Surface Transportation Act

Floor Speech

Mr. REID. Mr. President, this is a new year, and thankfully it has brought new signs of economic recovery--not as vibrant as we would like but some recovery--but it will never be good enough while we have millions of Americans unemployed in this country. As we say in the Senate, those on this side of the aisle, Democrats, we are not going to take our eye off the target; that is, a healthy economy. The bipartisan Transportation bill before the Senate is an important step in that direction. This bill will save or create almost 3 million jobs. Yet my Republican colleagues have caused the waste of about a month of precious time here on the Senate floor in obstructing this very important piece of legislation. So it is with disappointment that I am going to file cloture on this Transportation bill.

It seems 85 votes to begin debate on a measure no longer indicates a smooth legislative path forward. We would think that with 85 votes, we would have timely approval of the bill, but that has not taken place. That is because my Republican colleagues want to waste time on unrelated, ideological, nongermane, nonrelevant amendments instead of talking about the Nation's failing infrastructure.

There is no one, no one thinks--and I say that--no one believes that our roads, our highways, our bridges are up to snuff. They are not. We need significant work to bring them to a better condition. Tens of thousands of bridges are in a state of disrepair. So Republicans, instead of working on this valuable infrastructure bill, have been causing us to waste time on unrelated issues.

We have spent the last several weeks on women's access to health care, and,
of course, amendments they are talking about doing in addition to that would weaken our environmental protection, make our water less pure, our air dirtier--this instead of rebuilding, as I indicated we need to do, our roads and our bridges, even against their better judgment. One Republican leader said yesterday: We have spent enough time this year on trying to repeal the health care bill. But they have had to retract that because the tea party rose and said: Oh, we have to have more votes.

They are meaningless votes. Everyone knows there is going to be no repeal of the health care bill this year. So the Republican leader, who talked about this yesterday, was talking about maybe doing what Senator Alexander and Senator Pryor think we should do: spend our time on things that are constructive, such as getting our appropriations bills done. But, no, the tea party stepped in, and now there are going to be efforts made to repeal the health care bill. In fact, I read in the paper today a complete flip-flop from yesterday. Instead of not dealing with trying to repeal the health care bill the rest of this legislative year, now the word is that the entire month of March is going to be spent dealing with health care.

It is time to move forward on this bill. Hopefully, seven--that is all we need. There are 47 Republicans, and we need 7 of them to invoke cloture on this bill. That vote will occur Tuesday morning. All the nongermane, nonrelevant amendments, let them do them on a piece of legislation that is not so vital to the economy of this country. We are going to move forward on this bill. I certainly hope we can get seven Republicans to join with us. There are 53 of us,
seven of them.

I have always said I would be happy to come up with an agreement. If they want to offer amendments that are relevant to what we are doing, that is fine. But that hasn't been forthcoming. I hope the weekend will give my Republican colleagues a chance to reflect on whether they are willing to put ideology ahead of the economy. Three million jobs and what do we spend our time on? An ideological issue to take health care away from women.

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