[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 7702-7705]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  OUR COUNTRY'S TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I have come to the floor to discuss the 
need to strengthen the transportation system of our country, our roads, 
our highways, our bridges--our transportation system. A long time ago, 
the question was asked: What is the role of government? If you ask 500 
people, you probably will not get 100 different answers, but you will 
get a lot of different answers.
  Abraham Lincoln was once asked: What is the role of government? This 
is what he said: The role of the government is to do for the people 
what they cannot do for themselves. Let me say that again. The role of 
government is to do for the people what they cannot do for themselves.
  Sometimes I go to schools and young students ask me: What do you do? 
The kids in elementary schools, third, fourth, fifth graders say: What 
do you do?
  I tell them I am a United States Senator.
  They say: What do you do?
  I tell them I help make the rules for our country. We call them laws. 
I do that with 99 other Senators, 435 Representatives, the President, 
and the Vice President.

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  They say: Well, what else do you do?
  I tell them I help people. I help people. The best way to help 
somebody is to make sure they have a job--to make sure they have a job.
  I had the privilege of being Governor of Delaware for 8 years. I am 
told that in those 8 years, more jobs were created in Delaware than any 
8 years in Delaware history. I did not create one of them.
  We have seen in the last 6-plus years in this country some 12 million 
jobs created. I did not create one of them. My colleagues did not 
create those jobs. The President and the Vice President did not create 
those jobs.
  What we are responsible for doing here is to create a nurturing 
environment for job creation, access to capital--to money--for 
businesses that need to raise money, a world-class workforce, public 
safety, clean environment, public health, a Tax Code that is fair and 
reasonable, regulations that embody common sense and reflect common 
sense.
  We actually have, believe it or not, on each of our desks on the 
floor, a book. It is called the ``Senate Manual.'' We do not look at it 
that often, but if you go to one of the sections about two-thirds of 
the way through the book, you will find the Constitution. The 
Constitution lays out who is responsible for what generally in our 
country, for different responsibilities that do fall on government.
  There is a section in the Constitution--I am not going to read it, 
but Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma has oftentimes referred to it--where 
it talks about the obligation and responsibility of the Federal 
Government to post roads--post roads. For years, that has been read and 
interpreted to mean to build some roads, some highways, and some 
bridges.
  As time goes by, we have more and more people to build transit 
systems as well. As it turns out, as we go along in time--after being a 
country for almost 225 years or so, one of the most important things 
that we do in creating a nurturing environment for job creation and job 
preservation is to make sure our country has transportation systems--
roads, highways, bridges, transit systems--that are worthy of this 
great Nation that we are.
  As a former Governor--as I like to say, a recovering Governor--but as 
a former Governor, I have seen the impact roads, highways, bridges, and 
transit systems have on the economic growth and success in my State, 
the region in which we live, and across this country. It is how we move 
people. It is how we move goods. It is the key to an efficient and 
growing economy.
  For more than a decade, however, we have faced funding shortfalls for 
the Federal highway trust fund. This stop-and-go funding and lack of 
uncertainty has undermined--has undermined--the potential for economic 
growth in America for years. That has to stop.
  In fact, since 2008, we had to transfer nearly $65 billion out of the 
general fund--nearly $65 billion out of the general fund--which is far 
from running a surplus, to patch holes in the highway trust fund.
  I like to use the example of the glasses. We have glasses here that 
the pages are nice enough to fill with water and to bring for us from 
time to time. I would like for this glass to be the Federal highway 
trust fund. It is empty. There is another glass here. This is the 
general fund of the United States. It is empty. We have another glass 
over here that is full. It is full. When the general fund is empty and 
the transportation fund, the highway fund are empty, what we do is we 
go to this glass over here and say: How about some water? How about 
some money?
  We borrow money all over the world--all over the world. One of the 
places we borrow a lot of it is China. When the Chinese lend us money, 
they do not want to be bothered when we feel they may have been 
manipulating their currency.
  They will say to us: We thought you wanted to borrow money, so leave 
us alone on currency manipulation. They may say: Leave us alone when it 
comes to taking unfair advantage in terms of trade. When the Chinese 
are pushing around the Vietnamese in the Philippines in the South China 
Sea--where I used to fly as a flight officer--they would say: You 
cannot do that.
  And the Chinese might respond: Well, we thought you wanted to borrow 
our money.
  We find ourselves in a very difficult position to be obligated to a 
lender that is doing things that we think are inappropriate or wrong.
