[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 11840-11843]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            THE HIGHWAY BILL

  Mr. REID. Madam President, first, we all appreciate the work done by 
Senator McConnell and Senator Boxer. Senator Boxer has been tireless on 
this, as she is on everything. But we have an issue that I think we 
need to address. We received this bill, which is more than 1,000 pages, 
about an hour ago.
  I am going to have a caucus tomorrow, and I hope we will have an 
opportunity at that time to have reports from committees of 
jurisdiction. Committees of jurisdiction is more than just the 
Environment and Public Works Committee; finance is involved, commerce, 
banking, and other committees, of course, are interested.
  So we need the opportunity to look at this bill. This is a big bill 
with a lot of different sections in it dealing with a lot of different 
issues. We are not asking for anything unusual; we just want to be able 
to study the bill and talk about it in a private meeting tomorrow at 12 
o'clock.
  Now, if we were doing something that was--``What are you talking 
about? You mean you want to read this?'' Please. I mean, we have pages 
of quotes from my friends.
  Senator Enzi said:

       That is what created this enormous outrage across America 
     of: Did you read the bill? How can you read the bill if you 
     have not seen anything in it, if it has not been given to 
     you? I do not think it is intended to be given to us until we 
     have to shuffle this thing through at the end [and not know 
     what is in it].

  Lamar Alexander, one of the most thoughtful people I have served with 
in government, said a couple of years ago:

       We want to make sure the American people have a chance to 
     read it and they have a

[[Page 11841]]

     chance to know exactly what it costs and they have a chance 
     to know exactly how it affects them. That is not an 
     unreasonable request, we don't think. That is the way the 
     Senate works. That is our job. When it came to the Defense 
     authorization bill, we spent a couple of weeks doing that. 
     When it came to No Child Left Behind, the Education bill, we 
     spent 7 weeks going through it. . . . The Homeland Security 
     bill took 7 weeks. The Energy bill in 2002 took 8 weeks. A 
     farm bill last year took 4 weeks. So we have a little reading 
     to do, a little work to do.

  John McCain said:

       But could I also add, if we haven't seen it, don't you 
     think we should have time to at least examine it? I mean, I 
     don't think it would be outrageous to ask for a bill to be 
     read that we haven't seen.

