Providing for Consideration of Conference Report on H.R. 22, Surface Transportation Reauthorization and Reform Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I commend my colleagues on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, who we will be hearing from shortly, for their diligence in developing a thoughtful, long-term, sustainably funded surface transportation compromise that really has many of the priorities that Republicans and Democrats brought to the table.

As the gentleman from Georgia said, this is an example of what we call regular order of a conference committee.

I want to inquire of the gentleman from Georgia, what was the vote on the conference committee on this final transportation bill?

I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.

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Mr. POLIS. Reclaiming my time, you did even better than the education conference committee. We were 39-1. There was actually one person on that conference committee who didn't support it. What a great job that you and your colleagues did.

The education conference committee was the first chance in 7 1/2 years that I had to serve on a conference committee; my friend from Georgia, his first chance during his time in Congress to do it.

And that is a procedural matter. When the American people hear, oh, conference committee, that sounds procedural. Yet another committee; what does that mean? But the product of these committees are substantial bills.

Part of the problem here in this institution is that it is a bicameral legislature, and the House and the Senate don't talk to each other enough. The formal way they talk to one another is through a conference committee. What that means is there are Senators and Representatives on the same committee working on the same bill, rather than what happens too often around here where the House passes one bill and the Senate, if they pass a bill at all, passes a very different bill, and never the twain shall meet. Mr. Speaker, thanks to this procedural conference committee, the differences between the House and the Senate have been worked out.

So we were on the education bill yesterday. The Senate will likely consider that exact same bill next week, which means it will likely go to President Obama's desk before Christmas. This transportation bill the House considers today, I don't know the Senate's schedule, but hopefully in the next week or two they will consider this exact same bill, and hopefully it will go to President Obama's desk.

So we had a very quick meeting of the Rules Committee yesterday. My goodness, usually when the Rules Committee meets, those are contentious meetings. We have a lot of amendments from Democrats and Republicans that want to have their voice heard. But on a final conference report, it went pretty quickly, and members of our committee on both sides of the aisle had a lot of praise for the chair and the ranking member of the committee that had worked tirelessly to put this deal together.

The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act--they came up with a clever acronym, FAST. That works well, right? Transportation, fast, we all want to go fast, not too fast. The act commits $305 billion over a 5-year period towards improving our Nation's roads, bridges, transit systems, and railways. This is something that Republicans and Democrats both agree is the job of government. Transportation, infrastructure, and making sure people can get from one place to another is one of the most critical roles that our government plays.

In the first year, FAST increases spending on highways by $2.1 billion. By the final year, the funding levels will reach $6.1 billion in addition to current investment. It also raises transit funding from $8.6 billion to almost $10.6 billion by 2020.

It establishes a Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects program that helps focus our attention on projects that increase the competitiveness of American goods and services by expanding and improving upon heavily trafficked freight routes. Two that affect us in Colorado--very near and dear to my district--are highway 25, from Denver to Wyoming, and highway 70, from Denver to Salt Lake City, which we were able to successfully include an amendment in the House version, which I am proud to say is also reflected in this conference report.

Mr. Speaker, these Nationally Significant Freight and Highway Projects open the door to economic development, improve the flow of goods across our great country, increase the quality of life for residents, ease congestion and safety concerns, and, along our particular corridors, are to the benefit of tourism and the tourism industry as well.

This bill helps leverage private investment in our surface transportation program by promoting the use of public-private partnerships which simply have become a reality for many infrastructure projects today like those used to expand highway 36 from Denver to Boulder, which I drive on most days that I am back home in Colorado.

The FAST Act encourages installation of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure equipment--which the Colorado Department of Transportation has been at the cutting edge of designing and implementing--to improve congestion, ensure passenger safety, and really help create a 21st century infrastructure. This bill helps increase dedicated bus funding by 89 percent over the life of the bill, a change that was direly needed after the last highway authorization.

The FAST Act maintains local flexibility for STP Metro funding, allows governments to dictate what is best for our communities, and leaves the door open for complex transportation infrastructure projects like the northeast line of the Denver Regional Transportation District's FasTrack system, which our voters approved a decade ago.

The bill requires a feasibility study to determine an impairment standard for drivers under the influence of marijuana, something that I introduced a bill on and have been working hard on to increase the safety of driving in States where marijuana is legalized, like my home State of Colorado.

This bill increases funding for highway railway grade crossings and requires operators to report the movements of hazardous materials along railroads, many of which, again, traverse my district. In Fort Collins, in Loveland, and in Longmont, where trains run through the downtown every day, these types of commonsense safety measures are desperately needed and welcomed.

