National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 - Conference Report

Floor Speech

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Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I am pleased to follow my colleague and friend from Missouri. I just want to mention--although I didn't come to the floor to talk about what we are doing for veterans, let me take a minute or two to talk about what we are doing that we are actually proud of and then maybe touch on a couple of areas where we can do a better job.

I myself am a veteran, a Navy midshipman out of Ohio State who studied economics for 4 years and went on to become a naval flight officer. I served for 5 years in Southeast Asia as a naval flight officer and then as a P-3 aircraft mission commander for another 18 years until the end of the Cold War. I loved the Navy. I loved serving.

I got an education--undergraduate and graduate school--and feel very privileged. I had the opportunity at the end of my Active-Duty tour to use the VA hospital very close to Wilmington, DE, in northern Delaware. I remember the first time I went there. I was offered some dental benefits, and my dentist--a young dentist who was right out of dental school--told me the morale was pretty bad, and he said they didn't do very good work. It was place where they had 16-bed wards. They didn't do much in the way of outpatient surgery. The pharmacy was a mess.

I said: Wouldn't it be great to be in a position to do something about that and transform this place so it can be a health care delivery facility we can be proud of today?

Do they do everything perfectly? No, they don't.

We have two satellite operations in Delaware. We have one in the Dover area, in the middle of our State, and we have another one in the southern part of the State, in Sussex County, which is Georgetown. I am very proud of those health care facilities. We call them outpatient clinics, CBOCS.

The reason I mention that is because I was also eligible--coming out of the Vietnam war, along with other Vietnam veterans--to get an education, to go to college, and in my case graduate school on the GI bill. In my generation, we received about $250 a month. At the time, I was happy to have every bit of it. I continued to fly with my Reserve squadron for another 18 years, and it was great to have that benefit.

A couple weeks ago, our congressional delegation--Senator Coons, Congressmen CARNEY, and Governor Jack Markell--sent 300 Delaware National Guard men and women off to Afghanistan. We had a big sendoff ceremony for them. Their families were there. We had about 1,000 people. It was a big sendoff.

As they left, I told them: When you come back, you are going to be eligible for a GI benefit that dwarfs what my generation received.

They won't get 250 bucks a month. If they serve a total of 3 years on Active Duty and serve in Afghanistan or Iraq for a period of time, here is what they will be eligible for: They can come back and go for free to the University of Delaware, Delaware City University, Wilmington University--pretty much any public college or university in America; tuition, books, and fees paid for; and if they need tutoring, that is paid for as well. On top of all that, they get a housing allowance of $1,500 a month. We received a GI benefit of $250.

Not surprisingly, at the end of World War II, when my dad and my uncle served--in the Korean war, when my uncle served, and at the end of the Vietnam war, scam artists emerged to take advantage of the GI and tried to separate the GI coming back from combat--tried to separate the GI cash value benefits from the GI and sometimes not to provide them with a very good education but to take advantage of the GI and the taxpayers.

In about 1952, something called the 85-15 rule was passed whereby at least 15 percent of the students enrolled in a for-profit college or university had to be there--their tuition paid for by some source other than the Federal Government. As it turns out, the 85-15 rule became the 90-10 rule, so that 90 percent of those who were enrolled were paid for by the Federal Government, but another 10 percent had to be paid for by someone else other than the Federal Government. Over time, that changed so that 90 percent of the revenues of a for-profit college or university could come from the Federal Government but not the other 10 percent--except for the money that came from the GI bill to a college or university or from tuition assistance for people on Active Duty. That didn't count against the 90 percent. At the end of the day, a for-profit college or university could get 100 percent of its revenues from the Federal Government. I don't think that is a good thing.

The system that was designed early on with the 85-15 rule and later the 90-10 rule was designed to try to make sure there were market forces that ensured taxpayers and the GIs, the veterans would get a fair deal, get a good education, make sure they were treated the way we would want them to be treated.

There is a huge loophole in the 90-10 rule, and it is a loophole we need to fix. We need to fix it.

My colleagues who talked here earlier today--including my colleague from Missouri--about the quality of VA health care--I want to say that we are providing the best health care by far in the history of our country. For too long, a number of our for-profit colleges and universities and postsecondary-training programs have been taking advantage of GIs, taking advantage of the taxpayers, and it should stop. It should stop.

