[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3368-3369]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       SURFACE TRANSPORTATION ACT

  Mrs. BOXER. Mr. President, I thought I could give Senators and those 
who may be following this very elongated debate on the highway bill an 
update as to where we are. We have a managers' package we are hoping to 
approve momentarily. It is a bipartisan package. We continue to work 
across the aisle. Under the consent, we want to move forward with that. 
We had, I believe, a holdup yesterday. We are working to find out why. 
But we are very hopeful that will move forward. Then we have a series 
of votes on amendments, beginning at about noon. So at 11:30 or so, we 
will be back on the bill.
  I want to say to my friends on the other side of the aisle and to my 
friends on this side of the aisle that we are making great progress. 
This is a jobs bill. This is a major jobs bill. This is the biggest 
jobs bill.
  They passed an IPO bill over there in the House. Eric Cantor is 
saying it is a jobs bill. I do not know how many jobs it will create. 
It is an investor bill. It is good; I am for it. But it does not come 
anywhere close to the bill we are working on today. Because on March 
31, if we do not act on this transportation bill, everything will come 
to a screeching halt, if I might use that analogy. Because there will 
not be a gas tax anymore going into the Federal highway trust fund, 
there will not be any funds going from the Federal Government to the 
various planning organizations in all of our States and communities.
  All of us know that since the days of President Eisenhower we have 
had a national system for roads, bridges, highways, and so on. So we 
have a lot of work to do here. I want to say, we are very close to the 
day when everything will stop. So I think we are making great progress.
  I know the majority leader and the minority leader talked about 
finishing this bill today. That means a lot of cooperation because we 
have to get through about 20 amendments plus a managers' package. I 
think we can do it. I know we can do it.
  Then, frankly, we can actually go home and tell our people we voted 
on a huge jobs bill. How huge? We are going to protect 1.8 million 
jobs, and a lot of construction jobs. I have often told people that the 
unemployment rate among construction workers is way higher than the 
general population. Our unemployment rate is about 8.3 percent. We have 
a 15-, 16-, 17-percent unemployment rate among construction workers.
  And God bless this President. He has worked so hard on making sure we 
have set the table for job growth. We have had terrific job growth, but 
even with those 200,000-plus jobs created last month, construction jobs 
actually went down.
  So we are looking at an industry that is in a great deal of trouble. 
It is because of the housing market. It is still not stabilized. Until 
we solve our housing crisis--and, again, the administration and the 
Congress are trying to do everything to allow people to stay in their 
homes so we don't keep having defaults, houses on the market, short 
sales, and all the rest. Once that is behind us, we will see a whole 
new day for construction. But that day isn't here.
  It would be a dereliction of our duty if we fail to pass this bill 
because we will save 1.8 million jobs. That is how many people are 
working as a result of our ongoing transportation action. We have to 
save that. Then because of some very good work done in my home State, 
particularly in Los Angeles, we have come up with a new way to create 
an additional 1 million jobs by leveraging a program called the TIFIA 
Program, transportation infrastructure financing. It means as our State 
and our local areas pass, say, a sales tax to build transit or roads or 
highways, we, the Federal Government, can front that money at virtually 
zero risk and leverage these funds threefold.
  In this bill we would be protecting 1.8 million jobs and creating up 
to 1 million new jobs because of the TIFIA Program. I want to say this 
bill is a bipartisan effort--hugely bipartisan.
  I just talked to Senator Inhofe late last evening. We talked about 
the fact

[[Page 3369]]

that we don't want to have it held up anymore. We want to move it 
through, and we are going to move it through. We are very pleased.
  Anyone who follows politics knows Senator Inhofe is one of the most 
conservative Members of the Senate, and I am one of the most liberal 
Members of the Senate. We are both very proud of who we are and 
comfortable with who we are. We know when it comes to some things we 
don't see eye to eye. There will be many more opportunities to see how 
we disagree on issues, such as clean air, clean water, safe drinking 
water, superfund, climate change, and all that. But we are on the 
highway bill. We hope this will become a template for us in the Senate 
and the House to find a sweet spot where we can work together. We are 
right there. A little bit more work and we know we have done our jobs. 
It could come today--I hope it will come today--but it will come late 
today because there are many amendments to get through.
  I want to make my last comment about what is happening in the House. 
The House passed an IPO bill, initial public offering. I support that 
approach. I think it would be a great way to get more capital into the 
hands of businesses and enable them to hire people. It is a good bill. 
We are going to work on it. But the House has done nothing about the 
Transportation bill. Speaker Boehner has tried. He has had many efforts 
to bring people to the table. But the trouble is he has only brought to 
the table one political party. We have to work together. Senator Inhofe 
and I could never have gotten this bill to where it is if we stood in 
our corners and concentrated on the areas where we had disagreement. 
There were plenty of those, but we set those aside.
  I say to the Members of the House, there is a secret to success, 
which is taking your hand and reaching it across the aisle and finding 
common ground with your colleagues. If you lose a bunch of Republicans 
and Democrats, you still have enough to get a bill through.
  Our bill, though not perfect, does what we have to do. We protect 1.8 
million jobs, mostly in construction. We create up to 1 million jobs. 
We took a bill that had 90 different programs and brought it down to 30 
programs. We have a managers' package of very bipartisan issues that we 
have resolved.
  I will probably be back on the floor within an hour to debate the two 
amendments that will be pending, the Bingaman amendment and the DeMint 
amendment. I will speak out on those amendments.
  I thank the occupant of the chair for his support. He has been a real 
good friend and has helped us move this bill forward. I know this bill 
is important to his home State of Delaware, as it is important to 
Tennessee and to California. I have a list of jobs by State that we 
would lose if we fail to act. That is the bad news. The good news is we 
are going to act. I will be back in short order.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Tennessee is 
recognized.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, is it appropriate for me to speak as in 
morning business for a few minutes?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized.

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