Chaos in America's Infrastructure System

Floor Speech

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Ms. HAHN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my good colleague from California, Mr. Garamendi, for devoting this Special Order hour to the needs that we have in this country when it comes to our infrastructure.

I am sort of excited because this week, at long last, barely in time before the highway trust fund runs out of money, we are finally going to look at a long-term surface transportation bill to fund some of our Nation's most critical infrastructure, which you have been talking about.

Our Nation's highways, our roads, our bridges, they have been neglected far too long. Today we unfortunately have an infrastructure crisis. Not only do the American people rely on these roads to get from point A to point B safely and efficiently, our economy relies on them as well.

I have been advocating, as you know, for more funding for our freight network. That is the series of highways and roads that go from our ports and our manufacturing hubs and that the vast majority of our Nation's freight travel on. Our Nation's ports are hard at work, bringing in cargo from all over the world and exporting the products of American manufacturing to the growing overseas market.

Twenty-two million jobs nationwide rely on the efficient movement of goods in and out of our ports. These jobs rely on our Nation's freight network. For too long we have failed to invest in this important infrastructure and allowed it to crumble. Too many bridges along the freight network are in disrepair, and too many of our highways are unable to handle the modern levels of traffic.

Now, many of us deal with the inconvenience of traffic every day, but this same traffic also costs both businesses and consumers money, and it threatens our economy's ability to stay competitive in the 21st century global economy.

As the roads on our freight network become more and more unreliable, the cost of transporting these goods increases, and American manufacturers and consumers pay the price. That is why I proposed legislation that would drastically increase the funding of this freight network infrastructure.

I thought it would be a good idea, and my bill would have used existing customs fees to provide $2 billion every year just to fund this freight network and the

infrastructure projects without, by the way, raising any taxes. I thought, by investing in our freight network, we could give American businesses and manufacturers a competitive edge and spur job creation across the country.

The highway bill that we are considering this week provides just $750 million per year in freight funding. That is less than half of what I was hoping for. But it is a start. I hope that we can continue this conversation and find ways to invest in our ports and in this freight network at the level that our economy needs.

I hope that in coming days we can work in a bipartisan way to improve the highway bill and ensure that it passes before the end of this year. I would like to see the freight network expanded to include that last mile. Those are the roads that connect everything to our ports with highways and with rail. And when we talk about improving our roads, these last mile roads are often forgotten, even when they have the greatest amount of traffic.

I hope that we can expand the freight title to include funding for on-dock rail at our ports. Investing in on-dock rail would actually ease traffic on our highways by taking a lot of those trucks off the roads. That cargo would come off the ships, go right onto the rail and then to the end consumer.

This bill is a positive step. It is not perfect. It is not as good as I would like to have seen, but it is the right step for a long-term plan to invest in our Nation's critical infrastructure.

I am looking forward to working with you, Mr. Garamendi. Thank you for your leadership on this. Thank you for talking about why Make It In America makes sense. But none of that makes sense unless we can finally invest in this infrastructure in this country to, as you said, make this country great and make it work for everyone.

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