The Highway Bill
Floor Speech
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Mr. DURBIN. Madam President, let me add my voice to this bipartisan chorus. It is embarrassing to the United States of America that we are now in the midst of our 33rd short-term extension of the highway trust fund.
This 60-day extension ends in 10 days. It is true and the Senator from Texas is correct that many of us have come to the floor and said this is beneath the dignity of a great nation--that we cannot invest in our own economy, in our own business growth. Building the highways and bridges and the mass transit that sustains a great nation takes a determined long-term effort.
Now, there are those--not on our side of the aisle, but there are those--who question whether the Federal Government should be involved in this at all. The so-called devolution movement argues, I understand, that this really should be a State and local matter: Get the Federal Government out of the business of planning the transportation grid for America.
I have three words for those people who believe that: Dwight David Eisenhower, a Republican President who, in the 1950s, had the vision and determination, once he had seen the autobahn in Germany, to say that the United States of America needs an interstate highway system for its national defense. That is how he sold it. He sold it to a bipartisan Congress, and we have lived with that benefit ever since.
Our generation and even those before us have inherited the vision of that President and Members of Congress who said: Let us invest in the long-term development of America.
Think about your own home State and what interstate highways mean to your economy. In my State, if you are a town lucky enough to live next to an interstate, you are bound to have a good economy. And if you are blessed with the intersection of two interstates, hold on tight, because the opportunities are limitless.
So that generation 60 years ago had a vision. The question is, Do we have a vision? We certainly don't with 60-day extensions with the highway trust fund. That is why when Senator McConnell on the Republican side offered a long-term approach, 3 years--I wish it were 6--but 3 years actually paid for, I believe we should take it seriously.
One Senator among us, Senator Boxer of California, did. As chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Barbara Boxer rolled up her sleeves and started negotiating, crafting an agreement.
How about this for an assignment. We said to Senator Boxer: Come up with a long-term highway trust fund bill, get it through four different committees to the satisfaction of at least the majority of the 45 other Democratic Senators, work out your differences, and report to us in 10 days. She did. I have to give credit to her, as big as this bill may be--and by Senate standards it is one of the larger ones--it was an undertaking she took seriously and we should take seriously too. Now that we have the bill, there is no excuse. There is plenty of time to read this. Don't believe that every word on every page is valuable, but let's go through it carefully and make sure we understand completely what we are doing before we vote. That was the cloture vote we had earlier today.
When I went home over this weekend and called leaders in my State--I called the CEOs of two major corporations, I called the labor unions, I called the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and they were over the moon and happy with the notion that we are finally going to come up with at least a 3-year highway trust fund bill.
I will be reading this carefully. In the course of reading it, I hope I can come to the conclusion that this is the right answer to move us forward to build our infrastructure for the next generation.
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