Departments of Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008
Floor Speech
DEPARTMENTS OF TRANSPORTATION, HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am very pleased that the Senate is now debating the Senate amendment to H.R. 3074. This is the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill for this coming fiscal year. This bill has been supported by the broadest possible bipartisan majorities. The Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations subcommittee has 21 members, more than one-fifth of the Senate. It is one of the largest subcommittees in the Senate. Despite the diversity of views on our very large subcommittee, back on July 10 we voted unanimously to report the bill to the full Appropriations Committee, and 2 days later, each and every one of the 29 members of that committee voted to report this bill to the Senate.
This bill has broad, bipartisan support because it addresses pragmatically the very real housing and transportation needs of American families across all regions of the Nation. Rather than endorse the many arbitrary and destructive cuts called for in the administration's budget, we worked in this bill to target our limited resources on getting citizens out of traffic jams and home to their families; keeping our low-income tenants in their homes and out of shelters; providing housing for the elderly and the disabled; investing in crumbling infrastructure, and improving safety on our runways, highways, and railways.
Much has been said recently about a looming battle between the White House and Congress over spending priorities and the funding levels in these appropriations bills. There is no question that the bill before us spends more than the level sought by the Bush administration, both for transportation and for housing. Yet this bill still has broad bipartisan support, and I believe the Senate would benefit greatly from a detailed explanation as to why that is the case.
More than any other reason, this bill spends more than the administration's budget because it rejects many of the most punitive and misguided cuts that were proposed by the White House. The President's budget that he sent us for fiscal year 2008 proposed cuts across the board. Those included cuts that would put low-income tenants and their children on the streets. It proposed cuts that would undermine transportation safety, especially when it comes to aviation and railway safety; cuts that would worsen congestion on our Nation's roadways and runways; and cuts that undermine the community development efforts of mayors and county executives and Governors across this country.
So this bill spends more than the President's budget, not because it includes vast new spending initiatives but because it simply refuses to acquiesce to the President's reckless cuts. These are the very same cuts that have been proposed in recent years by the Bush administration and rightly rejected by the then-Republican-led Congress. That is why every member of the Appropriations Committee voted to support this bill.
In addition to restoring funding to the cuts that were proposed in the President's budget, there are a limited number of selected funding increases in this bill. Those increases are targeted on efforts to maintain the current service levels for the HUD section 8 program, so tenants do not lose their homes. It continues to make investments in highway infrastructure so we can address our crumbling bridges and highways. It addresses the critical housing needs of homeless veterans, including veterans who are struggling after returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. And it addresses the current crisis in the mortgage market by boosting funding to counsel subprime borrowers who are today facing default and foreclosure.
As appropriators, we have an obligation to ensure that with our limited resources we are addressing the most critical and current needs we face in transportation and in housing. I believe we can all agree the needs of our returning veterans, especially those in need of housing while they struggle with physical or mental illness, have to be paramount. I believe we can all agree that with billions of dollars of mortgages about to reset to higher interest rates in the next few quarters, we have to do everything we can to help our borrowers keep their homes.
I have been greatly fortunate to be joined by my ranking member, Senator Bond, in crafting this package. Senator Bond's long service on the Appropriations Committee, as well as his work on the Public Works and Banking Committees, has made him one of our leading experts in the areas of both transportation and housing. Senator Bond's leadership and his commitment to the mission of HUD takes a back seat to no one. I could not have a better or more experienced partner in this effort.
The bill that Senator Bond and I put together contains congressionally directed earmark spending. Consistent with the instructions of Senator Byrd and Ranking Member Cochran, those earmarks have been substantially reduced from prior years.
For the first time in a great many years, the committee has reported a bill that will leave dollars available to initiate national competitions among all eligible applicants for discretionary transportation programs. For the first time in several years, this bill requires every earmarked project to be fully eligible under the basic authorizing statute for the pertinent program in which it is earmarked.
Those projects must also conform to other strict criteria newly imposed by our subcommittee this year.
Now, as I said earlier, this bill spends more money than the President's request, principally because it rejects a great many of the cuts that were proposed in the President's budget cut, that by the way have been rejected year by year by Republican Congresses.
I want to take a few minutes of the Senate's time today to discuss those cuts in greater detail. The President proposed to cut community development efforts in all our States and communities across the Nation by slashing the CDBG Program by $735 million or 20 percent.
Now, at a time when our changing economy is imposing unprecedented challenges to our mayors and our governors in preserving their struggling cities and towns, the President wanted to slash this effort by almost three-quarters of a billion dollars.
I have yet, personally, to meet a mayor or governor of any political party who endorses that approach. So our bill restores every penny of that cut. The President's budget also proposed to cut housing funding for the disabled by $112 million, almost 50 percent. At a time when our social service networks are trying to give our disabled citizens the chance to live independently, the Bush administration wants to slash that program in half.
Now, if that is not bad enough, at a time when the number of senior citizens is growing, the President's budget for HUD seeks to cut housing for low-income seniors by $160 million or 22 percent. So the bill before you restores every penny of those cuts.