The bill includes reforms to the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing loan program--a loan that can be used to divert cumbersome traffic out of the middle of our downtown areas like in Fort Collins--to ensure speedy approval.

Mr. Speaker, this bill is a good bill. The policy changes are thoughtful and progressive. The funding levels authorized are an improvement upon those of the past. The financing sources we tap, while not ideal, are workable.

Now, it is always fair to say in any compromise that we could have done better. There are a few things I am disappointed that this bill doesn't contain.

We were on the edge of cutting a deal that would have included international tax reform that would have brought American wealth home, used the taxes gained to fund transportation and infrastructure restoration projects nationwide, and prevented the offshoring of corporations, which we continue to see.

Earlier this Congress, Mr. Speaker, I introduced a

bill with my friend, Representative Delaney, that would have deemed repatriation at 8.75 percent to fund both a 6-year highway bill at increased funding levels and create a new, national infrastructure bank. Combining international tax reform--desperately needed in its own right--with bold and robust infrastructure investment is a forward-thinking, problem-solving solution and exactly the type of move that I wish--and the American people wish--that Congress could have made.

Our failure to come to a deal on the repatriation of overseas wealth has, unfortunately, robbed the American people of hundreds of billions of dollars in public investment and continues to abandon the $2 trillion in overseas earnings that could have been brought home.

In addition, we fail to address the tax incentive that American companies have to merge with overseas corporations or relocate their own headquarters overseas to avoid paying American taxes. We came close--we came close--to addressing this in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Congress to address international tax reform as soon possible to prevent the continuing offshoring of companies and the moving of jobs overseas, as well as to ensure that over $2 trillion in overseas earnings can be invested here in America rather than face an enormous tax penalty if it is brought back, thereby preventing it from being brought back and providing an incentive for companies to invest in overseas growth and infrastructure rather than investing in infrastructure and growth here at home.

Mr. Speaker, the failure to contain corporate tax reform is not my only challenge in supporting this bill. There were certainly other programs that I believe we could have invested in, like improving even more the TIFIA investment which funds important projects like those needed along highways 70 and 25 in my district. I would have liked to have seen a direct funding stream tied to improvement and maintenance projects along designated high-priority corridors.

Finally, I would have liked to have seen the plight of communities with rail running through their downtowns addressed in the bill, an issue very near and dear to the cities in my district, cities like Fort Collins, Loveland, and Longmont, which are changed entirely by constant disruption of train horns and road blockages through our busy downtown areas.

The economic loss that we face in our communities, on top of the disturbance to residents' quality of life, isn't something that we can continue to sit by and do nothing about. We are going to work with every bit of flexibility in the bill. We continue to work with the department on less expensive implementation of quiet zones and of trying to reopen the rulemaking around train horns, which we expect to happen shortly, but there is no specific statutory fix to that issue in this bill itself.

So while I support this bill and commend the effort and the regular order that led to us getting here, we still need to look at what we can do. We see this bill as a floor, not a ceiling. There is even more we can do to bring our transportation infrastructure into the 21st century, to ensure its funding source is reliable and sustained, to repatriate overseas earnings and invest them here at home, and to eliminate an incentive for American companies to move overseas.

I hope my Republican colleagues agree that passage of this bill doesn't mean that we retire from presenting new, thoughtful ideas to improve our Federal highway system. I hope that Republicans and Democrats will continue to partner to address and solve some of these issues that I have raised that are not included in this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds before I further yield.

I agree with many of the critiques from the gentleman from Wisconsin. I think, when you pick apart a lot of the ways that this bill is paid for, you will find that they either won't generate the amount of revenue we think they will or you are borrowing from the outyears, meaning years 5 through 10, to effectively fund years 1 through 5. I know a lot of Members on both sides of the aisle will weigh that in their vote. I wish that the committee could have done better in finding pay-fors.

I would like to briefly address the national petroleum reserve. I think it is great that Democrats and Republicans are coming together around selling assets the Federal Government has that are nonproductive assets, like the petroleum reserve that was set up for a time when America relied on foreign oil. We are now net producers of crude oil.

I introduced an amendment that was not allowed for the energy bill yesterday to sell down the entire strategic petroleum reserve, which I think we should. However, the accounting for it in this bill shows us magically receiving twice the value per barrel for the price of oil than the futures market actually indicates that we would get. That is simply fictitious accounting in terms of how this bill is paid for.

I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 1/2 minutes.

Today, I recognize the patriotism and volunteer service of Major Fredric Arnold, a World War II P-38 fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps.

