Surface Transportation Act

Floor Speech

Mr. MERKLEY. Madam President, I rise to address the surface transportation bill that is on the floor. It has been a mark of the challenges this body faces in deliberation that we have now been on this bill for 3 weeks, and we have not had a debate over transportation amendments. But hope does spring eternal.

In that spirit, I wished to come to the floor and share some thinking about the amendments that we should be debating and should be approving in this process. Certainly, the underlying Transportation bill is a great step toward our No. 1 goal of passing legislation that would create jobs, put people back to work in the hardest hit sectors of our economy.

Building and repairing our transportation infrastructure will create or save 2 million jobs nationwide, good-paying jobs that would provide a huge boost to our struggling construction industry, the families, to the workers, and to our economy. This infrastructure we would be building is a downpayment for the success of our future economy.

China is spending 10 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. They are preparing for a stronger economy in the future. Europe is spending 5 percent of their GDP, but in America we are spending only 2 percent. Indeed, it was not but a few months ago that our colleagues on the House side of Capitol Hill said we should cut transportation spending by 30 to 35 percent, which would devastate the infrastructure efforts that are underway, even within the existing 2 percent, the small amount we are spending.

Is it any wonder our communities are struggling to repair the bridges and roads we have, let alone to solve the challenges, the bottlenecks in the transportation lines that need to be addressed for the future. We have made a good start in committee on this bill, despite the paralysis on the floor of the Senate. We had elements of this bill go through four different committees and incorporate good ideas from both sides of the aisle in each of those committees and come to the floor in a bipartisan fashion.

I wish to share a couple other thoughts to build on this groundwork that came out of our committees, commonsense fixes, cutting redtape, and closing loopholes. The first amendment, No. 1653, is one I am sponsoring with my colleagues Senator Toomey and Senator Blunt. Right now, farmers are exempt from certain Federal regulations when they transport their products in farm vehicles, as long as they are transporting these products inside their own State. But should they venture across State lines, even by just a short distance, then the Federal regulations are triggered. So we have farmers who are simply trying to get their products to market, to the local grain elevator, if you will, and they have to cross a State border and suddenly their challenge becomes very complex indeed.

For instance, Oregon farmers who live just across the border from Idaho, in these cases, the best market might be the nearest processing facility just across the State line. These farmers are exactly the same as their counterparts elsewhere, except for one small fact, the processing facility is across the border. This arbitrary distinction can mean major differences in how these farmers and ranchers have to do business in the form of additional burdensome regulations,

regulations such as vehicle inspections for every trip the vehicle makes, even if the farm vehicle is simply driving from the field to the barn or having to adhere to reporting requirements for things like hours of service rules, even though the farmer is just driving an hour down the road; or obtaining medical certifications meant for commercial truck drivers.

This amendment would simply make life a little easier and more logical for these farmers by exempting them from these regulations designed for interstate transport, not designed to intervene or interfere when a farmer is attempting to take his product to market. We have put limits on mileage and limits on purpose to make sure it serves the intended function--to get rid of that arbitrary boundary that creates a regulatory nightmare.

A second amendment is related to freight. The underlying bill has a freight program to improve the performance of the national freight network. That is a proposal that will help make desperately needed improvements. There are a few technical improvements that would further improve the bill; that is, to recognize that funding should be used in the most efficient and effective way to ensure that high-value goods are being moved quickly to market.

We often think of freight in terms of volume or tonnage. But when we start looking at the high-tech sector, we can have enormously high-value content such as that produced by the microchip industry in Oregon and the roads necessary to make sure that high-value freight gets to market, which drives a tremendous number of jobs. It is just as important to address as are the routes that involve high tonnage and volume.

Let's turn to a third issue, which is ``Buy American.'' I salute my colleagues, Sherrod Brown and Bernie Sanders, for working on these issues. We already recognize the principle that if we are paying to complete a public infrastructure project in America, it only makes sense for American businesses and workers to do as much of the work as possible.

Unfortunately, there are several loopholes that have undermined this basic premise in recent years. My amendment No. 1599 is an amendment that addresses one of these loopholes.

This summer, construction of a rail bridge in Alaska to a military base will be undertaken by a Chinese company because the Federal Rail Administration, unlike the Federal Transit and Federal Highway Administration, doesn't have the ``Buy American'' provision. An American company was ready to build this bridge, but because of this loophole the contract went to a Chinese company using Chinese steel. Isn't it frustrating that the infrastructure to provide access to a military base involves jobs and the steel going across the Pacific Ocean?

Then I wanted to note that a related amendment led by Senator Sherrod Brown, No. 1807, addresses another ``Buy American'' challenge. States have been using a project segmentation loophole to avoid putting Americans to work, to avoid the ``Buy American'' seal.

The Bay Bridge in California put in 12 separate projects so that Federal funds would only apply to a couple of those pieces. This allows the bulk of the bridge to be built--you guessed it--with Chinese steel, by Chinese workers. My amendment is modeled after a Republican amendment in the House Transportation bill, by Representative CRAVAACK of Minnesota, to close this loophole and ensure that the spirit of the law is upheld. These provisions were incorporated into the amendment led by Senator Sherrod Brown.

I urge my colleagues to support these amendments to make these commonsense fixes to our transportation program. We must have debate on the amendments on the Senate floor. This room should not be empty. The conversation should not be quiet because transportation is at the heart of our economy.

We have a construction industry that is flat on its back. We have interest rates that are low. We have infrastructure that needs to be built. This is a win-win for our future economy and our current workers and our current economy.

Let's get to work. I ask my colleagues to continuously object to amendments being debated--for those listening in, the Senate has had a rule that any Senator can block an amendment. We have to get 100 percent of the Senators to agree to bring an amendment to the floor. The social contract that allows this to happen on a regular and orderly fashion in the past has been broken. So while families across this country look to us to put a transportation plan into place for our future economy and to put America back to work now, we are sitting here fiddling. Let's end the fiddling and do our work so America can do its work of rebuilding our highway infrastructure.

Madam President, I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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