  I--as have a number of people in this body--have worked on highway 
bills in the past. We have worked on these bills, and they have taken 
weeks to get done. We are being presented with something here that 
basically says: You take this or leave it. That isn't the way it should 
work around here.
  I am going to do everything I can to move forward on a long-term 
highway bill. I want to get it done. But we are going to have to look 
at this and find out what my different committees think, what different 
Senators think, what people at home think. You know, I have a lot of 
people at home who are interested in what is in this bill. There is the 
banking provision. There are the pay-fors. I looked at them last week, 
but that has been a moving target also.
  The ranking member of our Finance Committee at this stage--unless he 
has learned something in the last half hour--doesn't know what the pay-
fors are either.
  So, in short, we want to be as cooperative as we can, but we are not 
going to lurch into this legislation without having had a chance to 
read in detail this 1,030-page bill and, after having read it, to have 
a discussion within the caucus on this bill.
  We would be in a very difficult position if--as the Republican leader 
said, we are going to work over the weekend, which is fine. I have no 
problem with that. I have tried that myself a few times; it didn't work 
so well. But I am willing to be part of the deal here if we need to 
work this weekend to get it done.
  I don't know what the House plans to do, but we are assuming a lot, 
that the House is going to take up this bill. If they did, that would 
be wonderful, but I have to say that based on my conversation with the 
Democrats in the House, in conversations they have had with the 
Republican leadership over there, I don't think there is a chance in 
the world they are going to take up this bill. They have sent us a 
bill--a bill that is for 5 months, with conversations between the White 
House--not our Whitehouse but the President's White House--to come up 
with a long-term highway bill. Part of that is some consideration of 
the Export-Import Bank. I realize how important that is. I have been on 
this floor talking about how important that is. We have about 45 
different countries that have, as we speak, ex-im banks that are 
working, that are taking away all of our business, so it is important 
that we get that done also. But we cannot let one get in the way of the 
other. It is not our fault--Democrats' fault--that we don't have an Ex-
Im Bank bill. We didn't create the problems with Ex-Im having gone out 
of business.
  So I want to get a highway bill done and I want to get Ex-Im Bank 
done, but the Ex-Im Bank problem should not stand in the way of us 
getting a good, strong, robust highway bill.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, my good friend the Democratic leader 
was saying as recently as a couple of weeks ago that we need to do a 
long-term highway bill. Well, Senator Boxer and I took him seriously. 
We have worked hard to come up with a bipartisan, multiyear, paid-for 
highway bill. The fact that it hasn't been online very long is a good 
argument, and our friends will have an opportunity to read every bit of 
it. I hope at that point they will find it attractive to move forward. 
As I have said for over I guess now something like 2 months, this bill 
is an opportunity for those who support the Ex-Im Bank to offer an 
amendment on that subject.
  So it is further complicated in terms of timing by the fact that the 
House of Representatives is leaving a week earlier than we are. I can't 
say with certainty that the House of Representatives will take up and 
pass a multiyear highway bill that doesn't raise the gas tax and is 
credibly paid for, but it is a lot more attractive, it strikes me, than 
a 6-month extension that we have to revisit again in December.
  I am hopeful that the House will take a look at what we have done on 
the Senate side on a bipartisan basis and find it very appealing. So we 
would like to work our way through this and we intend to work our way 
through it--including the weekend--to get what we believe is an 
important accomplishment for the country over to the House of 
Representatives so they can take a look at it, and maybe they will find 
it appealing as well.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. BOXER. Madam President, if I could say to both leaders, whom I 
respect tremendously--and I agree with Leader Reid 99.9 percent of the 
time--this is the situation: We have a highway trust fund expiring, 
going bust, going broke, and, yes, we have to spend some time. You 
know, we have a lot of staff; we can divide this up--250 pages, 4 
people. We have a summary. We have a summary of the bill out there for 
everybody, and we can just say we need 4 weeks or 6 weeks to look at 
it.
  The EPW piece, as my friend Senator Inhofe knows, has been out there 
for 3 months--not that long; at least 2 months. We haven't changed much 
in that. It has been out there, so that has been reviewed.
  All I want to say is this: If we could just keep our eye on the 
prize--and I understand that the way we proceed over here is important. 
That is why I voted no, not to go to a bill I wrote with Senator 
McConnell, because I agree with my leader completely. We need a chance 
to look at it. But I would submit that this isn't the first time we 
have ever done a highway bill. This is a little different from a health 
care bill in the sense that it is a highway bill. Most of it is very 
similar. I would say EPW builds off the old bill we had before, and 
most of the bills track older bills.
  I don't think it is going to be that hard for us to detail our staff 
to read it because--here is the problem--if we don't, we have 800,000 
construction workers who are still not back to work, and we have 7 
States that have stopped doing anything. So if we could just keep our 
eye on the prize, which is businesses being able to do what they want 
to do: build--I had a bridge collapse 2 days ago. You can't get from 
California to Arizona.
  So I hope that tomorrow we will be able to join with our friends and 
vote to proceed. If we don't like the bill, we will have three more 
opportunities to vote no. But I would love to get on this bill, get 
moving on it, and see if we can keep this economy moving in the right 
direction and not take a chance, as many economists said we will, if we 
don't do a long-term bill.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Will the Senator from California yield for a question?
  Mrs. BOXER. Yes, I will.
  Mr. McCONNELL. My understanding is that the Senator and Chairman 
Inhofe have been discussing with people around the country who would 
benefit from this bill. Does the Senator have a sense of their 
enthusiasm for the product we have come up with?
  Mrs. BOXER. I do. As I shared with Leader Reid today, we have 68 
organizations, from labor, to business, to general contractors. I have 
the list. They are asking us, begging us to move forward--the National 
Governors Association. It is really a broad-based number of 
organizations that don't agree all the time. I mean that the building 
trade doesn't often agree with the Chamber of Commerce, but they agree 
on this. So I think there is enthusiasm.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Would I be correct in saying they are less than 
enthusiastic about another short-term extension?
  Mrs. BOXER. They agree with those of us who have said that is a death 
by