The bill also rejects the President's proposal to completely eliminate funding for the very successful HOPE VI Program. Senators Bond and Mikulski deserve a great deal of credit for the success of that program. We have again restored funding for it so we can demolish some of the most decrepit and crime-ridden housing projects with new mixed-income developments that are cleaner, safer, and promote stable community living.
The bill before us rejects several punitive cuts proposed for the Department of Transportation. The President's budget proposed to slash funding for Amtrak by almost $500 million or 40 percent in a single year. This subcommittee heard testimony back in late February that a cut of that size would cripple the railroad and push it into certain bankruptcy. That was not just the view of Amtrak supporters, that was the view of the DOT inspector general who audits Amtrak's books every quarter.
The bill before us also rejects the President's proposal to cut subsidies for the Essential Air Service Program, which would eliminate all flights to dozens of rural and midsized communities in about every State.
At a time when our commercial airlines are terminating air service to small- and medium-sized cities, the President's budgets worsens the situation by slashing subsidies to keep some of those cities on the national aviation map.
As anyone who has taken a flight recently can attest, the number of air travelers has now well exceeded the levels we experienced prior to September 11. Flights are packed and are too often delayed. Planes are landing to find there are no gates to accommodate them. Consumer complaints are growing. Our air traffic control infrastructure is increasingly showing its age, with equipment outages and near misses occurring with frightening frequency.
Yet, as in past years, the President's budget for the FAA proposes to slash over $800 million from our programs that invest in airport capacity, safety projects, and modernizing the air traffic control system.
Maybe if the President flew commercial instead of on Air Force One we would see a much different budget here. But thankfully, as was the case in past years, our bill that is before us today rejects those proposed cuts.
Finally, as I mentioned before, the bill before us includes some select but critically needed funding increases. The President's budget proposed an absolute freeze on the amount of money available for tenant housing vouchers for the coming years, completely ignoring inflationary costs and rising rents. This bill provides a $500 million increase for tenant-based rental assistance. That is the amount we estimate will be needed to ensure that all currently federally assisted tenants can stay in their homes.
Senator Bond and I joined forces to add $78 million for the HUD-VASH Program. That program was designed to target both housing assistance and support services to our homeless veterans, including our veterans who are returning today from Iraq and Afghanistan.
We have coordinated this increase in voucher funding with a comparable increase in supportive services funding in the appropriations bill for the VA and military construction. This is a program that has not received funding for several years. I am very proud to say that our new initiatives will provide critically needed funding to support at least 7,500 homeless veterans.
This bill has also included small and selected increases to address critical and worsening problems with transportation safety. Small increases above the President's budget are provided to hire more air safety inspectors. At present, these inspectors cannot inspect all the maintenance facilities they are responsible for, and we are especially concerned about these facilities that are overseas.
We have also provided small increases for rail safety, highway safety, and pipeline safety. Our subcommittee, in fact, had a special hearing on the rising level of highway fatalities. We have worked to respond to some of the needs that were cited during that hearing.
We have also provided increased funding to enable the Department of Transportation to investigate the growing backlog of customer service complaints by airline passengers.
In summary, this bill rejects reckless and misguided cuts that Republican-led Congresses have also rejected before, cuts that would harm our infrastructure, our communities, and our citizens. It also contains modest targeted increases on programs that are tackling emerging and growing problems, programs that will help our veterans, our safety and our efforts to keep our families in their homes.
In doing all this critical work, this bill does spend more than the President's request. But in that sense, it is no different from the transportation and housing appropriations bills that were passed by the House and Senate when my Republican colleagues across the aisle chaired our committees.
This bill has broad bipartisan support because it takes a practical approach in addressing real needs we found in the transportation and housing sector. I urge all our Senators to support this bill and move us rapidly to final passage.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the second-degree amendment that I sent to the desk further expands the Secretary's collection authority and provides additional funding for the bridge rehabilitation program. I am going to be discussing this amendment in detail later this afternoon after Senator Bond has completed his opening statement.
I would like to thank my colleague, Senator Bond, for his work and his staff's work on this very complex and very important bill. Again, I urge all our colleagues to bring their amendments to the floor. As everyone knows, we are in a very short timeframe this week because of the Jewish holidays. We are going to be working late in getting our amendments done. We encourage everyone to get to the floor. I thank my colleague for his work on the bill.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I associate myself with the remarks my colleague made regarding the HUD tenant-based housing. I will have more to say on that later. I appreciate his comments.
We do have now before the Senate a pending amendment about which I would like to make a few remarks. I am hoping we can set a timetable for a vote on that fairly shortly. I do want my colleagues to know about the amendment now pending.
Less than 6 weeks ago, our entire Nation--really, the entire world--watched in horror as the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, MN, collapsed into the Mississippi River. Given the scope of that disaster, it is miraculous that the fatalities were not greater. Thirteen people lost their lives and over 100 were injured on that horrible day. We are all going to remember the horrendous vision of that yellow schoolbus full of children that came within a few feet of tragedy.
