Transportation Bill

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I started last week in Dallas, Texas, working with people across the country, but especially from Texas, dealing with transportation needs and their requirements for balanced transportation by pedestrians, streetcar, and especially light rail. Dallas has the most extensive light-rail system in the country. I ended my week in New York City, in Brooklyn, where this vast sprawling economic engine, home to 20 million people in the metropolitan area, was dealing with their transportation needs.

Virtually all of these people, whether from Brooklyn, Texas, or around the country, are in agreement with what they need going forward, an important part of which is a renewal and strengthening of the Federal transportation partnership.

I was pleased to see that we are moving ahead with discussion of the basic framework produced by our friends on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. I commend Mr. Shuster and Mr. DeFazio for producing a bill that is quite strong under these difficult circumstances. It does preserve the basic framework and continue to make improvements not just around the edges. There are potential breakthrough provisions in technology in transportation that could truly be transformational.

It is disappointing, however, that the bill flatlines important bike and pedestrian funding, something that is vitally needed in Houston, Indianapolis, Seattle, here in our Nation's Capital, in suburban Maryland, and communities all across the country.

The lack of balance in this transportation funding is unfortunate. But I am hoping, through the amendment process and the work between the two Chambers, if it proceeds, that we will be able to correct it.

The basic problem is, of course, we continue to tiptoe around the obvious solution to our transportation funding crisis. Our transportation partnership is compromised with our State, local, and private sector partners because we pretend that we can meet 2015 transportation needs with 1993 dollars, the last time we raised the gas tax. The refusal to do what Ronald Reagan did in 1982 and the refusal to do what six red Republican States have already done this year--Idaho, Utah, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Georgia--raising the gas tax, creates unnecessary difficulties.

The majority of States have raised their revenues over the last 4 years for transportation, and a review of the politicians involved with making these decisions found that those who voted for the revenue increases were actually reelected at a higher percentage than those who voted ``no.''

This bill is a well-intended statement with good structure and innovation; but until we have meaningful, long-term, predictable funding, it is only a well-intended statement. We continue the uncertainty that bedevils people at the State and local levels; and the big projects--multistate, multimodal, multiyear projects--need certainty.

The minor cost increase of a few cents per day for families would be offset by the dramatic plunge in gasoline prices and offset even more through the cost to families for damage to their vehicles of over $500 a year now because of poor road conditions and almost $1,000 a year lost due to congestion. These are real costs that we are inflicting on American families every day unnecessarily.

Raising the gas tax and providing stable, meaningful funding for transportation will create millions of family-wage jobs all across the country while we get America unstuck and strengthen communities large and small.

Mr. Speaker, one of the positive elements in this bill that we are discussing is Vision Zero, which asks us to plan for a world where there are no traffic fatalities, a goal that is so important to strive for as we continue to kill 32,000 people a year on our highways and countless more who are injured.

Setting our goal high with Vision Zero is the sort of bold step we need, but we should not have a Vision Zero for new revenue. That is not bold. That is not courageous. That doesn't get the job done.

I look forward to this debate over the next couple of days. I look forward to having Members of Congress consider their alternatives. What are they going to do to make sure we can rebuild and renew this great country?

This used to be an area of tremendous bipartisan cooperation, leadership, and accomplishment for Congress. I hope it can be so again as we turn to transportation this week. The American public would welcome such a development, and certainly they deserve it.

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