[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3192-3194]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       SURFACE TRANSPORTATION ACT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I was reminded this morning as I came to the 
floor about an old standard political joke. When I looked at my papers 
I had

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here, my outline of what I was going to say, I was missing a page. That 
is what the Republican leader and I were joking about here this 
morning. That is why he went first, because I didn't have my speech. 
The old political joke, as we have all heard many times--this 
politician was giving a speech and he is flipping through his pages and 
he is in the midst of giving it. After he gets wound up in his speech, 
he is going through the speech and he is waving his hands and shouting 
and he comes to the third or fourth page of his speech and it says: 
``You are on your own, you SOB.'' His speechwriter had had enough of 
him.
  But that is not what happened here today. Phoebe prepared the speech 
for me and I left a part of it in my office.
  I am pleased to say Democrats and Republicans reached an agreement to 
advance the highway bill that has been before this body for a month. It 
is a bipartisan bill. As I have said here over this past month, this is 
a piece of legislation that was prepared the way legislation should be 
prepared. A very conservative Member, Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma, and a 
very liberal Member, Barbara Boxer, managed this bill. They have worked 
very hard.
  Just a little side note; as we were struggling, trying to come up 
with these amendments, I was happy to hear from Barbara Boxer. She said 
to me privately: I have talked to Senator Inhofe and he thinks, as we 
are coming to this agreement, this is not what should be done.
  That was important to me in reaching consensus on how we move forward 
on this bill. As I have said many times, not everything we do this year 
should be a big fight. We should be able to move things forward without 
waiting for a month to get things done. This bill is truly indicative 
of how we have to get these done and why I appreciate the cooperation 
of Senators Boxer and Inhofe.
  We have a dilapidated system of highways. We have 70,000--I am not 
misspeaking, not 7,000--70,000 bridges in America that are in dire need 
of repair--or replacement even. Twenty percent, 1 out of every 5 miles 
of your roads in America are not up to safety standards. Thousands of 
pedestrians are killed because they relied on unsafe sidewalks or 
nonexisting sidewalks.
  Every day millions of Americans--a disproportionate number who are 
low income, minority, disabled, or old--are forced to rely on 
overcrowded mass transit systems, straining to meet the demands of a 
growing ridership. America's crumbling infrastructure is a terrible 
drain on our economy.
  A number of years ago when my wife and I took a few days off around 
Christmas in southern California, rather than fly back I thought why 
don't we drive back to Las Vegas. We did that. This was a couple of 
years ago. I hadn't done it in a long time. I-15, this famous road, was 
jammed. We came to complete stops on a number of occasions coming back 
from San Diego to Las Vegas. Think about that, a complete stop. There 
were trucks on that road. Drivers were being paid for their time on the 
road. The cargo they were hauling needed to get someplace. It is not 
only someone wanting to take a vacation, coming to Las Vegas; it is 
what it does to commerce to have these roads that are in a state of 
disrepair. So this crumbling infrastructure certainly is a drag on our 
economy.
  But rebuilding this infrastructure will have the opposite effect. 
Investing in our transportation system will save or create almost 3 
million jobs. This legislation has to be completed before the end of 
this month or we have no way of collecting the taxes; when you buy a 
gallon of gasoline, that funds what we need to do here to repair our 
roads, bridges, et cetera.
  This is not some wild program invented in the last few months here in 
Washington. This is a program that was initiated by President 
Eisenhower. This week I received a letter from an organization called I 
Make America. It is a group of more than 850 businesses and 20,000 
individuals who support this transportation bill. Many people across 
this country, some in this Chamber, would write off the rest of this 
Congress, but I am not going to do that. We have a lot more to do and 
we need to get it done. When we complete our work, we need to look back 
and say what has happened that is good.
  ``There is no single piece of legislation now before Congress that 
will do more to create American jobs and sharpen our global 
competitiveness'' than this legislation said Dennis Slater on behalf of 
I Make America, the program I just talked about.
  We need to push this bill over the finish line and I think the finish 
line is now in sight. This is one of the most important pieces of 
legislation we can consider. I indicated earlier why. But even as I 
recognize the bipartisanship that made this progress possible, I will 
sound a note of caution. Eighty-five Senators voted to begin on this 
legislation. Only a handful--it wasn't 15, because we had absent 
Senators that day--said we should not begin voting on it. Yet it has 
taken a month to begin voting on the amendments. Republican leaders 
have wasted weeks of the Senate's time directing this valuable jobs 
bill to extract purely political votes on unrelated matters, completely 
unrelated matters. Weeks were wasted on this vital legislation with an 
iconic attack on women's health.
  I suggest to the Republican leader who just left the floor, if it 
takes more than a month to pass a noncontroversial, bipartisan bill 
that is supported by almost 90 Senators, how can we ever expect to get 
anything more done?
  We have to. We have much more to do. Americans are not satisfied with 
the glacial pace of this body and neither am I. Americans are tired of 
delay tactics and obstructions and so am I. People across the country 
and in this Chamber would write off this Congress and say we have done 
enough. I am not going to do that.
  When we complete this legislation on the Transportation bill, we have 
other work to do. We have a score of judges who are waiting, some of 
whom have been waiting since last year. We have to do something about 
the post office. The Postal Service in America has changed. People 
don't pay their bills the way they used to; they don't send letters the 
way they used to. We have to reorganize the post office. We have to do 
that.
  We had a demonstration in the classified briefing room to talk about 
what is going on in America and what could go on in America with 
bringing down our country. The demonstration last night dealt with 
electricity, but it could be banking. It could be our hospitals. We 
have to recognize that we now have new enemies in the world, not 
enemies who are flying airplanes and dropping bombs and shooting us 
with bullets, but they are prepared to do something that is so damaging 
to our economy, and we were given that illustration last night.
  We have a cybersecurity bill we have to bring to the floor, which is 
another bipartisan bill. Senator Lieberman and Senator Collins, an 
Independent and Republican, have acknowledged they want to bring this 
bill forward, and they have it done, so we will bring it to the floor. 
We have all our Appropriations bills, and we have to do those. So we 
have a lot to do to accomplish even a fraction of our to-do list, and 
it is going to take more cooperation and less conflict. Not everything 
has to be a knock-down, drag-out fight as it was on this highway bill. 
To think we wasted 3 weeks on a matter dealing with the health of women 
in America, but we did. So we stand ready to work with our Republican 
colleagues.
  The Republican leader mentioned the small business jobs bill. We have 
been trying to do one for a long time. We are going to do a small 
business jobs bill. The House bill is not perfect. We are glad it is 
moving forward, and we are going to try to do something here to match 
so we can get it to conference and get this done.
  I am hopeful that when Democrats reach across the aisle, we will find 
willing partners on the other side for a change.
  I thank the Chair. I ask that the Chair announce the business of the 
day.

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