Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman of our subcommittee for yielding, and I want to join him in opposing this amendment.
This is an indiscriminate amendment. It cuts programs in transportation and housing without any thought as to their relative merits. It is the opposite of intelligent appropriating.
For example, this would result in fewer air traffic controllers, fewer pipeline safety inspectors, and the eviction--literally, the eviction--of elderly and disabled tenants. More generally, investments in our transportation and housing infrastructure would be altered. The associated jobs would be lost.
This bill is already underfunded, Mr. Chairman. It has got to be revisited when we have a budget agreement that lets us do a decent job with this bill.
So this amendment goes in exactly the wrong directions. It would encourage the agencies not to do more with less, but to do less with less, and it would be a body blow to our constituents and our communities.
Mr. Chairman, I strongly urge opposition to the amendment.
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.
The rule in question, HUD's rule, is intended to help communities more fully comply with the law and to avoid costly and time-consuming legal challenges.
The charge that this rule injects HUD into local planning and zoning conditions is simply inaccurate. Nor does it set up additional hurdles to Federal funding. That is inaccurate too.
The rule allows for communities to better understand local conditions and to create locally decided and implemented solutions.
I don't understand why we would want to revert back to a standard that relied on drawn-out litigation rather than simply presenting communities up front with information on local housing conditions and letting them address their needs. I know my local officials prefer community developed solutions over decrees that are judicially imposed.
With that, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison), a distinguished member of the Financial Services Committee, to express his opposition to this amendment.
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the chairman yielding.
I would simply add an observation about the situation that this and other amendments we may be considering today point to with respect to the pending FAA authorization. It is expiring at the end of this fiscal year.
Our colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee are exploring options to reform the FAA. One of them includes separating the FAA from the Department of Transportation and allowing the FAA more independence over the use of its resources.
This is an important time to encourage our colleagues to think very carefully about that, about whether a more independent FAA, one that does not have to rely on annual appropriations, would be as attentive to concerns such as our colleague raises today, concerns about noise, concerns about flight paths.
We ought to move very cautiously in this area. I have misgivings about the piecemeal approach, but I believe there is an important message that is being delivered to the leadership of the FAA. I strongly urge the Administrator to ensure the FAA is more attentive to the concerns that are raised by communities when developing their new flight procedures.
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise, honestly, in some disbelief that this amendment is actually being offered.
Members of Congress and industry stakeholders have been calling for months for the DOT to complete its rulemaking to update the integrity of tank cars that carry energy products and other hazardous materials. The DOT got the final rule out on May 8, and now, today, the gentleman wants to stop the implementation of that rule in its tracks.
There have been countless examples of derailments involving trains that carry crude oil and other energy products. These incidents have resulted in explosive fires that burn for days. The incident that occurred in Quebec resulted in the preventable deaths of almost 50 people.
U.S. and Canadian transportation officials have worked hard to try to improve the safe transportation of these dangerous products. The railroad industry wants stronger cars. Safety groups want stronger cars. Communities desperately want stronger cars.
We ought not to delay the implementation of this long-awaited rule, so I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.
I am now happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz-Balart), our distinguished subcommittee chairman.
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I simply want to add--or to reiterate, I might say--that our subcommittee's fiscal year '15 report required the FAA to work with the Phoenix community on this issue and to report back to the committee on these efforts. We are still waiting for that report.
Again, let me reiterate what I said earlier. The FAA must be more proactive in responding to concerns that are raised by communities. These are legitimate concerns, and the FAA needs to be accountable.
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. Our colleague from Texas has offered amendments like this in the past, an attempt to micromanage Amtrak from the floor of the House. I don't think it is a good idea.
We had a vigorous debate last night on the importance of investing in inner city passenger rail. Of course, he will get no quarrel from me or other colleagues, I suspect, in arguing for improved service and arguing for making the service more attractive.
What we are dealing with here--and have been through this whole debate--is a number of colleagues who simply want to defund passenger rail in this country, overlooking the fact that every mode of transportation is subsidized to some degree and that the national interest requires diverse modes of transportation.
Colleagues seem intent on singling out passenger rail for elimination, and we have had amendments offered to this bill that would do just that.
This one is more about micromanagement. It is more about a specific route, the Sunset Limited. This would eliminate the Sunset Limited's long-distance route. It serves communities along the southern tier of the United States. Actually, it serves more than 300,000 passengers annually in five States: Louisiana, Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, and California.
It is no way to run a railroad, if I might say so, and I urge rejection of the amendment.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment offered by our friend from Texas. This amendment outdoes his last one.
We are now talking about eliminating nine routes, with a total ridership of over 2 million people: the Cardinal and Capitol Limited routes from D.C. to Chicago, through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana; the Southern Crescent, New York City to New Orleans; the Coast Starlight, along the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington.
To elaborate further on our opposition, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).
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Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the subcommittee chairman for yielding.
I simply want to underscore his opposition to this amendment. It would block Amtrak's loan request for $2.5 billion for new Acela high-speed train sets. This loan would make it possible to upgrade Amtrak's best and most profitable service, but one that is severely stressed.
We need to remind ourselves that the cars in which people died in Philadelphia were 40 years old. We desperately need the kind of investment that this loan would make possible. As the chairman has stressed, this may turn out to be the way that we can fund positive train control. It may be the only way, given other limitations in the bill, other limitations in Amtrak funding.
It would prevent loans that exceed $600 million for other purposes, including safety purposes. This is a very, very ill-advised amendment. I urge colleagues to reject it.
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