[[Page 11842]]

a thousand cuts. We just can't keep on doing these short-term 
extensions.
  I would say this to the Republican leader. If you or I went to the 
bank to get a mortgage and the banker smiled and said that you get that 
mortgage, but it is only for 6 months or 5 months, you wouldn't buy the 
house.
  No one is going to build a new project or fix a bridge that has 
multiyear costs if they know the money could run out in 5 months or in 
the short term.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Would it also be correct, I ask the Senator from 
California, if we are fortunate enough to send a multiyear paid-for 
highway bill over to the House, that the same constituent groups that 
have had an interest in this and have indicated their enthusiasm to you 
would likely descend on the House and suggest that this might be 
something they ought to take a look at?
  Mrs. BOXER. I think there will be huge momentum if we are able to 
pass this in a bipartisan way; yes, I do.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
  Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I have been listening carefully to what 
concerns people have, and I have to remind everyone that it was June 
24--June 24--that we passed this bill out of committee. We had been 
working on this bill for months before that.
  All of us realize that between the last bill we had, which was a 
multiyear bill in 2005--that we then had a 5-year bill, and since that 
expired at the end of 2009, we have had nothing but extensions. Those 
extensions cost 30 percent off the top just because short-term 
extensions don't work. But we went ahead, and we passed a bill.
  The reason I am optimistic that if we can get this to the House they 
will sign it is because that wasn't a problem at all when it went to 
the House the last time. We showed them that the cost of the bill is 
far less--the conservative position. That was with 33 Members of the 
House on the transportation and infrastructure committee. So all of the 
Republicans and all of the Democrats on their committee voted for it. 
Those same Democrats and Republicans over there would support this.
  I think the reason they came out originally for a shorter term bill 
was to pack it in with some other things they wanted to get passed. But 
I have yet to talk to the first Member of the House who doesn't say: If 
you bring us a multiyear bill, we will sign it.
  So I think that is a moot statement. I think that will happen, and we 
are willing to stay here until it does happen.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I appreciate the chairman and the 
ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee pointing 
out that the actual underlying authorization language in this 
legislation has been public information since June 24--June 24. The 
only thing that is a little different about this underlying bill--it is 
not as if this were air-dropped out of heaven, and it showed up on 
people's desks--is that Senator Hatch, the chairman of the Committee on 
Finance, and other committee chairmen on the commerce committee, EPW, 
the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee have come up 
with a group of pay-fors to figure a way to pay for 3 years now of this 
underlying 6-year bill.
  So I think it is absolutely accurate to say that the good work being 
done by the Environment and Public Works Committee to pass a 6-year 
bill will be done when this bill is passed, but we have only been able 
to agree on 3 years of pay-fors. I wish we could have gone longer, but 
that is not bad considering our recent record with these temporary 
patches, which I agree is a terrible way to do business.
  So I congratulate the Senator from California and those who have 
worked to make this bill as good as it is, but I want to make another 
point. There are others who are arguing: Well, we shouldn't be doing 
this. We ought to be passing a temporary patch, and then we should be 
doing international tax reform and trying to come up with some 
additional revenue out of that process that will pay for a 6-year bill. 
