BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. CARPER. Madam President, colleagues, I want to hearken back to last November's election. I thought for some time--and the Presiding Officer has heard me say this once or twice--that for this Senator there are three takeaways from that election. No. 1, the American people want us to work together in the Senate here in Washington; the American people want us to get things done; and most especially, the American people want us to get things done that actually strengthen our economic recovery.
My own view is that one of the things we can do to strengthen our economic recovery is to increase exports. We work very hard in this Chamber, in the Senate and with the House and the President, to try to pave the way to create a large new trading block consisting of the United States and 11 other countries which, when put together, comprise about 40 percent of the world's customers. This is the trading block we call the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is something that is sought by the President and is supported by myself, by Democrats, and by Republicans, and it is still being negotiated. But it is an important part in growing and strengthening our economic recovery.
One of the other related areas is how do we finance exports. One of the ways we have done that for years in this country is through the Export-Import Bank. We have reached a point where the authorization of the Export-Import Bank has expired. The legislation that has passed the Senate would renew that authorization, and my hope is that when we finally find our way through the transportation gauntlet, we will also reauthorize the Export-Import Bank to again make available financing for business--not for every business large and small, but for quite a few. Other nations with whom we compete help finance their exports, and for us not to do the same puts us at a competitive disadvantage.
Another thing we can do to strengthen our economic recovery is to better protect our international property--research and development--whether it is from cyber security attacks, data breaches, or whether it is through simply the way we combat patent trolling. Folks come up with ideas and they are delayed. They end up in court, and research and development is stymied in some cases as a result of all that.
We have worked in the Environment and Public Works Committee for years now on something called the Tax Exceptions Control Act which provides predictability and certainty for businesses, especially in the chemical industry, but also at the same time works to protect our health as human beings, especially among the most vulnerable--the young, the old--and at the same time it is good for the environment. That legislation may be coming before us as soon as next week.
Many of us have sought to provide some certainty for businesses on the tax side through international tax reform, which is an idea supported by the President, by the House Republican and Democratic leadership, and by the Finance Committee working group led by Senators PORTMAN and SCHUMER. It is not comprehensive tax reform, but it is a big piece of it that at least provides some certainty and predictability and would also provide, frankly, a couple hundred billion dollars over the next 10 years to be used for roads, highways, bridges, transit, rail, and so forth.
The last thing I will mention in terms of strengthening our economic recovery is transportation. There is an outfit called McKinsey which is a major consulting company. They have something called the McKinsey Global Institute. Not long ago they reported that if we were to make the kind of robust investment in infrastructure sought by the President and supported by House Republican and Democratic leadership, and supported by our bipartisan working group on the Finance Committee--if we were actually to do that, we would grow, according to McKinsey's employment estimates, by as much as 1.5 million jobs over the next several years. A lot of these jobs are for people who are either not working or are working part-time. They would like to build something or rebuild something, and they could work on highways, bridges, our transit systems, and so forth. The folks at the McKinsey Global Institute go even further to say that if we were to make this kind of robust investment in transportation at large, we would not only put a lot of people back to work, but we would grow our GDP by as much as 1.5 percent. That may not sound like a lot, but I think our GDP growth in the first quarter was zero. We struggled through a tough winter. It has bounced back nicely in the second quarter, but it is still only 2.5 percent. The idea of being able to add 1.5 percent to that would give us a 4-percent GDP growth, and that is as strong as we have seen in a while. It would translate into a lot more jobs for people other than just building highways, bridges, and roads in our country.
I have been asked, why would our GDP grow so much by making these investments in transportation? In one of several meetings I have had with industry groups, someone from a company said: We move a lot of our products overseas in order to sell our products. We don't export by air, but by ship. Most of the exports leaving this country go by way of ship. He went on to say: We send our products to ports and we have a narrow window of time. In his particular case it was a timeframe of 4 hours. The ships coming into this particular port needed to pick up their goods and products within 4 hours. He said if they met that window, they were good. If they missed that window, they were not good. As it turns out, there are enormous delays in moving not just people in this country but in moving products and freight.
One of the great things about the Environment and Public Works Committee's 6-year transportation reauthorization legislation was a freight provision. I give a lot of credit to Senators BOXER and INHOFE for including--we were among the people who strongly recommended it--a strong freight provision in the Transportation bill in order to help grow GDP to help grow jobs.
