[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 9652-9653]
[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. Speaker, there is a tremendous crisis facing 
America, but it is not one you hear much about on Capitol Hill. It is 
killing hundreds of people a year, injuring thousands more. It is 
crippling America's global standing, as we have fallen in the world 
ranking from number 1 down to 27 and falling further. It is having a 
profound effect on our global economic competitiveness, while costing 
American families hundreds of dollars a year in extra expenses.
  Of course, it is complicating the lives of American business and 
families by losing millions of hours that otherwise could be put to 
productive work, at exercise, or with their families, and on the job.
  If it were any other subject, there would be cries of outrage and 
alarm and calls for action. You would see a flurry of action here on 
Capitol Hill.
  Sadly, this decline, this cost, this damage is the result of our very 
real infrastructure crisis, a crisis to which Congress has been 
indifferent at best and negligent at worse.
  Despite countless examples of the crying need for infrastructure 
investment, Congress has been paralyzed, trying to pay for 2015 costs 
of infrastructure with 1993 dollars. Congress has not taken any 
systematic action since 1993, and the time has long since passed for 
action.
  Thirty-three short-term extensions of transportation finance is not a 
substitute for action. No nation became great building its 
infrastructure 9 months at a time.
  To be fair, there are people on Capitol Hill who do care about this 
and have proposed action:
  My friend and colleague Peter DeFazio, the ranking member on the 
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has proposed a barrel tax 
on petroleum. He has proposed a financial fee on transactions, both of 
which would go a long way toward solving this problem.
  My Ways and Means colleagues Jim Renacci and Bill Pascrell have 
proposed a mechanism that would be a failsafe, that if Congress didn't 
act to fund infrastructure, the gas tax would be indexed and increased.
  Our Maryland colleague John Delaney has identified vast sums of 
corporate money parked overseas that could be made available for 
infrastructure investment in the United States if it were returned for 
that purpose.
  And I have proposed, along with two dozen of my colleagues, that we 
simply bite the bullet and do what Ronald Reagan did in 1992--raise the 
gas tax for the 1st time in 22 years.
  When I introduced this proposal in this Congress, it was supported by 
the widest array of groups on any major contested issue on Capitol 
Hill. It was supported by the top echelons of business, of organized 
labor, of the building trades, construction companies, local 
government, transit, bicycles, truckers, AAA, all in alignment that 
Congress should step up and remedy this situation.
  There are solutions. There are people who think about it. We need to 
have the same level of courage and urgency that has been shown by 
people at the State and local level where they don't have the luxury of 
living in a Capitol Hill bubble. They have to deal with the 
consequences, and they have stepped up, 19 States since 2012--in fact, 
6 States already this year. Idaho, Utah, Iowa, South Dakota, Nebraska, 
and Georgia, deep red States, have all raised the gas tax in 2015.
  I am pleased that tomorrow the Ways and Means Committee will have its 
first hearing on transportation finance in the 56 months since my 
Republican colleagues took over. It is no substitute for Congress 
rolling up its sleeves and acting, but it is an important start. And I 
hope it will signify a full-court press in that committee to finally 
get down to cases and solve this problem.

[[Page 9653]]



                          ____________________