Energy and the Highway Trust Fund
Floor Speech
ENERGY AND THE HIGHWAY TRUST FUND -- (Senate - September 09, 2008)
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California for coming and talking about an absolutely critical issue this Congress should be focused on like a laser beam, and that is the issue of our highway funding for construction projects across this country and the highway trust fund. I and my Democratic colleagues have been telling the Bush administration repeatedly that we face a looming disaster across this Nation. We have proposed a solution that would enable this trust fund to stay solvent. We have warned that without action this year, we are going to face a financial disaster. We warned that it was coming very fast. But, as we have seen with a lot of problems in this country this year, President Bush and our Republican colleagues have, unfortunately, chosen to hide their heads in the sand and just avoid the problem. They told us earlier this year that the trust fund would have more than $3 billion in the bank at the end of this month. They have worked to block our proposed solution.
I rise today because last Friday, President Bush's Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, finally acknowledged what we have been warning about for months now, and that is that the highway account of our highway trust fund is broke. The administration has taken a closer look at the real receipts they are getting in from the Federal gas tax and discovered that their estimates have been off by some $3 billion just since May. The Bush administration is now preparing to default on its bills to every one of our States. Right now, instead of reimbursing our States twice a day, as the Federal Government has always done, Secretary Peters has told the States that they are only going to get paid now once a week. That is happening right now in every State in this country.
This coming Thursday, 2 days from now, may be the last time the Federal Government will be able to reimburse 100 percent of their expenses. The Department of Transportation has told my Transportation and Housing Appropriations Subcommittee that on Thursday, September 18--just 9 days from now--reimbursements could drop to as little as 64 percent of the funds that our States are due. They will have to offer our States an IOU for the rest of that money. The result of the administration's failure to act on this is that we are now faced, in this country, across every single State, with an emergency situation. If we do not pass a solution very fast right here in the Senate, our States, every one of them, are going to be forced to cancel critical highway construction and repair projects that are ongoing right now that ensure our roads and our bridges are safe and secure.
Not only does this threaten the safety of our transportation infrastructure, it could bring about massive layoffs in the construction sector in this country. That is an area of our economy that has suffered one of the biggest hits in recent months, and this is going to have a huge impact across the country.
As we all know, this news is coming just as the unemployment rate has now reached the highest it has been in nearly 5 years. We are talking about a scenario in which ongoing highway projects could be stopped dead in their tracks if we do not take action in the next day or two. Across the country, thousands upon thousands of workers are going to be told to go home and not to come to work the next morning. These are critical safety and congestion relief projects that are ongoing right now across the country, and they could be halted--by the way, right in the heart of the construction season.
Fortunately, we do have a solution. It is ready to go, if only the Republicans would put their partisan ideology aside just for this event and work with us to get this passed. Earlier this year, we proposed returning, as the Senator from California talked about, $8 billion that was taken out of the highway trust fund back in 1998. Contrary to what some people have said about our proposal, it is not a bailout from the general fund of the Treasury. That $8 billion was collected from gas taxes for the purpose of being deposited into the highway trust fund. At the end of 1998, that money was taken from the trust fund because at the time the fund was flush and we didn't think we needed it. We definitely need it now, so we have proposed restoring to the trust fund the $8 billion that was borrowed and not a penny more. All the money that was borrowed, we propose putting it back into the highway trust fund.
This situation is extremely serious. After months of blocking our legislative solution, the Bush administration did a 180 and is now asking all of us please to get this bill on the President's desk by the end of this week. You would think that would be enough for his Republican allies. You would think they would finally see how dire this problem is and work with us to avoid the thousands of layoffs that are coming across the country if we do not act. Instead, last night, as we saw, they blocked our efforts to bring this bill to the floor and get it to the President.
Senator Bond and I--he is my ranking member on the Appropriations Transportation Subcommittee--included this proposed transfer in our Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill this year. Democrats tried to press this proposal in June, in fact, as part of the FAA bill. Democrats included it in the tax extender package. We were blocked. We tried to pass it as part of the stimulus bill. We were blocked. We have seen this blocked by Republicans at every turn as this crisis has gotten larger and larger. Now it is on us.