Well, the fact of the matter is that nothing we will do with this bill 
precludes that good work from going forward.
  As a matter of fact, after 3 years of paying for this bill, at some 
point we are going to have to find a way to recharge the bill in order 
to complete the work that was first started in the underlying 6-year 
bill. So I don't want anybody to be under a misconception, because I 
think you might if you didn't know the context of thinking that all of 
a sudden this 1,000-page bill appeared on people's desks, and they do 
not know where it came from, and they do not know anything about its 
provenance or what it will actually do. The truth is very, very 
different.
  It is important, and I respect the fact, as the Senator from 
California has made the point, that people do need to get comfortable 
with the paperwork. But what we have tried to do is to come up with 
credible ways to pay for the bill that actually represents a consensus 
to pay for 3 years rather than this idea of a 6-month patch and hoping 
that somehow we will come up with the money in December for a 6-year 
bill.
  So while I regret this failed cloture vote, this bill does represent 
a significant step forward, and I am encouraged by what I have seen in 
terms of the bipartisan cooperation that allowed us to make progress on 
a number of contentious matters so far this year, and I thank the 
minority whip for his good work on this as well.
  We passed an education bill. We passed trade promotion authority. It 
was not universally popular on both sides, but this was a priority for 
the President and I think something that represents a step forward for 
our economy, opening markets for the things we raise and grow and the 
things we make in this country.
  We have done a number of important things that I hope begin to regain 
the public's trust and confidence that we are actually able to function 
and that even though we have very different ideas about how to get to a 
conclusion, we can actually find common ground and make some progress.
  In my State in particular--Texas being a large State--the Texas A&M 
Transportation Institute estimates that by the year 2020, 8.4 billion 
hours will be spent waiting in traffic--8.4 billion hours. Of course, 
that also means that 4 billion gallons of gas will be wasted in the 
process. Imagine the pollution, not to mention the heartburn associated 
with congestion on our highways and roadways.
  We are, thank goodness, a fast-growing State relative to the rest of 
the country. We are a big State. We need the transportation 
infrastructure to keep our economy moving and to create jobs and 
economic growth.
  So I am confident we can work in a bipartisan manner to address what 
I hope is just a temporary obstacle and avoid these patches that kick 
the can down the road and provide no predictability or planning ability 
so these long-term projects can be initiated and completed.
  I would just point out the fact that Texas has not waited on the 
Federal Government in order to deal with its transportation needs. Last 
November, by an overwhelming 4-to-1 margin, Texans approved a ballot 
initiative that provided an additional $1.7 billion to upgrade and 
maintain our transportation network. So I congratulate our leaders at 
the State level who have taken the initiative to begin to make that 
downpayment on upgrading and maintaining our transportation network, 
but estimates are we need as much as $5 billion in order to do that. So 
this represents just a downpayment. We need to pass the Federal highway 
bill in order to complete our work.
  As I pointed out, our State has currently about 27 million people. By 
2040, it is estimated to reach as many as 45 million people. So we need 
this infrastructure, but we are not alone. We are not unique in that 
sense. Every State needs transportation infrastructure to keep people 
and goods moving in order to continue to grow our economy because a 
growing economy creates jobs and opportunity, and the one thing we need 
in this country is a growing economy.