As it turns out, part of the reason why it is difficult to get anything done around here on transportation is the issue of how we are going to pay for all these investments, although I have referenced some pretty good ideas. I mentioned one. One of the reasons it is difficult to pass legislation through is that multiple committees have jurisdiction over transportation. The Environment and Public Works Committee in which I serve is led by Senators INHOFE and BOXER. We have jurisdiction over roads, highways, and bridges. That is a big piece of our transportation system, but it is not all of it. The Banking Committee has jurisdiction over transit, which is significant. The Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over freight rail and interstate passenger rail and jurisdiction over safety in a lot of instances. They also have jurisdiction over a fair amount of what happens in the air for our country. Then the Finance Committee, which I am also privileged to serve on--which is called the Ways and Means Committee in the House--is heavily involved in how to pay for all the improvements we need to make--and how badly we need to make them.
As it turns out, there are some folks who actually study the amount of time that we are delayed either sitting in traffic or moving very slowly in this country. The folks at Texas A&M put out an annual report on congestion in our country. They found the average U.S. commuter wastes 38 hours every year because of traffic congestion. There is an industry group that has something called The Road Information Program. They estimate the average driver in the United States pays $377 each year in additional vehicle costs as a result of poor road conditions. The World Bank, in a related report, has found that when a road is allowed to deteriorate from good to poor, each dollar we fail to invest in road maintenance will increase vehicle operating costs by between $2 and $3. So among the many reasons we want to make these investments is No. 1, to grow employment for the many folks who are actually building and working on these projects--a lot of people. We want to grow our gross domestic product. We want to reduce the amount of time spent sitting in traffic or traveling very slowly in traffic. The 38 hours wasted in congestion are hours we lose in our lives every year. Lastly, we want to reduce the amount of money we spend on our own vehicles.
I know my own vehicle, my Chrysler Town and Country minivan, went over 400,000 miles this week as we were driving in from Delaware the day before last. We were coming across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge last week when it topped out at 400,000 miles. Along the way people have asked: How do you get a vehicle to go that many years and that far? I tell them that every other week we wash it. That is pretty much all I do. Well, I actually do a lot more than that. I have replaced a lot of tires. There are a lot of potholes, causing a lot of realignments, and it adds up. The average is almost $377 a year, but the money adds up for us as it does for other people as well.
I mentioned earlier that the Environment and Public Works Committee has jurisdiction over roads, highways, and bridges. The commerce committee has jurisdiction over ground transportation, including freight rail, passenger rail, and air; the banking committee has jurisdiction over transit; and the Finance Committee has jurisdiction over finance and how we actually finance these investments. That is one of the reasons it is difficult to put a package together with all the different pieces to find common ground and to come to an agreement on how to fund it.
One of the other difficulties is--and I am not a huge advocate of earmarks, but one of the reasons people were willing to vote year after year, decade after decade, for a 6-year transportation bill was because they could point to certain specific provisions in the Transportation bill which helped their congressional district or their State. It is more difficult now for a representative or Senator to say these are the specific provisions that are good for my State or my district, and this is one of the reasons why I am supporting this legislation. It doesn't mean we ought to go back to earmarks, but it is one of the reasons why it is harder to build a super majority to move legislation like this through the Senate.
So where are we? The House has passed legislation that says for the next 3 months we are going to fund transportation projects in this country--roads, highways, bridges, and transit. They have outlined a couple of ways to pay for that. They do not have enough money to pay for projects over the next 5 months. They have authorized the actual construction of those projects for the next 3 months. That is their bill, and I think they have pretty much passed it and said, kind of, take it or leave it. Previously, they said they wanted to extend for 5 months the authorization and the appropriations for roads, highways, bridges, and transit until sometime in December to give us time between now and December to come to agreement on the administration's earlier idea embraced by House Democratic and Republican leadership and embraced by the working group in the Senate Finance Committee about international tax reform, which some would deem repatriation.
We passed out of here today a different plan that I do not support but a plan that would appear to authorize projects for a 6-year transportation bill. As it turns out, the money is good for maybe 3 years, not for 6. It comes from a lot of different sources, some that I would deem inappropriate. Others may differ with that. It is not the way I think we should do business, but it is the way we have done business.
We passed a bill. We have different perspectives as to what we ought to do. My expectation is that the Senate will agree with the House-passed bill and we will, in the meantime, go back to the drawing board. One of the things that I think has value in the House-passed bill is it sets the stage for us to get serious about the administration's proposal, again embraced by the House Democratic and Republican leadership, and by our bipartisan working group in the Finance Committee. It gives us time to actually find out if we can do that.