Having said that, there are a number of for-profit colleges and universities and training programs that do a great job. They are not all bad actors. Some of them wear white hats. For them, good for you, and for those who are not, you need to change your ways.

I didn't come here to talk about that, but in the spirit of making sure we look out for our veterans, I thought I would mention that.

TRANSPORTATION INFRASTRUCTURE FUNDING

Let's take a look at some of the posters here this afternoon.

The first one looks like my State. It probably also looks like the Presiding Officer's State. It could look like any of the States our pages are from.

But this is a traffic jam. It is a traffic jam that occurs almost every day, almost every business day, and frankly a lot of weekends on highways across America from coast to coast. We spend a lot of time sitting in traffic. It is actually quite a substantial cost that inures to our Nation's economy. The cost this year is believed to be about $160 billion, a hit on our national economy. I will talk in just a second about what that includes.

Part of the waste that is reflected in our Nation's economy is--you see right here it says ``82 hours wasted in big city traffic.'' That is per person, per driver, on average, across the country, big cities, people sitting--pretty much sitting in traffic. They could be in a minivan, they could be in a small car, a large car, they could be in a truck, but we are talking about 82 hours a year just pretty much sitting in traffic.

The average across the country, when you take in the more rural parts of the country and suburban areas, is about 42 hours. That is a whole lot of time. Time is money. So just think about that.

Here is one with a sense of humor. This is not Delaware. I am not sure where this is, but for those who can't read this, it says--the traffic sign that is up here says: ``You'll never get to work on time. Haha.'' It is some kind of construction program. You see the orange cones out there. Someone had a good sense of humor there. My guess is, the folks who maybe were working on the project had a good sense of humor. My guess is that for a moment it made the drivers smile but not for long, especially if they sat in traffic long enough. Eighty-two hours a year, that is long enough.

Not only is it expensive, a waste of time and money for us as individuals to sit in traffic for a long time, another part of the cost is caused by potholes and other problems with our roads. I think this is probably a bridge. It looks like it might be a bridge, but it is a construction project someplace. Here is a pothole. That is a bad pothole. In other parts--not too much in Delaware--I have seen in other States at least that bad and worse.

What is going to happen, vehicles will come along, they will hit that pothole, and may damage their tires, they may have to replace a tire or two, they may have to get their front end realigned. That costs money. How much? Actually, believe it or not, just like Texas A&M has actually figured out on average we waste 82 hours a year as drivers, somebody else actually spent the time to figure out how much we spend on our cars, trucks, and vans in order to fix them during the course of the year because of potholes like this and other problems, whether it is the surface of the roads we travel on or the surface of the bridges we travel on. It is over $350. I have seen the range of anywhere from $350 per year to $500 per year. Let's say it is just $350 a year. That is a lot of money. That is part of the cost of the damage to our economy.

The other thing I would say, our economy today, as we all know, is a ``just in time'' economy. I will give you a good example. We have a port in Wilmington that sits right on the Delaware River. As you come up the Delaware Bay, it becomes the Delaware River. The port that is closest to the Atlantic is the Port of Wilmington. Ships are coming in and out of there throughout the day, nights, and weekends. The ships don't come in and spend a week. Ships don't come into the Port of Wilmington and spend a day. They may come in for 4 hours, they may come in for 6 hours, but they are there and then they are gone, because when a ship is sitting in the Port of Wilmington or any other port, the shipper, whoever owns that boat, that ship cannot make any money. So they want to be in and they want to be out. That is the way they do their business.

It is important for whoever is coming in using a truck to bring goods to put on that ship to send around the world, there may be a very short window of time to get there. If you are stuck in traffic, the kind of traffic we saw early on, you may miss that window when the ship is in the port, whether it is Wilmington or some other port. That is another reason why, in a ``just in time'' economy, these kinds of delays mean time is money. Again, someone else with a sense of humor--if you cannot read this, it looks like a husband and wife driving along in their car. His wife says: ``Finally someone fixed that pothole.'' Here is the pothole. There is a car down there. The guy driving looks like he is having a bad day, not just a bad hair day, a very bad day.

A little humor there but not if you happen to be this guy, frankly--probably not if you happen to be this guy, because if you are running over somebody else's car in a pothole like this, the guy is going to spend a lot more than 350 bucks to repair his car and get it going again.

We are not making this stuff up. There is a national association, I think it is civil engineers, people who spend their life's work on transportation projects. Every year for years, they have given us a grade on what kind of shape our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems are in. They could give an A, A-plus, A-minus, they could give a B, B-plus, B-minus, they could give a C, C-plus, C-minus or they could give a D-plus, D, D-minus. The last couple of years we have been right around D to D-plus. I think we are probably going down rather than going up. So what everybody knows--just about anybody who drives in our country these days knows we are not investing in our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems the way we need to.

Look around the rest of the world, travel around the rest of the world. You can see in a lot of countries we compete with that they do. One of the components of certain investments we need to make in our country in order to strengthen our economy, to better ensure the jobs are going to be created or preserved--there a lot of things we can do to make sure businesses have access to capital, make sure the cost of energy is affordable, make sure the cost of health care is affordable, make sure we have public safety, make sure the people who are coming out of our schools can read, write, and have the skills that are needed in the workforce.

I know the big one is to make sure we have the ability to move people and goods where they need to go, when they need to go. Here is our current plan. It is pretty well summed up in this sign. It is meant to be funny. I suppose it is. But I like this part of the plan: ``Good luck.'' That is not a plan. That is not a plan that is going to get us where we need to go as a nation.

For those who may be unable to read this, there is a big traffic jam. A lot of people are saying--you see those little bubbles there--``I'd pay to be anywhere but here.''

I was Treasurer of Delaware. I studied economics, got an MBA, and was Treasurer of Delaware when I was 29. I had a chance to serve in the house for a while and then as Governor. I was very much involved in the National Governors Association in trying to make sure we invested in our transportation infrastructure across the country. In the Senate, I am on the Environment and Public Works Committee. The last time I was privileged to serve as chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure.

So I thought a fair amount about these issues. If you think about the way we pay for roads, highways, bridges, and transit, what we have used for years is a user pay system. The people, the businesses that use our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems, we pay for them. In some places, we have sort of gotten away from that. There is an unwillingness to ask people to pay for what they want to use. Everybody wants to have better transportation systems. There seems to be a lot of reluctance to pay for that.

When I was Governor of Delaware, three times I asked for modest--very modest--increases, just a couple of cents in the fee for gas and diesel tax. I think out of three efforts, we succeeded one time. Not a whole lot was raised, but we cobbled together some other money from other user fees and we were able to continue to fund transportation funding.

For a number of years in the Nation, we have had a transportation trust fund. Most of the money for that transportation trust fund comes from user fees, and two primary user fees are a gas tax. It has been about 18.3, 18.4 cents since, I think, 1993. It has been a little bit over 18 cents since 1993. It has not changed. The cost of concrete has gone up. The cost of asphalt has gone up. The cost of steel has gone up. The cost of labor has gone up. What has not gone up is the user fee we are asking people to pay to have better roads, highways, bridges, and transit to get people off our roads, highways, and bridges. If we can do that, we can save a lot of money.

We have a tax on diesel--a Federal tax. It has been about 24 cents per gallon. It has been at that level since 1993--since 1993. Again, concrete, asphalt, steel, and labor have all gone up, but in 22 years we have not changed the user fee, if you will, on diesel.

The money we collect from the gas and diesel tax does not go to pay for health care, it does not go to pay for wars, it does not go to pay for agriculture and other things. The money we collect from these user fees goes to pay for roads, highways, bridges, and to some extent for transit systems, to get people off our roads, highways, and bridges so the rest of us will have some extra room to maneuver.

I will go back in time. Thomas Jefferson said a lot of things that are worth remembering. My favorite Jefferson quote is this: ``If the people know the truth, they won't make a mistake.''

If the people know the truth, they won't make a mistake. The truth is, we are not investing in our transportation infrastructure in this country the way our competitors are and the way we ought to be.

To do so does not mean we have to raise--in some places they have gas taxes or diesel taxes that are $4 or $5 a gallon. We don't have that. It is 18 cents, and 24 cents for gas and diesel combined. If we had increased them by the rate of inflation in the past, the gas tax would be not 18 cents; it may be even closer to twice that. The diesel tax would not be 24 cents; it might be closer to twice that. But we have not changed them.

Here is the way we pay for transportation improvements: We don't pay for them. We don't raise anything, in some cases. We just simply go out and borrow money for the transportation fund from the Federal general fund. When the general fund runs out of money, we borrow money from countries around the world like China and other places and replenish the general fund, and use that to replenish the transportation fund.

I think that is pretty foolish, especially to be beholden to the folks in China for our transportation system. It does not make a whole lot of sense to me, maybe it does not to you either. There are other things we do--we have these--I call them cats and dogs, sort of sleight of hand. One of the more recent examples, we do something called pension smoothing, where--I will not get into how that works, but it is just an awful idea to mess with, muck with people's pensions in order to be able to provide funds for road improvements. That does not make much sense.

Another thing we do is we maybe raise the TSA fees when people want to fly. Instead of using that to make our friendly skies safer, we put a little of that money in roads, highways, and bridges or maybe we sell some of the oil we have in our Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We paid a lot of money several years ago to buy gas, to buy oil when it was expensive. People think it would be a smart thing to sell that oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, when prices are low, to help pay for roads, highways, and bridges. Remember the old saying ``buy low, sell high.'' Well, this is really buy high and then put that oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and then sell low.

That is insanity.

We can do a lot better than this. For a number of years, some have encouraged us to do what we have been doing for years, to actually be honest and pay for improvements to our roads, highways, and bridges. And that is to raise the user fees--not all at once, not by $1 or $2 or anything like that, but by 4 cents a year starting next year for 4 years. Then after that index--then index the fees and the taxes on gas and diesel according to the rate of inflation.

If we did that, I think we would have a combined State and Federal user fee, if you will, for gas. I think it would be at that time 53 cents. It would be about 53 cents. Compared to what? Compared to pretty much any other developed nation in the world, we would have the lowest combined Federal, State, and local user fees on gas and diesel. It is the lowest as far as I can tell. We can actually double that. We are not going to do that. We could actually double it again--we are not going to do that--from 53 cents to $1.06 per gallon. Again, I don't suggest we would do that, but if we did, we would still be among the lowest compared to the rest of the world.

Sometimes we say: Well, 16 cents--what could I buy with that? If I didn't have to pay 4 years from now an extra 16 cents when I buy a gallon of gas, what would that add up to in a week for the average driver?

I will tell you this--maybe brings it home--basically the price of a cup of coffee a week is the cost that would be incurred by the average driver even after the full increase, the 4 cents times 4 years. That is what it is worth. That would be the out-of-pocket expense for the average driver, the price of a cup of coffee a week.

We saw earlier from some of these charts that, on average across the country, people are sitting in traffic for 42 hours per year. We saw some of the graphics with the pothole and were reminded that the cost of damage to our cars, trucks, and vans is anywhere from $350 to some estimates as high as $500. We are learning that for the price of a basic cup of coffee, if we invest that money instead--people can still drink coffee, but if we put that in our roads, highways, bridges, and transit systems, we can have a transportation system we can be proud of. Those four pennies add up over time, and they add up over the next 10 years to $220 billion to have for investments. So instead of having roads or potholes that look like the one I saw and the kinds of traffic jams we see here from coast to coast, we can have a transportation system again in this country we can be proud of. We just have to have the will to do it.

Again, Thomas Jefferson reminded us that things that are worth having are worth paying for, and if people know the truth, they won't make a mistake. Roads, highways, bridges, transit--that is what we are paying for. The truth is, it doesn't have to break us. It doesn't have to break our banks or our budgets. We can have those roads, highways, and bridges again that we can be proud of. I hope we will do that.

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois and I have introduced legislation to essentially do that, to raise the user fees by 4 cents a year for 4 years, at a time when the price of oil is as low as it has been for some time and is expected to stay low for the foreseeable future.

If the Iranians work with us and the other five nations that negotiated the Iranian agreement in order to gradually lift sanctions from their economy, they will be able to start producing oil and selling it across the world as long as they agree not to create that nuclear weapon. We are going to make sure they don't.

But it turns out that Iran is the No. 4 nation in the world in oil reserves. Think about that. We live in a world that is awash in oil. Very soon, the Iranian oil will be added to the oil that is available to consumers to use on this planet of ours. All that oil will not push up the price of oil or gasoline or diesel; it will push it down--supply and demand. Let's keep that in mind.

With that, I have spoken for long enough. I see one of my colleagues has been waiting patiently, and I will bid you all adieu. Have a good weekend. Thank you.

I yield the floor.

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