Virginia (Mr. Connolly) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. CONNOLLY of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, for those watching on 
television and here in the House, I assume my friend from Texas was 
talking about President George W. Bush. Certainly he was not talking 
about the current President, Barack Obama.
  But I want to talk today about transportation. The residents of my 
northern Virginia district endure one of the worst commutes in the 
Nation. Each citizen spends an average of 74 hours stuck in traffic, 
costing the average commuter nearly $1,500 a year in lost productivity 
and consumption. They're understandably fed up with congestion and 
traffic, and they want to see improvements being made. They want to be 
able to get to work without having to leave in the middle of the night 
to get there on time. They want to be able to attend their child's 
school activities or go to a doctor's appointment without having to 
take half the day off from work.
  The unmet needs in northern Virginia alone top $600 million a year. 
Across the Commonwealth of Virginia, they exceed $100 billion over the 
next 25 years. My constituents and I are ready for a robust 
transportation bill that will repair our roads and bridges and expand 
commuting options, especially transit. Sadly, H.R. 7 is not that bill, 
and it is laughable for the House Republican majority to claim 
otherwise. Their plan will cut investment in transportation and in our 
Nation's crumbling infrastructure, and it will cut, not create, jobs.
  In highway funding alone, Virginia will lose $361 million under this 
proposal compared to current funding. H.R. 7 completely eliminates bus 
and bus facility funding for the Washington area metro system and the 
Nation's other metropolitan transit authorities. Just 5 States out of 
50 will receive more highway dollars over the next 5 years. All the 
rest are losers. This bill eliminates all dedicated user funding for 
transit, prompting even the conservative Chamber of Commerce to urge 
Congress to reject this proposal. Nationally, this bill will cut $16 
billion and result in the loss of more than half a million jobs, which 
will serve as an abrupt speed bump for our economic recovery. Mr. 
Speaker, that's unacceptable. We can and must do better.
  Twenty-six business leaders in my community--including the Prince 
William and Fairfax Chambers of Commerce, realtors, builders, and 
contractors--recently signed a resolution in which they said: New 
transportation

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infrastructure is an investment, not a cost. Failure to invest will 
result in economic decline.
  They are right. They have witnessed firsthand the consequence of not 
making significant, new, dedicated, and reliable investments in 
infrastructure. Due to this lack of investment at the State level, 
Federal revenues are now the single-largest source of transportation 
funding in my State. That's why $500 million in State dollars are 
diverted annually from new construction to simple maintenance as more 
and more roadways deteriorate and along with them our competitiveness 
in attracting new employers and their families.
  But it is not just roads. My community supports a multimodal 
transportation system that includes bus and van pools, commuter rail, 
and mass transit. We have the second-highest transit usership in the 
Nation; yet our success in getting people out of their cars and off the 
roads is now in jeopardy because of this bill eliminating dedicated 
funding for transit, breaking a 30-year commitment that we have to 
supporting multimodal options for commuters all across America. Under 
this proposal, money that has been dedicated to transit will now go to 
highways, and a one-time general fund transfer of $40 billion is 
somehow supposed to make up for it.
  To further salt the wounds of my constituents, House Republicans are 
proposing to pay for that one-time general fund transfer by gutting the 
retirement benefits of Federal employees. As a result of the 2-year pay 
freeze, Federal employees have already contributed $60 billion over the 
next 10 years to deficit reduction, but that is not good enough. This 
new proposal would pile on by increasing out-of-pocket retirement costs 
by at least three times while reducing overall benefits by 40 percent. 
Once again, the House Republican majority is using the dedicated 
Federal workforce as a punching bag politically and discouraging 
today's young people from even considering a career in public service.
  So let me get this straight. The Republican bill will actually reduce 
spending on transportation, end the reliable user-fee funding system 
that has been in place since 1956, shifting the burden onto the backs 
of Federal employees. That's not progress by any stretch of the 
imagination. In fact, it will just make congestion worse.
  I urge my colleagues to defeat this bill and work together on a 
bipartisan alternative.

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