Hire More Heroes Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I want to compliment the Senator from Oklahoma for his great work on this legislation. He has been a fierce advocate for transportation funding, for doing highway bills on more than a short-term basis. As he has mentioned numerous times, since 2009 we have had 33 short-term extensions--patches, if you will--which make it very difficult to run a highway program.
The Senator from Oklahoma has been, as I said, a fierce and persistent advocate that one of the responsibilities we have around here is to make sure we are building the infrastructure in this country that keeps our economy competitive, that allows people and freight to move in an efficient way and to ensure our economy is strong and vibrant.
I can tell you, as someone who represents a rural State in the middle of the country, the supply chain we have between our highways and bridges, our railroads, our ports, is critically important for us to get our products, the things we raise and grow in South Dakota, to the marketplace. Agriculture is our No. 1 industry. It drives our economy. It is incredibly dependent upon transportation. So a strong, vibrant, robust economy depends upon transportation.
Obviously, we want to have a system that is safe, and that is one of the issues I want to speak to with regard to this bill as well. I appreciate the great work Senator Inhofe and his team, working with Senator Boxer, have done on this bill.
We are going to continue to debate this. I hope we can bring it to a close. As the Senator from Oklahoma pointed out, if we did that, we would have an opportunity to at least put it before the House and give them a chance to act on it, whether they choose to or not. I would certainly hope the House of Representatives would take a hard look at this bill and consider taking it up and moving it because there has been a lot of work that has gone into it. We have a deadline ahead of us, and if we don't do this, we are going to be stuck with yet another--the 34th--short-term extension, which just kicks the can down the road and makes it more difficult for those who are in the position of having to make decisions about planning and designing our infrastructure in this country to do that.
Obviously, there are a lot of people and a lot of jobs that depend upon the decisions that come out of Washington with regard to this bill. So I, too, encourage our colleagues in the Senate to move as quickly as we can to complete action on the Senate bill and to allow the House of Representatives to take a chance at considering it and perhaps getting this issue resolved and a long-term bill in place.
These bills are nothing new in the Senate. The bill before us today is notable because it is the first Transportation bill, as I mentioned, in almost a decade to provide more than 2 years of funding for our Nation's infrastructure needs. Since 2009, Congress has passed more than 33 short-term funding extensions. That is an average of approximately five funding extensions a year. That is not a good way to manage our Nation's infrastructure and it wastes an incredible amount of money.
Around the country, hundreds of thousands of people and hundreds of thousands of jobs depend on funding contained in transportation bills. When Congress fails to provide the necessary certainty about the way transportation funding is going to be allocated, States and local governments are left without the certainty they need to authorize projects to make long-term plans for transportation infrastructure. That means essential construction projects get deferred, necessary repairs may not get made, and the jobs that depend on transportation are put in jeopardy.
My home State of South Dakota has been forced to defer important construction projects thanks to the lack of funding certainty. No individual or business would start building a house or an office building if it could only promise a contractor 3 months of funding. In the same way, Congress can't expect a State to begin construction of a new bridge or highway without the certainty that their project is going to be fully funded.
The highway bill before us--the DRIVE Act--reauthorizes transportation programs for 6 years and provides 3 years of guaranteed funding. All 3 years of funding have been paid for without raising the gas tax and without adding a dime to the deficit. This bill will give States and local governments the certainty they need to plan for and commit to key infrastructure projects.
The bill will also help to strengthen our Nation's transportation system by increasing transparency in the allocation of transportation dollars, streamlining the permitting and environmental review processes and cutting redtape.
Mr. President, over the past few years of Democratic control, the public has grown increasingly skeptical of Congress being able to function. When Republicans took the majority in January, we promised the American people we would get the Senate working again, and we have been delivering on that promise.
This Transportation bill is another major legislative achievement and the result of hard work by several committees that put together key provisions to spur important infrastructure investment and safety improvements. Republicans and Democrats alike got to make their voices heard in this process, and the resulting bill is stronger because of it.
As chairman of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, I had the opportunity to work on the commerce section of the bill. Our focus was on enhancing the safety of our Nation's cars, trucks, and railroads, and the bill we produced makes key reforms that will enhance transport safety around the country.
Over the past year, the commerce committee has spent a lot of time focused on motor vehicle safety efforts. Last year was a record year for auto problems, with more than 63 million vehicles recalled.
Two of the defects that have spurred recent auto recalls--the faulty General Motors ignition switch and the defective airbag inflators from Takata--are responsible for numerous unnecessary deaths and injuries, at least 8 reported deaths in the case of Takata and more than 100 deaths in the case of General Motors. Indications point to the Takata recalls as being among the largest and most complex set of auto-related recalls in our Nation's history, with more than 30 million cars affected.