The final effort we needed was just 60 votes. Do you know how many we got? We got 51. Only 5 Republicans voted to move that bill forward, while 42 Republican Senators voted against it. Now we are here in a crisis mode. But we have another chance, a final chance. The House has passed a similar bill by a 10-to-1 margin. It is not partisan over there. They know the emergency. That bill is here in the Senate. We could pass it by unanimous consent today. But, as we saw last night, Republicans are blocking it.
We literally cannot afford to tread water like this. I came to the floor yesterday to urge my Republican colleagues to see how important this legislation is. We are here again today making the case. I hope our colleagues across the aisle will listen and work with us. The obstruction and failure to take action has now gotten our country into a crisis, and we do not need another one. We have a housing and mortgage crisis. We have an economic crisis. We cannot afford, in this country right now, to have a transportation construction crisis in every one of our cities and communities across the country.
Within just a few days--take note--we are going to be seeing consequences across the country. This Thursday, as I said, could be the last day our States will be fully reimbursed by the Federal Government for the construction work that is ongoing. By this time next week, States are going to have to start doing without.
The stakes could not be higher. Mr. President, 84,000 jobs in this country were lost last month alone. We cannot put another American job at risk, and we cannot afford to play Russian roulette with our country's highway construction effort. That is what is happening right now. We have to act. We need to act now. I plead with our Republican colleagues, put your partisanship aside. When it comes to our country's safety, infrastructure, construction jobs, economy--all at risk--can we take care of that today, please? Can we move forward and fix this emergency that is upon us?
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I share with my colleague from California a real sense of frustration. The people across the country know we are in political season. They understand politics. They understand all of that. But this is beyond politics. This is about severe consequences. I do not understand putting partisan politics, more filibusters, an effort to not let anything happen, on the backs of every single community across this country.
These are specific dollars that go to keeping our construction projects moving along. Now, I get frustrated like everyone in the summer when you come across a project in progress and you have to wait. But I want that construction process done because I know that highway needs to be repaired.
We saw a bridge collapse not that long ago. Not that long ago deaths occurred. A huge community in Minnesota was impacted. That can happen across the country. We are attempting to fix those construction projects and they are going to be halted if we do not fix this trust fund problem.
This has dire consequences.
This is not about politics. It is not about a Presidential election. It is not about who is going to stop what. This is about real consequences in our community, jobs lost in the construction sector to families who will not have a paycheck next month in the middle of an economy that is already struggling.
In some of our States, as we know well, the construction season is short; it ends in a few short months. And those projects, if they are halted now, will not begin again until next March or April. The long-term consequences are real.
Our Governors had better wake up and start calling all of our Republican colleagues. Our community leaders who want these projects completed had better start calling our Republican colleagues. We have a solution in hand. It is easy to do. We can do it today. The President now has turned around, finally, and asked for this solution.
I do not understand why it is being blocked. It makes no sense to me. I can tell you, to those families who wake up 2 weeks from now without a job, and to those families who are trying to drive to get to work and all of a sudden they see a critical construction project stopped in their State, they are going to be asking all of us: What are you doing back there?
I heard Senator McCain say recently: Watch what happens in Congress over the next several weeks. Well, I hope the American people are watching. What we see is obstruction and filibusters with dire consequences. It is going to be felt in every one of our communities if we do not put this aside for once and at least get this highway trust fund fixed.
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Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, the Senator from California and I have been on the Senate floor this morning talking about the dire straits we are in in terms of the construction trust fund, the highway trust fund, that provides the money across the country for construction projects and the fact that within a few short days our States are not going to be getting the checks they need to pay for those construction projects, resulting in layoffs across this country and construction projects literally coming to a halt very quickly.
We are going to offer a unanimous consent request to bring up that bill again and pass it and get it to the President, as he requested. We understand, unfortunately, now there is an objection on the Republican side, and we will not be able to do this request at this time. I respect our Republicans' request to be able to discuss this issue at their weekly meeting they are going to be having shortly to determine how to move forward. But I want everyone on notice this is a critical issue, it is not going to go away, and we are going to be asking again this afternoon to move this legislation forward because we believe we have a responsibility as leaders in this country to get this trust fund emergency problem fixed and moving. We hope our Republican colleagues, upon reflection, will join us and we can quietly pass this legislation this afternoon and move on to other major issues of the day.
But to me this is the most important critical issue facing us right now in the Senate, and I hope we can move it this afternoon.
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