  Unfortunately, with the example like the one I have just given you, 
this actually does happen.
  We have not had a transportation bill that lasts for more than 2 
years for, I think, now 7 years. It used to be commonplace that every 6 
years we would pass a fund, a transportation bill, for our country. We 
call it the highway bill, but it was for roads, highways, and for 
transit systems--every 6 years, almost like clockwork.
  The money provided by the Federal Government provides roughly one-
half of all the money that is spent in the State highway budget, State 
highway transportation budget. Half of that money is Federal money 
appropriated by the Congress and approved by the President.
  Why we have not had a transportation bill that lasted for more than 2 
years, since 2008--we have passed some short-term funding provisions 
and authorization provisions for transportation that lasts as little as 
a few days--a few days. This undercuts Governors and undercuts mayors 
around the country. It prevents them from making long-term investments 
in critical transportation projects.
  Let me give a good example. State Route 1 Delaware runs from I-95 to 
the north, north-south, right past Dover, our State capital, passing 
Dover Air Force Base, and heads on down to the southern part of our 
State, where we raise more chickens and soybeans in Sussex County, DE, 
than any other county in America. It is a county that has more five-
star beaches than anywhere else in America.
  When I had the privilege of being Governor of Delaware, we actually 
built, modernized, and expanded State Route 1. We replaced about 40 
traffic lights with a four- or five- or six-lane limited access highway 
that cuts not in half but greatly eliminates bottlenecks and expedites 
the flow of traffic in my State. It took over a decade--maybe a dozen 
years--from start to finish.
  Why did it take that long? It is because these projects need some 
things. You have to take some time to plan the project. You have to 
take some time to fund the project. You have to take time to contract 
the project through competitive bids. You have to get the permits for 
the project. Sometimes there is litigation to work through. It is part 
of what has to be done to build a major road, highway or bridge in a 
State. It does not take just a few weeks to do this. It does not take 
just a few months to do this. It can take years.
  In the case of State Route 1--in a little State--it took years, 
roughly a dozen of them. And without the certainty in the future that 
the Federal funding will be there for a project that is almost 
impossible to do it well and, frankly, without that kind of certainty, 
it is really expensive to do these projects. Stop-and-go. ``Stop-and-
go'' means stop and pay lot more money for the projects we are trying 
to build.
  Yet even though we know our States, our counties, our cities, and our 
businesses are counting on us in this body to do our jobs, we let them 
down time and time again. What is worse is that Congress has known 
about this problem for just about a decade--for almost a decade.
  It was in 2005 that Congress included provisions in transportation 
legislation to create not one but two blue ribbon commissions. For what 
purpose? Will it help us to figure out how to pay for highways, 
bridges, and transit systems which we are not smart enough to figure 
this out? Why don't we put together some commissions and let the 
experts come in and they can help us out? We received the reports and 
the recommendations. We just never acted on them.
  In 2008, these two Commissions delivered reports summarizing the 
advice of countless experts and giving us a roadmap to fixing the 
problems for good.

[[Page 7704]]

Among all of their recommendations, one idea was stressed above all the 
rest: gradually raise transportation user fees and then index them to 
inflation going forward.
  Despite understanding the problem and the smartest solutions for 
nearly a decade, we have only shirked our responsibility to agree on a 
solution again and again.
  Rather than take advantage of those blue ribbon ideas, we have 
continued to kick the can down the road, continued to avoid doing what 
voters sent us here to do; that is, to make decisions, tough decisions, 
in the best interests of our country.
  I stand here today to say it is high time we finally take care of 
business and do the job the American people sent us here to do.
  My concern about this issue should come as no surprise to any of my 
colleagues. For years I have been outspoken about my desire to fully 
fund a multiyear transportation bill.
  Government does have a clear role in ensuring that our country has 
modern, high-quality roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems. 
That is why the Framers of our Constitution had the good sense to as 
much as say so in that Constitution. Unfortunately, it seems to me that 
our courage and willingness to fulfill this responsibility continues to 
escape us. Instead, we avoid tough choices and simply do things such as 
smooth pensions or steal Customs fees. Sometimes we will steal Customs 
fees that are not due for maybe 6, 7, 8 years into the future, and we 
steal that future money and use it to pay for a couple of months' worth 
of road, highway, and bridge construction today. We borrow mine safety 
funds. We apply other bandaids as well.
