Restoring Highway Trust Fund Balance

Floor Speech

RESTORING HIGHWAY TRUST FUND BALANCE -- (Senate - September 10, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to talk about the emergency we are facing in the highway trust fund. The highway trust fund is the primary means of funding all of our highway construction and repair projects in every State in this Nation.

Last Friday, President Bush's Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, acknowledged finally what we on this side have been warning about for months: that the highway account of our highway trust fund is broke.

We have been hearing denials of this crisis for some time, but the Bush administration has now finally taken a closer look at the real receipts that are coming in from the Federal gas tax and discovered their estimates have been off by some $3 billion just since May. Now they tell us they are preparing to default on their bills to our States.

Let me make it very clear to everyone how serious the impact could be. If we do not pass the bill that is before the Senate this evening, my Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee is going to be forced to slash money for Federal highway investments in every State across the country, and it is going to cost each of our States tens of millions of dollars in the next month alone.

Not only does this threaten the safety of our Nation's roads and bridges, it could also very easily mean tens of thousands of jobs lost, as the Federal Government defaults on the contracts in every State of our Union.

Now, this nightmare is going to become a reality just as the unemployment rate has reached the highest it has been in nearly 5 years. Our country lost 84,000 jobs in August alone--84,000 jobs--which came on top of job losses in July and June and, in fact, every month of this year.

We know people across this country are hurting. Many are wondering how they are going to be able to pay their bills as the weather now starts to get colder and they have to begin turning on their heat.

If we do not shore up this trust fund, we are going to be forced to halt ongoing highway projects dead in their tracks. That means thousands upon thousands of people who go to work every day in the construction industry in our Nation to build our highways and bridges are going to be told to go home and do not come back to work the next morning.

The urgency of this bill is very critical. We cannot delay it. I hope we can put aside the ideology and partisanship for the evening and everyone can work together for the good of the Nation on this critical issue because we literally cannot afford to wait any longer.

I want to explain the situation so my colleagues understand where we stand this evening. This coming Thursday--that is tomorrow--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--that is a week from tomorrow--reimbursements could drop to as little as 64 percent of the funds that States are due. They simply have to offer the States an IOU for the rest.

In my home State of Washington, 21 percent of the transportation budget is supported by the Federal gas tax. Local agencies spend between $15 million and $30 million per month in Federal dollars. If the Federal Government has to cut back or cut off funds, Washington State will lose between $33 million and $54 million a month over the next 5 months.

That is only one State, one example in this country. In other States, the Federal Government's share is a lot bigger than in Washington State. In fact, at a hearing this morning, the Oklahoma Transportation Director, Gary Ridley, testified to the Senate about the impact it will have in his State. In answer to questions, he said, in Oklahoma, 85 percent of the State's construction program--85 percent--is paid for with Federal funds. He said the kind of crisis we are talking about will have a ``dramatic effect'' on his State's ability to move forward on road construction.

He told us that in Oklahoma they just opened bids on $80 million in highway work, including a $40 million project to replace a bridge in Oklahoma City that has been identified as having numerous safety vulnerabilities. But Mr. Ridley testified this morning he has had to ask his State highway commission to hold off on those contracts. In fact, he said he might even have to stop all right-of-way acquisition and construction projects until we here in Congress find a solution to this trust fund crisis.

So this is a desperate situation in every State across the country. What is most disturbing to me is it is not as though we did not know this was coming. I have been sounding the alarm about the highway trust fund for almost 2 years. My Democratic colleagues and I have warned repeatedly that we face a looming disaster. We have proposed a solution that would enable these funds to stay solvent, so our States are whole, so our construction industry can continue during this construction season to move forward on these critical safety transportation projects. We have made it clear that without action this year, we would face a financial disaster, and that it was coming upon us very fast.

Well, the situation is so serious that after months of blocking our legislative solution, this administration, the Bush administration, did a 180 and is now asking us--in fact, telling us--we have to get a bill on the President's desk by the end of this week. So I am very hopeful this evening we can finally move this bill and provide a solution to our States.

What this bill does is replace $8 billion that was taken out of the highway trust fund back at the end of 1998. This is not a bailout from the general fund of the Treasury. That $8 billion was collected from our gas taxes for the purposes of being deposited into the highway trust fund.

Now, at the time, the trust fund was flush with money and people did not think we needed it. Well, clearly, we need it now. We are proposing to restore that $8 billion that was paid in gas tax receipts to the trust fund, and we are not asking for a penny more.

This is not new to anyone in this body. We have debated this proposal before. I and my ranking member on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Bond, included this proposed transfer in our Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. So it has been a bipartisan effort in our Senate Transportation Subcommittee.

In fact, Democrats also tried to pass this proposal back in June on the FAA bill. We included it in the tax extender package. We tried to pass it as part of the stimulus bill.

Well, we are back this evening. We have another chance. We are working on a bipartisan basis to move this critical bill forward, and I urge my colleagues again to get this done this evening because, as I said, we are going to start seeing severe consequences to this crisis if we do not act and work together on this now.

As I said, this Thursday--tomorrow--could be the last day that our States are fully reimbursed for construction work. So by this time next week, States may have to start doing without. The stakes could not be higher. Mr. President, 84,000 jobs were lost last month. We cannot afford to put another job at risk. But, importantly, these construction contracts are out there and we are in the middle of construction season. Our States need to know we stand by our word and this money is going to go out to them in a timely fashion.

I thank my Democratic colleagues, as well as our Republican colleagues, who have been working with us this evening in a bipartisan way to finally move this bill forward and solve this crisis that is in front of us.

Thank you, Mr. President.

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