Hire More Heroes Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CALVERT. Madam Chair, the highway bill, crafted by my friends, Chairman Bill Shuster and Ranking Member Peter DeFazio and the rest of our colleagues on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, contains a number of important reforms to our highway programs that will benefit commuters across this country.

One of those provisions, section 1313, establishes a pilot program that would allow States to conduct environmental reviews and make approvals for projects under State environmental laws and regulations instead of Federal laws and regulations. It is expected that this pilot program will save highway projects time and money, while maintaining the same environmental standards.

The bill permits the State to designate 10 local governments to administer local projects under the new pilot program. However, for large States like California, New York, Texas, and Florida, limiting the program to 10 localities is simply not enough. My amendment would increase the allowable number of localities to 25 in order to allow more communities to take advantage of bringing down the cost and shrinking the amount of time required to complete highway projects.

The amendment is supported by the California State Association of Counties, local transit authorities, and CalTrans is not opposed.

We are well aware that our need for highway infrastructure continues to outpace the resources we have available. That is exactly why we need to support efforts like my amendment that can make more highway projects a reality by bringing their costs down and completing them more quickly.

I urge all my colleagues to support the amendment which will help our communities, counties, and commuters.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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