[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 5261-5262]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TRANSPORTATION FUNDING

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. President, please help us stop this madness. The 
same way President Reagan demanded Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin 
Wall, you have an opportunity to stop serial malpractice on the part of 
Congress refusing to meet its obligation to fully fund our 
transportation responsibility.
  Twenty-three short-term extensions of the transportation program in 
recent years is as embarrassing as it is destructive. No country became 
great building its infrastructure 9 months at a time.
  You can bring this charade to a halt. With all the major agenda items 
on the table this spring for Congress, there is no way that we are 
going to be able to do anything but extend the May 31st transportation 
deadline, when the funding authorization expires. That is the most 
recent time when Congress kicked the can down the road, what it 
approved last fall all the way to this spring. I said at the time, When 
spring comes, we will be right back in the same situation. And we are.
  This does not mean that we need to write off the entire year and 
beyond. It certainly does not mean that we need to throw this issue 
into the middle of the next Presidential campaign, which unfortunately 
has already started. You should give us a reasonable deadline: July 
1st, August 1st, or even September 1st. Under no circumstances should 
you let this bleed into the next Federal fiscal year, starting October 
1st.
  We lost an opportunity at the end of the last Congress to force 
responsible

[[Page 5262]]

action in the lame duck session after the 2014 election. We were close, 
but it eluded us. Please don't let that happen again. Make clear you 
will not sign any transportation extension beyond the end of the 
Federal fiscal year.
  Mr. President, you don't have to dictate a solution. You have already 
indicated what you want in a robust 6-year bill; you have given an 
outline of how you would have Congress fund this significant 
reauthorization. Your Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, has 
been traveling the country, advancing a vision for transportation for 
decades to come; and he is clear about the need for bold action to 
properly fund it.
  You and your administration have also made it clear that you are 
willing to sign any reasonable bipartisan legislation that meets the 
standards that we need. It needs to be sustainable; it needs to be 
dedicated; it needs to be big enough to get the job done. Let Congress 
put up or shut up. Force it to act by not extending the deadline past 
October 1st.
  Recently, the historic solution driven by Speaker Boehner and Leader 
Pelosi took a problem that long seemed intractable here on Capitol Hill 
since 1998 on Medicare payments and the funding under the so-called 
``doc fix,'' but yet enacted a permanent solution on a bipartisan 
basis, overwhelmingly approved in this House and in the Senate. It 
required leadership and for some people to relax somewhat their 
partisan talking points--if not their core principles--but we all got 
the job done under your leadership.
  Let's do the same on transportation funding. Let's lay down an 
absolute deadline. Let's refuse to let it slide past October 1, 2015. 
Let's all work together, demanding Congress do its job. Several hundred 
Members of Congress signed a letter recently circulated by Congressman 
Ribble and Congressman Lipinski, my colleague from Illinois, saying 
that that is what should happen. Well, let's actually do it.
  Together, Congress can be forced to act. We can rebuild and renew 
America, putting hundreds of thousands of people to work at family wage 
jobs, making our communities more livable, our families safer, 
healthier, and more economically secure. It is not going to get easier 
if we stall. It is not going to be a smaller problem if it is going to 
be done next year or the year beyond. Let's decide this summer we are 
going to get the job done. Mr. President, you can help us by demanding 
that it be done according to a strict timeline, no later than October 
1st.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their 
remarks to the Chair.

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