The National Transportation Safety Board is still, of course, conducting its investigation into the exact cause of the bridge collapse, but the horror of that incident has appropriately focused the Nation on whether we are investing adequately in a national highway system that is fragile and aging. The troubling conditions of our Nation's highways and bridges should not have been a surprise to the media or to policymakers. This has not been a story kept under wraps for years. This is not a case where the true conditions were suddenly revealed in a groundbreaking study.
The U.S. Department of Transportation has by law been required to publish regular reports on the conditions and performance of America's highway infrastructure. That report is submitted to Congress and posted on the Web. The DOT's report was used extensively in the debate we had with the Bush administration 4 years ago over the appropriate amount of funding that should be authorized in the highway bill. This report from the DOT is amplified by regular annual report cards published by the American Society of Civil Engineers, along with regular studies by other groups. The difference today is that the nightmare became a reality for the people of Minnesota and Americans across the country as we watched it live on television.
We have built a national highway system that is the envy of the world. But it is now no secret that our Government has failed to adequately fund the maintenance needs of that system. Increasing traffic has put added stress on a system that simply was not designed for it. As a result, our bridges are deteriorating far faster than we can finance their replacement. This is why more than one in every four bridges on U.S. highways is rated as deficient. Put another way, fully 27 percent of our 600,000 bridges have aged so much that their physical condition or their ability to withstand current traffic levels is simply inadequate. Roughly half of these deficient bridges or about 78,000 across the Nation are structurally deficient. That means the Department of Transportation considers the physical condition of these bridges to be poor or worse.
These bridges require immediate attention, and many of them will need to have weight limits to keep them in service. For a portion of these bridges, their physical condition is so bad that they are unsafe and do need to be replaced. The other half of deficient bridges or another 80,000 across the Nation are functionally obsolete. They don't meet today's design standards. They don't conform to today's safety requirements, and they are handling traffic far beyond their original design.
These deficient bridges are not just found off the beaten path, by the way. In fact, over 6,000 bridges considered deficient are located on the National Highway System, the roadway system that is designated as most important to our Nation's economy, defense, and mobility. There are deficient bridges found in every State in the Nation. My home State of Washington has more than 2,300 deficient bridges. But certain of our States are struggling a lot more than others. Iowa has more than 6,600 deficient bridges. Oklahoma has more than 7,400 deficient bridges. Pennsylvania has almost 9,600 deficient bridges. Texas has more than 10,000 deficient bridges. California has more than 7,000 deficient bridges, with more than 2,000 on the National Highway System.
The Department of Transportation evaluated the complete picture across the Nation last year when it published its Conditions and Performance Report for 2006. That report concluded that there is a $65.3 billion backlog of repairs needed on U.S. bridges by all levels of government. Unfortunately, the challenge of addressing this issue comprehensively is going to have to wait for the next highway reauthorization bill. But today I have offered an amendment to this bill that will add $1 billion to the resources available to all 50 States to help address their most critical bridge replacement and repair needs.
This amendment will not bust the budget. It can be accommodated within the budget ceiling that governs our subcommittee bill. It does not bust through that ceiling or through the discretionary spending cap that has been imposed by our budget resolution.
Working with Chairman Byrd and Ranking Member Cochran, our subcommittee was allocated additional outlays that were not used by other subcommittees specifically to accommodate the cost of this amendment I have offered.
My amendment would distribute the $1 billion strictly according to the formula that already exists in the code for the bridge replacement and rehabilitation program. That formula by law takes into account the physical conditions of the bridges in each State, the cost to rehabilitate or replace the deficient bridges, current safety standards and traffic demands, and the role of the bridges in the overall transportation system.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a table displaying the distribution of this funding to all 50 States be printed in the Record.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, consistent with the rules that are already in law for the bridge program, these additional funds we are covering under this amendment will be available to the States for bridge replacement, bridge rehabilitation, preventive maintenance, seismic retrofitting, bridge inspections, and the installation of countermeasures designed to protect bridges and extend their lifespans.
Importantly, my amendment does include one restriction that is not included in current law. My amendment will require the Secretary of Transportation to ensure these additional funds be used to enhance planned expenditures by the States for bridge construction and repair.
Under current highway law, States have the flexibility to use obligational authority for many different uses. States may transfer funding between program activities so they can target Federal funds on their most urgent needs. My amendment would not disturb that flexibility for the over $40 billion we are allocating to the States in regular Federal aid funding. However, my amendment would require the States to use the additional $1 billion we allocate with this amendment solely for their most critical bridge activities.
This amendment is a very measured response to a very big problem. I know our States need even greater resources to address their bridge repair needs, but my amendment will allow for an historic increase in Federal bridge funding--a boost of 25 percent. And it will do so while working within the constraints of our budget resolution.
I urge our Senators to support this amendment. The American people deserve to feel safe on our roads and our bridges. We should be taking every step necessary to ensure they are.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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