[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 13166-13167]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         THE HIGHWAY TRUST FUND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. LORETTA SANCHEZ of California. Mr. Speaker, we are on a dangerous 
path. First, my Republican colleagues pulled two critical appropriation 
bills from the floor simply because their party cannot come to an 
agreement on a flag that represents a very dark time in our Nation's 
history.
  Second, my colleagues across the aisle, rather than focusing their 
energy on passing comprehensive immigration reform, passed a poisonous 
anti-immigrant bill in response to an isolated incident in the city of 
San Francisco, pulling money away from our law enforcement funding for 
public safety.
  Then they refuse to reauthorize the Export-Import Bank, which helps 
ensure that Americans' businesses can compete with their global 
competitors.
  And now the House Republicans refuse to come to the table yet again 
to

[[Page 13167]]

provide a robust, long-term funding bill for our decaying 
infrastructure system in America.
  Why do we continue to refuse and cut services that our communities 
need? The American people need good-paying jobs, safe and modern 
infrastructure, and efficient transportation in order to provide a 
better life for themselves and for their families. We need to end these 
stopgap extensions.

                              {time}  1100

  How do we fix a broken bridge or a broken highway? Two months of 
highway funding will not do that. In my home State of California, 60 
percent of our roads are in poor or mediocre condition; and, moreover, 
almost 30 percent of California's bridges have been recognized by the 
Department of Transportation as structurally deficient.
  Just a little bit over a week ago, California residents experienced 
the real-life consequences of this statistic when the Interstate 10, 
which connects California and Arizona, collapsed, injuring a resident 
and shutting down the highway for several days. This highway is 
critical to our Southwest economy, which is already suffering from 
deficiencies because of our water infrastructure and the drought that 
we have going on.
  With more than 60,000 bridges throughout the United States in need of 
drastic repairs, failing to provide Americans with a long-term highway 
bill, we are putting jobs at risk, and we are putting our lives at 
risk, which is why my fellow House Democrats have come together to 
provide a 6-year funding bill known as the GROW AMERICA Act. The bill 
will provide for $178 billion over 6 years, so that States and local 
municipalities can address critical infrastructure needs.
  This commonsense legislation would help pay for the investments by 
ending an unfair tax loophole and limiting corporate inversions, 
meaning that big corporations, when they are renouncing their United 
States citizenship, they do that in order to avoid paying taxes.
  Let's use that money for transportation investments here in America. 
Investing in local public transportation projects not only helps to 
improve our traffic flow, but it also helps create good jobs.
  As we look for ways to put our economy back on track, we must be 
mindful of the services that we provide to the American people. We need 
to stop slashing, and we need to start providing. We need to get away 
from sequestration and patchwork funding mentality to actually fulfill 
our duty as public servants to the American people.
  Our families, our roads, and our economy deserve a highway funding 
bill that will invest in America's future, invest in better 
infrastructure, and invest in bigger paychecks for our hard-working 
families who are trying to make it in America.

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