  The standard justification for each of these short-term patches has 
been that we need just a little more time to work out the details of a 
long-term plan. Just give us a little more time, and we will work this 
out. But, as usual, during the 10 months we gave ourselves when we 
passed the last short-term extension, which, as I recall, was early 
last August--the 12th time we have done this in 6 years, in case anyone 
has lost count--we have come no closer to a solution.
  The Washington Post last summer may have put it best, and here is 
what they said: ``Congress doesn't need more time, Congress needs more 
spine.''
  Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing 
something over and over again and expecting a different result. Today, 
I am asking our colleagues to join me and others to help stop this 
insanity. If we work together, I know we can find a way to invest in 
the 21st-century transportation system our States, our cities, and our 
businesses deserve and need in order to compete in a global 
marketplace. In an effort to do just that, Senator Boxer and I have 
introduced a measure that would at least get us started, taking a 
constructive step that would align the expiration of transportation 
programs with the funding available in the highway trust fund.
  What we have right now is that at the end of this month, the 
authorization for spending Federal money for these roads, highways, 
bridges, and transit projects--the authorizations to spend that money 
expires, effectively stopping the use of Federal money for these 
purposes at the end of this month. We can't let that happen.
  The authorization ends at, we will say right here, the end of May, in 
about 10 days. Meanwhile, the actual funds in the transportation trust 
fund, the highway trust fund, are good until the end of July. So the 
legislation Senator Boxer has joined me in introducing says: At least, 
if we do nothing else, let's align the end of the authorization--now 
May 31--to the end of the funding so that we can at least continue the 
work that is being done in States across the country in the meantime. 
If we work together, I know we can find a way forward.
  We have introduced this legislation, and this adjustment will keep 
the Congress from putting this issue, we hope, on the back burner yet 
again.
  We hope this will increase the likelihood that we can finally sit 
down and come to a long-term solution not this fall, not next year, but 
this summer. I know there are some who say: Well, let's just push this 
off until December. We have done that before and we can do that again. 
I just say to my friends, we have a way of--we are getting to the 
elections. We are getting into the election cycle for President later 
this year. Maybe there are some who feel that will be helpful to us in 
finding a way to come together and funding a transportation project. I 
would beg to differ. I think if we don't get it done sooner rather than 
later, if we don't make those tough decisions now, we are not going to 
make them when the caucuses are gathered in Iowa and the primary voters 
are starting to get riled up in New Hampshire and South Carolina. That 
is not going to help us do our jobs.
  There is a friend of mine who likes to talk about stopgap funding and 
the need to make a long-term commitment to America's growth and 
success. He says it is something like what we do now. It is something 
like taking a road trip--maybe a summer road trip across the country--
stopping to fill up our cars, our trucks, our minivans with gas 1 
gallon at a time. Instead of filling up, we stop at a gas station and 
we get 1 gallon, and then we go down the road and a little while later 
we stop at another gas station and we buy another gallon. It is 
wasteful. It wastes time. It wastes money. It is no way to take a trip 
across the country with your family, and I can assure my colleagues it 
is no way to build a transportation system for a world-class power--
America.
  In any event, as I said earlier, I took two or three ideas away from 
the elections last year. No. 1, Americans want us to work together; No. 
2, they want us to get things done; and No. 3, they want us to do 
everything we can to enhance and strengthen our economic recovery.
  Finally finding an agreement on a way to pass a fully funded 6-year 
transportation bill would help us do all three. We would demonstrate 
that we can work together. We would demonstrate that we can get things 
done for States and cities and counties across America. No. 3, we 
really would strengthen our economic recovery. We wouldn't just put 
600,000 or 700,000 people to work across America building roads, 
highways, bridges, and transit systems; we would do a lot more than 
that. That is important. A lot of jobs need to be filled, and a lot of 
people would love to have those jobs.
  As it turns out, the McKinsey Global Institute recently reported that 
making a major effort to repair and improve our roads, highways, 
bridges, and transit systems could add about 1.5 percent to our annual 
GDP growth and create at least 1.8 million jobs. Let me say that again. 
Making a major effort to repair and improve our roads, highways, 
bridges, and transit systems could add about 1.5 percent to annual GDP 
growth. Keep in mind that GDP growth I think in the last quarter was 
only about 1 percent. This kind of investment could add another 1.5 
percent to annual GDP growth and create almost 2 million jobs.
