Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users

TRANSPORTATION EQUITY ACT: A LEGACY FOR USERS

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Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, there can be honest differences of opinion. The way this has worked historically, and I have had the experience on this type of legislation for 19 years now, is that we come up with a bill. The bill we came up with is based on a formula. It is not a pork bill. It is a spending bill because it is a spending bill on infrastructure for America.

My job, and the job of the ranking leader, Senator Jeffords, is to come up with a bill that meets the infrastructure needs of America. Then we look to the Finance Committee to help us to find the funds to finance it. I am not about to pass judgment, as others appear to be readily willing to do, to cast disparaging remarks on the nature of the offsets or the nature of the product of the Finance Committee. I know we came up with a good bill. It is one that is not nearly as high, in terms of the amount of money that would be spent, as the needs. In fact, it has been looked at and evaluated that if we are to pass a bill, even at the $295 billion over the 6-year period, of which 5 years are remaining, that it would not even maintain what we have today.

I also want to correct something else because the very distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee is certainly knowledgeable in all of these areas. He talks about being conservative and talks about doing these things in a proper and appropriate way. Well, I would challenge anyone to match my conservative performance and credentials, and yet I have always said that when one comes to this body there are two areas where conservatives are big spenders. One is in national defense and one is in infrastructure. That is what we are supposed to be doing. We are supposed to be building the infrastructure and improving the infrastructure.

This bill is not just any type of bill that is coming along. This is a bill that is a matter of life and death. We put together a formula to determine how the distribution between the States should take place. In that formula, one of the elements is the mortality rate on the highways on a per capita basis. Now, if no one is concerned about the number of lives that are lost, quite frankly my State of Oklahoma has more lives lost on the highway than the average State. Consequently, that is one of many determining factors in a formula. The formulas have factors for the donee States and the donor States, the number of miles and, I might even add to my friend from New Hampshire, even covered bridges.

This bill probably could be considered by most people as the most important bill we will have this entire year. It is probably the second largest bill we will have this entire year. It is one that lets us rebuild the infrastructure of America. We all have heard the statistics. There is no sense going over and plowing those fields again, but it is one also that is a huge jobs bill.

I am not one to say that WPA--actually the WPA looks pretty good now after a few years, but I do not look at Government as the ultimate employer. But when they talk about for each billion of new construction it provides 47,000 jobs, it is a huge jobs bill. It is very significant.

Many people are supporting this bill. There are Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. As a conservative Republican, I wholeheartedly support it. I support it at the higher level because I think that is what we are supposed to be doing.

I am sure there will be those who want to talk a little bit about the product of the Finance Committee. I know the ranking member of my committee, Senator Jeffords, wants to make a statement or two. We have between now and the next 25 minutes to discuss this. I just want to assure my friend, the chairman of the Budget Committee, I am very sincere, and I think we are doing the right thing. While I do not always agree wholeheartedly with the President, I do 99 percent of the time. In this case, I disagreed last year. Last year, when we came up with $318 billion, we should have passed that. I believe the Finance Committee was sincere when they said we had this covered, and it was something that I supported at that time. The President did not support it.

There are a lot of things we pass that I would like to debate and not pay for. This is not one of them. I feel very strongly that we should go ahead. Quite frankly, I do not think the number is high enough, but if this is all we can cover, then I am happy with that. The most important thing is we have to have a highway bill. We are on our sixth extension right now. The States are wondering what we are doing. They have no way of planning in advance. They cannot plan for the next 5 years. All they can do is say: We have another 6-month extension. What will we do for the next 6 months? Then we all miss the construction season. In States such as that of my friend from Vermont, a northern State, and the State of New Hampshire, we have already missed the majority of the construction season. So it is very important that we not continue with extensions and that we get this bill passed. To do this, we already have a cloture motion in effect. We need to get by this motion, and I think we will be doing that.

I yield to the ranking minority member.

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Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I say to the Senator from Iowa, the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee, what a great job they have done. We imposed upon them the obligation or the duty of coming forth and coming up with a way to pay for a more robust bill. As I have said several times before, there are still other things we need to be doing, and even with the action that has been taken, it is not enough, but I understand he does now have it in a position where we are not increasing the deficit; that this is properly offset and I would almost believe those who oppose what he is doing are people who do not want the bill to start with.

We have been inviting people to come down with their amendments. I see the Senator from New Jersey is in the Chamber. I am anxious to get as many people down as possible and would encourage those Members who have amendments, keep in mind, the deadline for filing amendments is now behind us and we are operating under cloture right now. We need to have them get down and not wait until the last minute.

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Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, the vote that just took place is significant. We all realize that the Finance Committee has done their job. The Joint Tax Committee has verified that their work is good. They have found legitimate offsets. It is easy to say there are not, but there are. While it is very much a concern to everyone in terms of the budget and deficits, I am always ranked, certainly, as in the top five most conservative Members of this body. I can tell my colleagues, I would not vote for something that is going to increase the deficit. This is not increasing the deficit.

When we stop to think about what we are supposed to be doing in Washington, we talk about a lot of silly programs, but the two most important things on which you might say I am a big spender are, No. 1, defense and, No. 2, infrastructure. There is nothing more important that we will be voting on this year than this bill. We all know the reality that we need to get this to conference, and it was necessary to pass what we just agreed to in order to get it to conference.

I understand Senators CORZINE and LAUTENBERG are ready to offer an amendment.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, before the chairman of the Committee on the Budget leaves, there are some areas where an honest disagreement can take place. One is on the idea that if we try to establish a policy in this country that addresses something that is an emotional need or desire of any of these Members and it has nothing to do with transportation, that should not be borne on the backs of the highway trust fund.

We talk about the ethanol provision which I opposed, but nonetheless we had that, the Senator is right, and the cost of that. If they want to pay for it, let them pay for it out of the general fund. Why should the highway trust fund be paying for policies?

And the same is true on the deficit reduction. I stood in the Senate at that time that took place saying I was for deficit reduction but not on the backs of the highway trust fund. The reason I say that is because I have considered this to be somewhat of a moral issue. People go to the pump and they pay tax for gasoline. There is an assumption, as wrong as it is, that money should go to repairing roads and highways and bridges. I do disagree in that respect.

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