Providing for Consideration of H. Con. Res. 96, Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2015, and Providing for Proceedings During the Period from April 11th, 2014, through Apil 25, 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, let's talk about what is not in the Ryan budget.
The Federal highway trust fund, which funds all highway, road, bridge, and transit projects in the United States of America will be exhausted sometime this summer. A number of States are already delaying or canceling major projects, and there will be a flood of States doing that after the trust fund goes belly up.
For next year, under the Ryan budget, there will be zero--no, none, zero--Federal investment in roads, bridges, highways, and transit despite the deteriorated state of our infrastructure for somewhere between 9 and 11 months until we pay our past bills, and then there will be a little trickle.
Meanwhile, bridges will be falling down, people will be driving through potholes, delays, and congestion. We will walk away from or lose over 1 million construction, manufacturing, and engineering jobs, and it will have an impact on hundreds of thousands--millions--of other jobs across the United States of America, not even to begin to talk about our lack of competitiveness with the rest of the world.
The Ryan budget does address this in a rather novel way, so the trust fund is going broke. Probably what we have done the last couple of times when we get to that point, we say transportation is so important we transferred some general fund money over. The Ryan budget says you can't transfer general fund money over to transportation; it must go broke.
Well, the other thing is a new source of revenue or user fees. The Federal gas tax is 18.4 cents a gallon, and that has been since 1993, the same tax in 1993 when gas was $1.11 a gal. Last weekend, I paid $3.71, and Federal tax is still 18.4 cents a gallon.
Where is that money going? It is going to ExxonMobil; it is going to Wall Street speculators. It sure is the heck not going to rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and putting millions of Americans back to work.
Under the Ryan budget, we are going to revolve Federal transportation. What does that mean? It means we are going to have a 50-State and territory Federal transportation policy. You know, we actually tried that once. This was 1956. This is the brand new Kansas Turnpike.
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Mr. DeFAZIO. Oklahoma promised they would build one, too. Well, they didn't have the money. They said: sorry, guys, can't build it.
This is Emil Schweitzer's farm field. For 3 years, people crashed through the barrier at the end here and went into his field, until Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican, passed the national highway transportation bill with a trust fund.
That would be undone by Paul Ryan. He says States can opt out. They don't even have to collect the 18.4 cents Federal tax; they can do whatever they want with that money.
Madam Speaker, counties are actually ripping up paved roads and turning them back to gravel because they can't afford them. There are 140,000 bridges that need repair or replacement. Forty percent of the national highway system has pavement that has totally failed.
There is a $70 billion backlog on our transit systems. These are millions of jobs foregone--productivity foregone, and if you are so darn proud, as I heard on that side, why aren't you proud of the future of America, putting people back to work and competing with the rest of the world with a world class, 21st century transportation system? You're going to kill it.
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