Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, in 2013, the Connecticut General Assembly passed a law which was enacted that tried to modify and did modify, at least at the State level, the truck weight limits for agricultural producers, which, again, is sort of caught in a bit of a geographic box, given the fact that it is an 80,000 limit in Connecticut, 127,000 in Massachusetts for interstates, and 143,000 in the State of New York.

This is a very densely concentrated part of the country, and almost all of their feed, almost all of their silage, a lot of their fuel, and a lot of their equipment comes in from out of State. So when you have got trucks that can carry 120,000 going down the Mass Pike and then enter Connecticut, you are suddenly having a very disruptive, expensive proposition in terms of actually needing more trucks or having to have the products offloaded.

That is why the general assembly passed this statute. They thought they fixed it, but as, of course, we know here, in fact, Federal law has to be modified in order to make it effective. And that really was the purpose of this amendment.

I had the support of the Governor and all of the relevant agencies in Washington.

Truck weights are complicated. We know that, and I think we have really learned a lot in terms of this process.

Again, I will be making a motion which I think will bring this event to a conclusion, but before I do that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Hayes), a great advocate for farms in the State of Connecticut, a member of the House Agriculture Committee, and someone who has been very involved in terms of trying to help on this issue.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Speaker, again, I think the gentlewoman described very well the situation that is there. We obviously, as I said, learned a lot in this process in terms of maybe trying to get more reassurance about the precision of the definition of what are agricultural products, as well as making sure that the regulations in Connecticut are beefed up so that the maximum level of truck safety would be incorporated into any such change. As I said, it needs more work.

I want to thank Mr. DeFazio for at least listening to us and Mr. McGovern for making this amendment in order and Mr. Graves, again, for the work that he does on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

As a friend of mine once said when he was redirected out of a seat in the Connecticut Legislature: Don't send me flowers, because I am coming back.

Don't send us flowers, because we want to really bring this issue, sometime in the future, to Congress to try and help really great people who work every day, get up early, and are doing wonderful things in terms of food production and agriculture products.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source