Mr. Arnold flew and survived 50 combat missions and was promoted to the rank of major at the age of 23. He received numerous medals, including the Distinguished Flying Cross and Air Medal with nine oak leaf clusters.

While assigned to the Office of Flying Safety, he wrote and illustrated the first ever flight training manuals for the P-38, P-47, P-51, and P-80 fighter aircraft, and he created educational air combat situation drawings for the P-38 Lightning, which saved the lives of inexperienced American pilots.

Today, at age 93, Mr. Arnold lives in Boulder, Colorado, where he is creating a monumental bronze sculpture, funded by The Radiance Foundation, which depicts 12 life-sized fighter pilots who are engaged in a World War II flight briefing, in order to honor the 88,000 airmen who lost their lives during the war and to ensure future generations remember the sacrifices that were made to protect our freedom.

This sculpture is entitled, ``Lest We Forget: The Mission,'' and it will be exhibited at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.

I am proud to recognize Major Fredric Arnold for his service as a fighter pilot and for his personal commitment to honor and help us all remember the aviators who served this Nation during World War II.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

If we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to bring up bipartisan legislation

that would close the loophole that allows suspected terrorists to legally buy guns. This bill would bar the sale of firearms and explosives to those on the terrorist watch list.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

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Mr. POLIS. Mr. Speaker, a third of our Nation's major roads are rated as poor or mediocre, and one in four bridges is in need of significant repair or expansion, many of them dangerous, while 45 percent of Americans don't have access to public transit.

Congestion on our roadways has gotten so bad that Americans are wasting an average of 8.4 billion hours--that is 8.4 billion hours less in productivity--and 4.5 billion gallons of gas over a decade while being stuck in traffic.

The average commuters are wasting nearly $800 of their own money and 5 full days of their lives each year in traffic. In my district alone, population and congestion has far outpaced our ability to maintain our critical thoroughfares.

If you have ever been to Colorado, you will know that there is one way up to our world-class ski resorts and ski areas and unparalleled 14,000-foot peaks from the Denver metro area. It is called highway 70. If you have ever taken it on a Friday evening or on a Sunday evening, you have probably sat in your car at a dead stop, waiting at times perhaps even for hours.

If you have ever been to the largest city in my district, Fort Collins, home to one of our greatest universities, Colorado State University, you have probably found similar circumstances along highway 25 during rush hour.

The expansion of highway 25 and the high-speed rail along highway 70 have been given completion dates of 60 years from now. That isn't good enough. Fort Collins, Loveland, Boulder, Vail, Frisco, Breckenridge--none of these tourism- and recreation-driven communities can survive without making improvements for 60 years.

The future of these projects lies with a long-term, robustly funded surface transportation reauthorization. Our future depends upon our States' and municipalities' ability to rely on what level of Federal support they can expect to receive and what their Federal partnerships will look like year in and year out.

By providing consistency in funding levels and a several-year commitment to critical infrastructure projects, as we do today in this conference report, we open up a future for major highway improvements like those needed with highways 25 and 70 in my district and with highways and roads across the entire Nation.

While I have outlined the issues and misgivings I have with this bill--and I certainly agree with Mr. Ribble about the lack of courage this Congress has to actually pay for a bill and to instead devise clever gimmicks that only partially pay for the bill, including assuming that we are going to get twice the money per barrel for oil that the Federal Government owns and the actual market price would bear--I think that this bill, nevertheless, is a step forward over continued short-term reauthorizations, which I have been voting against the last several times they have come before us and which, I should point out, also generally include gimmicky ways of paying for it.

So if this Congress, which it seems to have done, has chosen not to address the real issue of how to pay for something and has chosen to instead use gimmicks, it is still better to do that in a predictable manner rather than to come up with a new gimmick every 60 days--a gimmick of the month, if you will--which is what this Congress has been doing throughout this year.

I thank my colleagues for the inclusion of my amendments in this bill, particularly an amendment to designate Highway 70 from Denver to Salt Lake City as a High Priority Corridor. That provision will open up funding sources and opportunities for a highway that has been a nightmare for residents, for tourists, and for freight truck drivers for decades, particularly during its busiest times.

I appreciate the committee's desire to be transparent and receptive to ideas brought by Members who don't serve on the committee.

I am hopeful that what happened here this week, as my colleague from Georgia started out by saying, not only with the surface transportation reauthorization but also with the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, is only a beginning--a beginning of big things, of good things, of hard compromises, of the success of regular order, of discussions between the House and the Senate that will hopefully bode well for future developments.

I am hopeful that we can get back to work after a long hiatus of gridlock and grandstanding. I hope this is the first of many.

I congratulate my colleagues for coming together on such a pivotal piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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