Hire More Heroes Act of 2015--Continued

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, this Friday, July 31, the authorization for the highway trust fund will expire and the fund itself will be nearly out of money. That means that unless Congress acts, projects in New Hampshire and across the country will grind to an abrupt halt. In the face of this, the House has passed yet another short-term, stopgap bill. The Senate is now debating and amending a long-term highway bill.

My clear preference is for a long-term bill. I think it would be a terrible mistake to pass yet another short-term extension without at the same time taking action on a long-term bill like the Senate is currently doing. Only passing another short-term extension--which would be the 34th since 2008--without taking steps toward a multiyear bill would be kicking the can down the road, and in this case the road is overwhelmed by traffic, badly in need of modernization, and filled with patches and potholes. If you have driven around on the roads in the District of Columbia, sometimes you wonder where you are because they are so bad, so filled with potholes. For a country that seeks to remain competitive in the 21st century, as we do in America, this is totally dysfunctional and destructive.

There are few more basic and necessary functions of government than providing for modernized highways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure. Yet in Congress we have been grossly neglecting this responsibility. China spends about 9 percent of gross domestic product on infrastructure. Brazil spends about 8 percent. Even in Europe they are spending about 4 percent. But infrastructure spending in the United States has fallen to just 2 percent of GDP.

Our highways and bridges face an $800 billion backlog of investment needs, including nearly half a trillion dollars in critical repair work. Americans spend a staggering 5.5 billion hours stuck in traffic each year. Yet in early May we saw a budget pass out of this Congress supported by the majority party that slashed Federal funding for transportation by 40 percent over the next decade.

I am especially concerned about disrepair and decay among our Nation's bridges. That is why I filed an amendment which is a bill I have introduced in previous Congresses called the SAFE Bridges Act. The Federal Highway Administration has identified more than 145,000--145,000--structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges. That is more than 20 percent of all the bridges in the United States. In New Hampshire it is actually a higher percentage.

In May, I went with the mayor and city manager of Concord--New Hampshire's State capital--to inspect the rusted-out and now-closed Sewalls Falls Bridge, which is one of the three critical bridges in Concord across the Merrimack River. I worked very hard with the city--our office did--to get necessary approvals from the U.S. Department of Transportation to replace this bridge. In fact, it is a replacement project that started back in 1994. The city of Concord lined up all the permits and approvals--and then nothing. Because of uncertainty about Federal funding for the project, it was stopped dead in its tracks.

My amendment, the SAFE Bridges Act, would authorize an additional $2 billion annually for the next 3 years to enable States to repair and replace their structurally deficient or functionally obsolete bridges. States would get funding based on their share of deficient bridges nationwide, and the additional funding is fully paid for by closing a corporate tax loophole.

As the Senate continues to debate the Transportation bill, I hope we do get an opportunity to vote on relevant amendments like my SAFE Bridges Act.

The neglect of our transportation infrastructure is creating congestion and gridlock on our roads. It is hurting our economy and our global competitiveness. It is also killing jobs--especially in the construction trades, where employment has yet to recover from the great recession.

According to a Duke University study, providing Federal funding to meet the U.S. Department of Transportation's infrastructure requests would create nearly 2.5 million new jobs. So our investment in this industry, which is one of the slowest recovering from the recession, would create millions of new jobs.

Several months ago, I joined in a bipartisan group of eight Senators who had previously served as Governors--Senators KING, ROUNDS, KAINE, HOEVEN, WARNER, CARPER, MANCHIN, and myself. We sent a letter to our Senate colleagues urging that we commit to fully funding national infrastructure priorities and that we put a stop to the dysfunctional short-term fixes that have become routine in recent years.

I know the Presiding Officer appreciates that it was a visionary Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, who championed the Interstate Highway System in this country. The National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956--I think it is critical to think about the title of that bill which was not just about commerce, but it was also about defense. It was about the security of our country. It ensured dedicated Federal funding to build a network that today encompasses more than 46,000 miles of roadways. That system has transformed our economy and created countless millions of jobs, but it is now six decades old.

Its dedicated funding mechanism, the highway trust fund, is chronically underfunded and just days from becoming insolvent. It is time for Congress to come together on a bipartisan basis to break the cycle of patchwork fixes.

The bill before us is not perfect. There are a number of provisions included that I don't agree with, if I had been writing the bill, but it is a compromise measure, and it was ably negotiated by the leadership of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Inhofe and Senator Boxer, along with numerous others in this body.

We have the opportunity to pass a 6-year authorization bill with 3 years of funding. Yet what is happening in the House today? The House is passing another short-term extension. They are getting ready to leave town. They are not even going to stay and take up the long-term bill that is going to come out of the Senate. They are going to give us another short-term bill that is going to leave States such as New Hampshire up in the air, with thousands of people who are not sure if they are going to have a job next week when the money runs out, who aren't sure what the future is going to hold, companies that can't plan because they don't know if we have a long-term highway funding bill.

It is now time for Congress to pass a fully funded, multiyear highway bill that will allow governments at all levels to plan long-term capital investment projects and to build a 21st-century transportation system that meets the needs of our 21st-century economy.

I hope that we in the Senate will be able to pass this bill and that our House colleagues will recognize they need to stay here and get this work done.

I yield the floor.

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