[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8734]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   INVEST IN AMERICA'S INFRASTRUCTURE

  (Mr. TONKO asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. TONKO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to implore my colleagues to 
abandon their my-way-or-the-highway approach to the job-creating 
highway bill currently in conference. We cannot afford to kick the can 
down the road again.
  During the recent recession, 1.9 million jobs were lost in the 
construction sector. There are still about 1.4 million unemployed 
construction workers. But reauthorizing a long-term highway bill, as is 
encouraged by the President, would begin to fix this problem.
  In my district alone, 25 years ago, on April 5, 1987, the Thruway 
bridge collapsed at 10:50 a.m. on a Sunday morning near Fort Hunter, 
New York. Ten people died. They included three men returning from a 
bowling tournament, a mother and a daughter heading to a baby shower, 
two Shriners, a married couple driving to Texas, and a truck driver 
heading to Wisconsin. The cause was failure to properly maintain the 
bridge.
  No price can be put on the lives that were suddenly ended that very 
tragic day, but their memory should serve as a stark reminder that our 
failure here has real, painful, life-taking consequences.
  Let's move forward and invest in America's infrastructure--to put 
construction workers back on the job, to help businesses grow, and to 
keep our drivers and truckers safe.

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