Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I have been coming to the Senate floor and talking about a very important issue for our country that we should be spending much more time focusing on, and that is the importance of growing our economy. With the exception of national defense, I believe there is no more important moral imperative for this body and the Federal Government to focus on than this issue, but unfortunately, as we have seen, the administration doesn't focus on it. They don't want to talk about the importance of growing the economy because the record they have of economic growth for Americans, particularly middle-class Americans, has been dismal.

I have been trying to get my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to focus on this chart over the last several weeks because this chart says a lot. If you look at the different records of different administrations, both Democratic and Republican, the Obama years have been a lost decade of economic growth. This red line shows 3 percent GDP growth. That is decent growth but not great. We can see that Reagan, Clinton, and Kennedy all had better numbers. This is the worst recovery over a 7-year period. That is a fact. They don't want to talk about it. We should talk about it a lot more.

I clearly think it is one of the most important things we should be doing in this body, and one way we can reignite the American dream and our economic growth, especially for the next generation--like for our pages--is to reduce burdensome and unnecessary regulations. Everybody agrees with that, including the Presiding Officer and all of my colleagues here. We need to reduce burdensome and unnecessary Federal regulations and build infrastructure for America. That is exactly what my amendment No. 3912 to the Transportation appropriations bill--which is so ably managed by my colleagues from Maine and Rhode Island--would do, and that is what I will talk about for a minute.

My amendment would give States and communities throughout this Nation the ability to expedite permitting for the maintenance, reconstruction, or construction of structurally deficient bridges. It is pretty simple. The amendment is very narrowly tailored. It says: If you are going to do maintenance, construction, or reconstruction on a bridge that is structurally deficient and the Federal Government won't be burdened, we will expedite the permitting by waiving many of the permitting requirements. That is it. It is very simple. As a matter of fact, this amendment only has two paragraphs.

It is a win-win for the country. Investing in our infrastructure will help boost our economy and economic growth, and importantly, it will keep American families safe. It is a commonsense approach that I am hoping my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support.

Recently, President Obama was asked about the economy and our crumbling infrastructure. He talked about the need for infrastructure investment, which I completely agree with; however, he laid the blame for a lack of investment in infrastructure on Republicans, who he said were unwilling to spend on our infrastructure. Well, I think with the highway bill, the WRDA bill, and this appropriations bill, we are doing it. Again, it is very bipartisan. I don't think what the President said is true. We are certainly willing to invest in infrastructure, which is so important to our economy, but we need to do it wisely, and we need to make sure our taxpayer money does not go to unintended uses. In fact, I believe, as do many of my colleagues, that there is perhaps nothing more central to growing our economy and competing globally than sound infrastructure for America, but throwing money at projects that aren't ready for development because of the burdensome permitting and regulatory requirements that we often see from the Federal Government is not a sound use of taxpayer dollars.

A recent column in the Wall Street Journal points out that of the $800 billion of taxpayer money that was passed several years ago as part of the President's stimulus package, only $30 billion was spent on transportation infrastructure. That is remarkable. Out of the $800 billion, only $30 billion was spent on infrastructure. Why? One of the big reasons is because these infrastructure projects were not shovel- ready because of the onerous permitting requirements and environmental reviews.

Consider this: The average time for an environmental review for a major transportation project in the United States has increased to a staggering 8 years. In 2011, it took 8 years to get a transportation project approved in terms of Federal permitting, and that is up from 3\1/2\ years in the year 2000. We have more than doubled the time in less than 7 years because of the Federal permitting requirements.

The average environmental impact statement was about 22 pages when NEPA, which requires EIS's--and that is important. When that bill initially passed, the average EIS was 22 pages. Today's highway projects often have EIS's that are well above 1,000 pages. On average, it takes over 5 years to permit a bridge in the United States. Nobody wants this.