[[Page 11843]]

  Last year, in 2014, the Texas economy grew at 5.2 percent. The U.S. 
economy grew at 2.2 percent. That is why, because of that 3-point 
differential, we have created more jobs in Texas--or seen jobs created 
by the private sector, I should say--than anywhere else in the country. 
If we fail to pass a multiyear transportation bill, if we somehow 
decide to shoot ourselves in the foot and fail in this important 
effort, we will have only ourselves to blame, and we will be 
contributing to the problem rather than contributing to the solution.
  The resources provided for in this legislation will help relieve 
urban congestion, upgrade rural routes, and improve the overall safety 
and efficiency of our highways. It is something our friends across the 
aisle just a few short weeks ago said they wanted. They said they were 
worried about this impending deadline coming up where we needed to do 
something, and they were predicting that perhaps we would just have 
another patch. They called for a longer term highway bill. So I would 
urge our colleagues to take yes for an answer.
  Thanks to the good work done by Chairman Hatch of the Committee on 
Finance and a lot of work on a bipartisan basis across the aisle, we 
have actually come up with enough money--enough legitimate pay-fors--to 
pass a 3-year transportation bill with the prospect, if we can come up 
with some additional funds through international tax reform, to 
backfill the final 3 years. So nothing here actually precludes that 
effort. Nothing cuts that off. This is, I think, part of doing our 
basic job as Members of the Congress. It is not particularly attractive 
or sexy or interesting, but it is about competence, it is about doing 
our job, and it is about putting the American people's interests first.
  So I hope by tomorrow our colleagues will have had a chance to 
satisfy themselves and understand the pay-fors in this bill, 
recognizing that most of this information has been out there in the 
public domain for a long, long time. I am not asking them to like it, I 
am not asking them to fall in love with the pay-fors, but I am asking 
them to let us go forward and to let the Senate be the Senate. Let 
people offer their ideas, hopefully get votes on constructive 
suggestions, eventually pass this legislation, and send it over to the 
House, where I predict, if it comes out of the Senate with a good 
strong vote, our friends in the House will take it up and pass it and 
send it to the President, and we will have fulfilled our 
responsibility.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, let me add my voice to this bipartisan 
chorus. It is embarrassing to the United States of America that we are 
now in the midst of our 33rd short-term extension of the highway trust 
fund.
  This 60-day extension ends in 10 days. It is true and the Senator 
from Texas is correct that many of us have come to the floor and said 
this is beneath the dignity of a great nation--that we cannot invest in 
our own economy, in our own business growth. Building the highways and 
bridges and the mass transit that sustains a great nation takes a 
determined long-term effort.
  Now, there are those--not on our side of the aisle, but there are 
those--who question whether the Federal Government should be involved 
in this at all. The so-called devolution movement argues, I understand, 
that this really should be a State and local matter: Get the Federal 
Government out of the business of planning the transportation grid for 
America.
  I have three words for those people who believe that: Dwight David 
Eisenhower, a Republican President who, in the 1950s, had the vision 
and determination, once he had seen the autobahn in Germany, to say 
that the United States of America needs an interstate highway system 
for its national defense. That is how he sold it. He sold it to a 
bipartisan Congress, and we have lived with that benefit ever since.
  Our generation and even those before us have inherited the vision of 
that President and Members of Congress who said: Let us invest in the 
long-term development of America.
  Think about your own home State and what interstate highways mean to 
your economy. In my State, if you are a town lucky enough to live next 
to an interstate, you are bound to have a good economy. And if you are 
blessed with the intersection of two interstates, hold on tight, 
because the opportunities are limitless.
  So that generation 60 years ago had a vision. The question is, Do we 
have a vision? We certainly don't with 60-day extensions with the 
highway trust fund. That is why when Senator McConnell on the 
Republican side offered a long-term approach, 3 years--I wish it were 
6--but 3 years actually paid for, I believe we should take it 
seriously.
  One Senator among us, Senator Boxer of California, did. As chairman 
of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Barbara Boxer rolled up 
her sleeves and started negotiating, crafting an agreement.
  How about this for an assignment. We said to Senator Boxer: Come up 
with a long-term highway trust fund bill, get it through four different 
committees to the satisfaction of at least the majority of the 45 other 
Democratic Senators, work out your differences, and report to us in 10 
days. She did. I have to give credit to her, as big as this bill may 
be--and by Senate standards it is one of the larger ones--it was an 
undertaking she took seriously and we should take seriously too. Now 
that we have the bill, there is no excuse. There is plenty of time to 
read this. Don't believe that every word on every page is valuable, but 
let's go through it carefully and make sure we understand completely 
what we are doing before we vote. That was the cloture vote we had 
earlier today.
  When I went home over this weekend and called leaders in my State--I 
called the CEOs of two major corporations, I called the labor unions, I 
called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and they were over the moon and 
happy with the notion that we are finally going to come up with at 
least a 3-year highway trust fund bill.
  I will be reading this carefully. In the course of reading it, I hope 
I can come to the conclusion that this is the right answer to move us 
forward to build our infrastructure for the next generation.

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