  By failing to pass a long-term transportation bill, we are 
sacrificing this potential growth and job creation. It is a little bit 
like leaving money on a table--in this case, a lot of it on a table.
  The Federal Government shares the responsibility with State 
governments to make investments in their aging infrastructure. As I 
said earlier, the Federal Government--when States spend money on roads, 
highways, bridges, and transit systems, whether it is in New Hampshire 
or Delaware, roughly half of that money is coming from the Federal 
Government. Our States are counting on us to be a partner in funding 
our transportation systems that the families and businesses we 
represent count on every day. When a Federal policy fails to plan for 
the future, we leave these people in the lurch.
  The highway trust fund has several dedicated revenue streams in the 
form of various user fees, as we know. These fees haven't been adjusted 
in over two decades. During that time, the purchasing power of 
transportation has nearly been cut in half. There have been increases 
in the price of concrete,

[[Page 7705]]

asphalt, steel, and labor. The 18.3-cent Federal gas tax that we set up 
in 1993 is now worth less than a dime. The 24-cent diesel tax is worth 
less than 15 cents.
  The Congressional Budget Office put together the chart here on my 
left that shows the growing difference between the highway trust fund, 
the money we put out for transportation projects, and the money we take 
in from user fees. I would say we were doing reasonably good from 1998 
to 2014. Every 6 years, we see it go up and then it drops down, and 
then it goes up and then it drops down. That is a 6-year transportation 
authorization bill.
  Look what happened starting this year.
  I might add that over the last several years, a lot of this money was 
just transferred out of the general fund, not money we actually raised. 
Then we borrowed most of that money from around the world.
  But we get to the year 2015, and look what happens. At the end of the 
year, every year up through 2025, this will be the shortfall. I think 
it adds up to about $140 billion by 2020. One does not have to be an 
accountant to know we have a problem when what we are spending outpaces 
what we collect more and more each year.
  We need to find a long-term solution that we can agree on to fix this 
problem, and we need to do it this summer. We don't need to do it this 
fall. We don't need to do it next winter. We need to do it this summer. 
Again, I talked about kicking the can into a Presidential election 
year. If we don't do it this summer, my fear is we won't do it at all--
at least not a long-term bill.
  Many of my colleagues have said we must wait until we can enact 
comprehensive tax reform that creates revenues to solve this problem. 
As a strong supporter of tax reform, I hope we can find a way to reform 
our Tax Code, find a way to generate some revenues that can be used to 
invest in the country's roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems. 
As I understand, this idea has support from not only President Obama 
but also from the House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, 
and that is encouraging.
  One thing I know for sure is that this idea is a lot better than 
kicking the can down the road. Let's be honest--we have been talking 
about tax reform for years. It is one of the most complicated problems 
Congress is facing. We can't just wait around letting our highways and 
transit systems that people count on deteriorate while we negotiate the 
incredibly tough decisions surrounding tax reform efforts. Furthermore, 
tax reform only offers one-time revenues that won't fix the long-term 
problem with the highway trust fund.
  I believe we have to have a viable backup plan in case a bipartisan 
deal on tax reform continues to elude the Congress. That is why I 
talked to literally a dozen Members of the House and the Senate from 
both parties and I asked them to share with me their most thoughtful 
ideas of what I hope could become an ``all of the above'' 
transportation funding proposal that we expect to unveil at the 
beginning of next month. I urge any of my colleagues with serious 
thoughts on how to shore up the highway trust fund to bring us their 
ideas and join this effort because I hope to present such a plan, as I 
said earlier, very soon and to make sure that we don't once again kick 
this can down the road. There is time to act. It is not next year. It 
is not around Christmastime. It is this summer.
  Gas prices this Memorial Day weekend will be lower than any Memorial 
Day in recent memory and are likely to stay that way for at least a 
while longer. The prediction is that they are actually going to start 
dropping again as we move into summer.
  There is an amazing coalition of stakeholders from all parts of the 
community--frankly, all parts of our country geographically--and 
throughout the business sector and our government as well, and they 
support a long-term transportation bill. They are businesses, labor 
groups, construction companies, transits, retail businesses, 
manufacturing businesses, and a lot of American families. Their message 
to us is the same: It is time to do the right thing. It is time for us 
to do our jobs. It is time for us to give America the roads, the 
highways, the bridges, and transit systems that we can be proud of and 
that will help our Nation to continue to grow and to be great.
  Mr. President, thank you so much.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cassidy).
  The Senator from New Hampshire.

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