There are some people who don't like that idea. Some people in pretty powerful positions around here don't like that idea, but there are others in equally high positions who think that is a very good idea. Among the benefits that it would provide--it doesn't address our transportation needs forever, but it certainly would provide a lot of money for the next 6 years.
Why might that be a good idea? I think ultimately--and while for years we have used user fees, gas taxes, diesel taxes, to fund most of our road construction at the national level and for our road repairs--to be honest with you, over time, our cars, trucks, and vans have been more energy efficient.
My Chrysler minivan that I mentioned earlier gets about 24 miles per gallon on the highway, but there are vehicles today, including minivans, including trucks, that do a whole lot better than that. We have smaller passenger cars that routinely get 40 and even 50 miles to the gallon. To say that the diesel tax and the gas tax are forever the sole solution is probably not realistic. We have some vehicles on the road that are pretty much all electric. They do not buy any gas. They do not buy any diesel fuel. When they need a refill, they pull up and recharge their batteries. We have some folks who buy vehicles that are powered by fuel cells. They run on hydrogen or natural gas, methane.
So given the changing mix in the way we move ourselves and goods and services around the country, that sole reliance on user fees, by a gas tax and diesel tax, forever is not a good idea.
Among the other ideas that are out there is tolling. People who come through my State on I-95 pay a toll. A lot of them use E-ZPass. They can go through our State on the highway using E-ZPass so they don't have to sit in line and wait. Their credit card accounts get charged for their travel. We have a similar kind of arrangement on State Route 1, where a lot of people come through our State from I-95 heading south to our beaches or to Dover Air Force Base. We have highway-speed E-ZPass there too. So tolling is part of the future.
Another idea that is being experimented with by the States--it is referred to in different ways--but I think of it as vehicle miles traveled. Is there a way we can actually figure out how much, in terms of a true user--how many miles we are actually traveling in our vehicles and assess some kind of fee at the Federal level or maybe at the State level on those who are driving cars, trucks, and vans.
Folks in Oregon have been working on this the longest. I think they started this effort about 10 years ago. They call it a road user charge. That is another way of saying vehicle miles traveled. I think at the end of the day--not the end of the day but in 10, 15, 20 years, we will have figured out how to actually do vehicle miles traveled/road user charges in a cost-effective way that is protective of people's rights to privacy.
The other area that I think we will do a better job in is tolling, moving to more things like the highway-speed E-ZPass, so people who want to use a particular road will pay a toll and do so in a way that still expedites movement of traffic as we do through highway-speed E-ZPass. Having said that, if we are unable to come to an agreement at the end of this year, if we are unable to come to an agreement on some kind of international tax reform, the idea of using a lot of cats and dogs to fund transportation improvements for the next 2 or 3 years--I don't think that is a good outcome.
I am not a Congress of one. If I were, I would go back and say we should look at--at least for the next 6 years--user fees. We have been using user fees or taxing gas and diesel for a long time to provide for most of the Federal share for these transportation construction projects and improvements. I think the last time we raised the Federal gas tax was 1993. We raised it to 18.3 cents per gallon. We raised, at the same time, the diesel taxes to 24.3 cents per gallon. We have not raised either of those for over 22 years. Since that time, the cost of asphalt, the cost of concrete, the cost of labor, the cost of steel have all gone up, but the user fees, the gas tax and diesel tax, have not gone up at all.
George Voinovich--former Governor, former U.S. Senator--and I worked together about 5 or 6 years on the Bowles-Simpson Commission to suggest an increase in the gas and diesel tax by a penny every quarter, by a penny every 3 months, for about 15 quarters. We were roughly saying 3 or 4 cents a year for 4 years and then index the gas tax after that to the rate of inflation so we did not have to come back and re-address it every year or every 2 or 3 or 4 years.
That is an idea that was actually adopted in the Bowles-Simpson report, but much of what the Bowles-Simpson report included has not been enacted. One of the things I am going to be doing--and I hope colleagues in the House as well as in the Senate--in the next day or two is introducing an increase in the gas and diesel tax of 4 cents a year for the next 4 years--that will be 16 cents over the next 4 years--and then indexing the gas tax and diesel tax to the rate of inflation.
What would that cost the average family, the average driver in this country? On a weekly basis, it would be about $2, actually less than $2. I don't know what people pay for a cup of coffee, but I am told you can buy--I bought a cup of coffee today for $1.70. Some people buy it for less. Some people buy it for $2 or more. But for roughly a cup of coffee a week, we could have better roads, highways, bridges--a whole lot better.