Given the seriousness of these recalls, when it came time to draft the highway bill, one of our priorities in the commerce committee was addressing auto safety issues and promoting greater consumer awareness and corporate responsibility. The commerce section of the DRIVE Act now triples the civil penalties the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration can impose on automakers for a series of related safety violations--from a cap of $35 million to a cap of $105 million--which should provide a stronger deterrent against auto safety violations such as those that occurred in the case of the faulty ignition switches at General Motors.
Our portion of the bill also improves notification methods to ensure that consumers are made aware of recalls.
In the wake of the recall over the GM ignition switch defect, the inspector general at the Department of Transportation published a scathing report identifying serious lapses of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, or NHTSA, the government agency responsible for overseeing safety in our Nation's cars and trucks.
The concerns raised included questions about the agency's ability to properly identify and investigate safety problems--a concern that is further underscored, I might add, by the circumstances surrounding the Takata recalls.
In addition to targeting violations by automakers, our portion of the highway bill also addresses the lapses at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration identified in the inspector general's report.
In its typical fashion, the Obama administration claimed NHTSA's problems could be solved by simply throwing more money at the agency, but based on the expert testimony from the inspector general, it is clear money alone is not going to solve the problem. We need to ensure that the agency fixes what is broken before we provide a significant increase in funding authorization with taxpayer dollars.
Our bill makes additional funding increases for NHTSA's vehicle safety efforts contingent on that agency's implementation of reforms called for by the inspector general, ensuring that this agency will be in a better position to address vehicle safety problems in the future.
I appreciate that NHTSA's current administration and Administrator have pledged to implement all of these recommendations.
Another big focus of the commerce committee this year has been rail safety. Nearly half of the commerce section of the DRIVE Act is made up of a bipartisan rail safety bill put together by the Republican junior Senator from Mississippi and the Democratic junior Senator from New Jersey. Their work on important rail and Amtrak reform was almost ready for a committee markup at the beginning of May, but after the tragic train derailment in Philadelphia, these two Senators opted to delay the markup and then added even more safety provisions to the bill they crafted.
Their bill, which passed the committee with unanimous support from committee members of both parties, include provisions to strengthen our Nation's rail infrastructure and smooths the way for the implementation of new safety technologies.
Our transportation infrastructure keeps our economy and our Nation going. Our Nation's farmers depend on our rail system to move their crops to the market. Manufacturers rely on our Interstate Highway System to distribute their goods to stores across the United States. All of us--all of us--depend on our Nation's roads and bridges to get around every single day. For too long, transportation has been the subject of short-term legislation that leaves those responsible for building and for maintaining our Nation's transportation system without the certainty and the predictability they need to keep our roads and highways thriving.
I am proud of the bill we have on the floor before us. I hope we can pass this legislation as soon as possible and work with the House to develop a final bill that will allow us to fund our Nation's transportation priorities on a long-term basis. We can't afford to continue this path we have been on of passing short-term extensions--33 already in the last 5 years, more than 5 a year--and all the uncertainty that comes with that. That jeopardizes jobs across this country that are related to construction of these projects. It jeopardizes the planning and engineering and design work that our departments of transportation across the country do, and it puts at risk all of the transportation infrastructure that moves the freight, that moves people across this country, which our economy depends on.
So I simply want to say that as a Member who represents a rural State, South Dakota--where we have 77,000 square miles, home to 800,000 people--we depend heavily on roads and bridges to get to and from our destinations. We have people who drive long distances to work. We have people who come into our State every single year.
This time of the year we will have a million or so people descend upon a little town in South Dakota called Sturgis, which will be the place where the annual motorcycle rally is hosted. We have people who come by the thousands to our State every single year to visit the Black Hills and Mount Rushmore. We depend upon a good, viable, robust transportation system.
As I mentioned earlier, we are an agricultural economy which drives the jobs in our State that keeps our Main Streets going. That agricultural economy depends upon getting those things we raise and grow to the marketplace. That means good highways, railroads, ports--all the things that are essential to make sure our agricultural producers can get the things they raise and grow to the places and destinations they need to get to.
This is truly important work we are doing. I thank the Senator from Oklahoma for his hard work. I certainly hope we can push this across the finish line soon, so we will be able to present it to the House of Representatives, notwithstanding the statements that have been made there. Perhaps they can look at this body of work and think, as we do, that this gives us an opportunity to put something on the books, the longest term bill we have had literally now in 10 years, and do something important for our economy and for jobs.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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