[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Page 9357]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        BUILDING A TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that after 55 months in 
control, my Republican friends have scheduled their first hearing on 
transportation and finance. This is a very important, very welcome 
development, as welcome as it is long overdue. I appreciate my friend, 
Paul Ryan, the chairman of the committee, keeping his word that we 
would actually have a hearing.
  Now, the question is whether this is going to be one that is more or 
less perfunctory, sort of a plain vanilla, or whether it is going to be 
the start of a critical dialogue involving not just ideologues, but the 
people who do more than just study the issue, hear from the vast army 
of people who plan, build, maintain, and use our transportation 
infrastructure. Theirs is a unique, shared, forceful vision. Congress 
should spend the time not just to listen to those stakeholders, but to 
understand how they got to where they are and what we need to do.
  We shouldn't settle for half steps to just get past the next 
transportation deadline, which is looming next month, which would be 
the 34th short-term extension. Just as bad or worse, we would fail to 
give the country the bold transportation investment that is so sorely 
needed.
  The next hearings are even more important following next Wednesday's 
effort. That is the time to actually follow regular order, to debate 
real options.
  I have introduced a path. After 20 years of working on transportation 
funding, it is still the simplest, the best, and the most widely 
supported. It is the widest coalition, in fact, of any major issue 
confronting people on Capitol Hill. It includes the AFL-CIO, the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce, contractors, transit, local government, 
bicyclists, engineers. It includes the AAA, representing automobile 
users, and the American Trucking Association. They all support, for the 
first time in 22 years, raising the Federal gas tax.
  We are in the problem we are in now because we are paying for 2015 
transportation needs with 1993 dollars. It doesn't work.
  My approach would not just raise the gas tax, index the gas tax, but 
work to abolish the gas tax because it is no longer a sustainable long-
term solution. We can, in fact, replace it with a much more viable, 
effective, fair system based on road user charges, which we are 
experimenting with in Oregon, and States around the country are looking 
at.
  In the meantime, we ought to step up and do our job on the gas tax. 
It is interesting that six red States have already raised the gas tax 
this year. If it was good enough for Eisenhower, if it was good enough 
for Ronald Reagan, who used his Thanksgiving Day speech in 1982 to 
summon Congress back to more than double the gas tax, which he and Tip 
O'Neill did, it ought to be good enough for us today.
  Let's discuss, examine, and understand all the viable solutions, the 
health of our infrastructure, our economy, and the impacts on the 
people we serve.
  Whatever solution we come up with must meet three tests: It must 
raise enough to do the job of giving America its first 6-year 
transportation bill since 1998; it must be dedicated to allow the 
certainty to be able to build a transportation vision for the future; 
and it must be sustainable so that we don't end up back in the same 
place in a year or 2 or 4 or even 5.
  My legislation would provide 210 additional billion dollars, enough 
for the transportation committee to fashion that vision for the future. 
It is ironclad dedicated over the next 6 years, but it is sustainable 
because, if Congress hasn't moved to abolish the gas tax by then, at 
least we don't fall off a cliff.
  There was a time when America had the best infrastructure in the 
world. Sadly, that time has passed. There was a time when 
infrastructure used to be bipartisan. I am hopeful that if we step up 
to the plate, approach it in a bipartisan fashion, we can do the job so 
that we start repairing infrastructure that is now rated 25th or 27th 
in the world, and going down.
  We no longer have the finest infrastructure, but we can be bipartisan 
and thoughtful. We can reverse this 20-year slide. We can put hundreds 
of thousands of people to work across America at family-wage jobs this 
year and rebuild and renew America so our families are safer, 
healthier, and more economically secure.

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