By doing that, we would raise, over the next 10 years, $180 billion, maybe even more, to be able to provide for our construction needs, roads, highways, bridges, and transit. We have the system in place. We know how to do it. The price of gasoline--I bought gas the other day in Central Delaware, in Dover. I paid $2.53 a gallon. It was down by about 20 cents over the last month. If the Iran deal actually goes through and is approved, the Iranians are expected to add to a world already awash in oil. So the price of oil is coming down. The Iranians would add, I am told, about another half billion barrels of oil to the marketplace and probably continue to push down the price of oil.
I ask us to keep that in mind. Some people say we will never be able to get the votes for an increase in the gas or diesel tax, even if it is phased in for 4 cents a year for 4 years. But there were six States last year across the country--most of them with Republican Governors and Republican legislatures--that did something like this. They did not raise the gas tax by $1 or 50 cents or even 25 cents, but they raised it, in some cases, over several years.
The question is, Can State legislators or Members of the Congress actually vote to meet our transportation needs? Can they actually vote for this stuff and get reelected? As it turns out, 95 percent of the Republicans in these six States and State legislatures--95 percent of the Republican legislators who voted for these user fee increases won their primaries last year and they won their generals. They were reelected.
Among the Democrats who voted in those six States last year to raise user fees, 90 percent of them won their primaries, they won the general election. They were reelected. For people who say you cannot vote to do a tough thing and still get reelected, I would just say look at those six States from last year. Other States are going to follow in those footsteps this year as well.
So the long term--I will wrap it up at this point in time. I see Senator Grassley is on the floor. But long term, the worst option is to do nothing. The worst option is to do nothing. I have a glass of water here. I am going to ask the pages to bring me a couple more glasses, just empty glasses, if they will quickly. Senator Grassley is waiting to talk. Bear with me. This is show-and-tell on the Senate floor. I don't think this is against the rules, but if it is, maybe the Presiding Officer will cut me a break.
We will say this glass of water that is sitting right here is world capital markets, a lot of money, trillions of dollars. Some of it is from sovereign nations, some of it is from trust funds, pension funds, and so forth. This glass is empty. This is the U.S. transportation trust fund. It is empty.
When we run out of money and we don't raise taxes or revenues to fill it, we turn to the general fund. We say let's take money out of the general fund and put some of it into the transportation trust fund. This glass is empty too. Our debt is down, our deficit is down--our debt is not down--our deficit is down, but we still are running a big deficit. There is no money in the general fund to refill the transportation trust fund these days.
So what we do is we go out into the world capital markets--here, where there is a lot of money--and we borrow. We sell Treasury securities. So as it turns out, one of the best buyers for those Treasury securities is China. So we ask China: How about buying some of our Treasury securities? They do. Then when the Chinese turn around and start pushing around the Vietnamese or the Filipinos in the South China Sea, around the Spratly Islands and places I used to fly as a naval flight officer years ago--when the Chinese--and I don't think they are doing this so much anymore, but they manipulate their currency.
When the Chinese are trying to maybe dump some of their products in this country illegally and we say you can't do that, China, you can't do that, for the Chinese, it is very easy to say I thought you wanted to borrow money, and it puts us in a very awkward position as a nation.
If things are worth having, they are worth paying for. I don't think the pay-fors that were used in the--not the 6-year authorization bill that passed here--the Transportation bill is really a 3-year. I don't think the idea of taking money away from Customs fees and different other sources to use for purposes for which it was never intended--for transportation purposes--I don't think that is the way to do this.
The good news is this: The House is in one place, the Senate is in another. We have several months to figure this out. I hope we use these several months to drill down real hard on the idea of international tax reform, the deemed repatriation, which will provide hundreds of millions of dollars for transportation over the next 6 years. If that does not work, I want us to look at some other alternatives. The worst alternative is to get to December and say: Well, let's just borrow some more money or let's come up with some cats and dogs and patch this and kick the can down the road again.
So I am going to work very hard as a member of the Finance Committee on the international tax reform piece. I know Senator Grassley, if I am not mistaken, is the senior Republican on the Finance Committee and somebody who is a key participant in trying to find common ground. He is good at that. I look forward to working with him on that.
I will close with this. To me, the message from the American people in the elections from last November was threefold: People want us to work together. They want us to get important things done, and among the most important is to further strengthen an already strengthening economy. A big piece of that can be transportation. The American people expect us to make tough decisions. This is a tough negotiation, but it is one we have to have. We have to have a good outcome in the end.
With that, I thank my friend from Iowa for his patience.
I yield the floor.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT