Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DeSAULNIER. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is based on the bipartisan Metropolitan Planning Enhancement Act that rebuilds public trust by promoting evidence-based decisionmaking in the transportation investment process. This commonsense amendment helps States and metropolitan planning organizations offer the highest return for taxpayers and commuters through increased transparency and improved accountability.

Americans of all types are suspicious of government right now. In the context of transportation funding, many Americans believe that highway and bridge project decisions are based on politics and insider connections rather than statewide and regional transportation goals.

In many areas of the country, local commuters have little idea how State Departments of Transportation and MPOs make their project decisions or why they choose one project over another; yet, every year, lawmakers ask taxpayers to spend more and more of their hard-earned dollars on infrastructure projects with minimal transparency and accountability.

This amendment requires State and regional transportation plans to include project descriptions and to score projects based on criteria developed by the State or the region, not the Federal Government.

Requiring that projects be assessed with objective criteria ensures that limited transportation resources are invested in projects that provide the highest return on investment to commuters. Furthermore, requiring transportation decisionmakers to communicate how projects are chosen enhances the public's understanding of and confidence in the project selection process.

Many States and MPOs are incorporating project priority criteria today: Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas, Washington State, Minnesota, Massachusetts, amongst others. There is plenty of early evidence that this has increased confidence within the commuting public.

Effective and efficient transportation systems are critical to our growing and prosperous U.S. economy. We cannot allow diminishing resources to be directed toward bad investments. This amendment ensures that the public has more complete information to judge the merits of projects for themselves.

Mr. Chairman, much of the debate about America's crumbling infrastructure is about how we are going to find the necessary money to match the need. As responsible legislators, we should ask ourselves how we can most efficiently invest the resources we already have.

I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense, good governance amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source