OFFICIALS LEGISLATION INTEREST GROUPS PUBLIC STATEMENTS COMMITTEES VETOES

Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users

Date: April 2, 2004
Location: Washington, DC
Issues: Transportation


TRANSPORTATION EQUITY ACT: A LEGACY FOR USERS -- (House of Representatives - April 02, 2004)

The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. BROWN of South Carolina). Pursuant to House Resolution 593 and rule XVIII, the Chair declares the House in the Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union for the further consideration of the bill, H.R. 3550.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MARIO DIAZ-BALART of Florida. Mr. Chairman, under today's law, every State, every single State, is guaranteed 90.5 percent of 93 percent of the transportation budget. And the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure who, by the way, has been wonderful to work with, has said that he would like to work to improve that number, that he believes that the donor States should be a little bit improved. But the problem is that the bill that is in front of us today does not improve it. It makes it worse. It is no longer like current law that every State will get 93 percent of the transportation budget. No. Every State goes down to 90 percent of 84 percent of the entire budget.

I am not the smartest guy in the world, but nobody can tell me that 90 percent of 93 is worse than 90 percent of 84. Not even in Washington can we make those numbers make sense. So this is a reality. If we believe that the donor States are paying too much, we should not hurt them worse.

Let us be very clear about what the amendment does. The amendment does not do what all of us want it to do, make it better for the donor States. All the amendment does is keep it to current law so that every single State has exactly the same formula that we are living under today. Is that good enough? I do not think so. But, please, what makes no sense is to hurt every single donor State to provide projects that we keep hearing about of national significance that are not in the bill. It is a theory. It is not real. Those projects are not in the bill. So we do not know what we are buying, but every single donor State knows what it is losing. That is not fair.

arrow_upward