As a matter of fact, former President Bill Clinton highlighted the need for reform in this area in a well-known Newsweek article. In 2011 he was on the front cover of Newsweek. His article talked about how to get Americans back to work. One of his top recommendations was to make sure that when we have infrastructure projects, the permitting requirements don't take forever. He said that we need to ``keep the full review process when there are real environmental concerns, but when there aren't, the federal government should be able to give a waiver to the states to speed up start times on construction projects.'' That was former President Bill Clinton's recommendation. Well, that is exactly what my amendment does. Again, if you are going to repair or build a bridge and keep it in the same capacity--a two- lane bridge stays a two-lane bridge, not a four-lane bridge--and in the same place and the same size, then the permitting process should be expedited.

Let me spend a few minutes on why this is so important for our economy and the safety of our citizens. I think most people in this body know our bridges are in poor condition. About 1 in 10 of America's roughly 607,000 bridges is termed and classified as ``structurally deficient.'' Let me repeat that in a different way. In the United States, there are more than 61,000 bridges in need of repair. The average age of our bridges is 42 years old. Americans cross these structurally deficient bridges 215 million times a day.

Here is a chart that shows where they are located. If you look here, this classifies different bridges. The red category shows the most bridges--over 25 percent--that are structurally deficient. The lighter red represents 20 to 25 percent, and the lightest shade of red represents 15 to 20 percent. As we can see, every State has structurally deficient bridges that Americans are crossing 215 million times a day.

Let me be clear. It is not just about the economy, where truckers and commerce are crossing these bridges every day; it is about the safety of our children when they ride on schoolbuses and parents when they come home from work. Every State in the Union is impacted by this.

Let me give a few quick examples of some structurally deficient bridges across the country.

This is the Magnolia Bridge in Seattle, WA. It was built in 1929. This bridge carries over 18,000 cars per day and has been declared structurally deficient.

The Greenfield Bridge in Pittsburgh, PA--Pennsylvania has the most structurally deficient bridges in the country, and this chart shows one of them. It was built in 1921. It carries almost 8,000 cars per day. In 2003 a 10-inch chunk of concrete went through a car windshield, injuring the driver. This structurally deficient bridge has been crumbling for decades.

I have one more example, which the Presiding Officer will find of significant interest. This is the Russell Street Bridge in Missoula, MN. Transportation for America rates the deck of the Russell Street Bridge a 4 out of 10 in terms of structural soundness. It was built in 1957 and carries over 22,000 cars a day.

I think we would all agree that we need to fix these 61,000 structurally deficient bridges. There is no doubt about it. I don't think there is any Member of this body or anyone in the Federal Government who would disagree about that, but what happens when we try to do that? In fact, the efforts, especially in the local communities, are strangled by bureaucratic redtape.

The Wall Street Journal recently had an article titled ``The Highway to Bureaucratic Hell,'' and it talked about this very issue of what happens when communities try to fix their structurally deficient bridges. They gave a number of examples, but I wanted to read one that impacts Americans in the New Jersey-New York area of the country. The Wall Street Journal article stated: Another illustration of what happens is the Bayonne Bridge that connects New Jersey to Staten Island and at 150 feet tall blocks large cargo ships. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey plans to raise the bridge from 150 feet to 215 feet. They wanted to do that to allow cargo ships to go under it. They planned to keep the bridge the same size; they just wanted to raise it so they wouldn't have to spend over $3 billion to build a tunnel.

The article goes on to say that their reward for thinking rationally was that it took 6 months to have the lead agency identified for an environmental review--an environmental review that dragged on for more than 5 years and spanned 20,000 pages. That is not good for New Jersey, that is not good for New York, and that is not good for America.

Again, what my amendment would do would fix this issue. It is very narrowly tailored, and it would simply make sure that when we are trying to fix the 61,000 structurally deficient bridges in the United States, we can do it in an expedited manner, not in the way in which this Wall Street Journal article described--5 years and 20,000 pages.

This amendment is a win-win-win. It will help spur economic growth, help us with the safety of our citizens, and help our workers get back to work so we can do the maintenance and reconstruction on these bridges. Everybody here talks about regulatory reform and how we need it. Even the President, in his State of the Union speech, talked about the need to cut redtape in order to grow this economy. But we rarely act on it. We talk about it, but we don't act on it.

I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--my colleagues particularly from older States, where this amendment will help them more than the rest of the country--to vote on this amendment which will keep our families and kids safe, help grow our economy, and put workers back to work. It is a commonsense thing to do for our country.

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