Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Shuster and Chairman Graves as well as Ranking Member DEFAZIO for working with me and for all of us being able to work together on what will be, when it gets to the floor in November, I believe, the first 6-year or long-term transportation bill in 10 years. That is why it is possible not to fret that we are now going through another extension.
As a matter of fact, the States have the funds until January. These short-term extensions have compelled the States to stash their money without spending all of it because what they need to get to are long-term projects or at least projects that take more than a few months or a year or two, so we are making progress. When we authorize a 6-year bill, there will be a real burden on us to make sure that, in fact, it is 6 years.
I would advise my colleagues to support this last short-term extension. It is bipartisan. It is both Chambers. It avoids furloughs.
There is a bill waiting off stage. However, there is a funding mystery. I don't like mysteries, particularly with long-term bills. But I have to believe that the appropriate committee is meeting every day--it must be in secret--in order to fund this bill.
At least we have done our work, and we have done it in a bipartisan way. I won't trouble with the entire bill. There will be time to get to that.
I will say, on positive train control, that I regret there had to be a 3-year extension. I do think that puts at jeopardy those that have to be in these trains--employees and passengers. As I looked at what it took to do positive train control, I don't think we had any alternative. So that gives people 3 years.
With the benchmarks, I hope that we will get most of this done way before 2018. I don't like permitting individual waivers because, after all, there have been at least 2 years spent trying to do something about positive train control, and the jeopardy is clear when we see what has happened already with respect to terrible crashes that have taken human life.
Finally, I just want to say that perhaps the greatest challenge we have is a challenge that we must meet.
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Ms. NORTON. Mr. Speaker, and that is a new way to fund the highway trust fund. There is in the final bill some experimentation that I regard as urgent.
I thank my good friends on both sides of the aisle for this short-term extension, which I hope will be the last in a very long time.
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