Repealing Health Care

Floor Speech

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Mr. COURTNEY. Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth, and I appreciate the fact that you are putting the spotlight on this issue which is really extraordinary in terms of what's just happened in the last 24 hours.

As you know and as Congresswoman Edwards knows, the real workhorse infrastructure transportation funding in this country is the highway trust fund. That is a mechanism which was set up by the Congress. It has a dedicated revenue source, gas taxes, and since 1998, there has been a rule which the Congress has operated under which says that the 5-year transportation plan authorized by the Congress cannot be tampered with by a bill that's brought to floor of the House. If it is, then that bill is ruled out of order. And the purpose of that is to make sure that the transportation plan, which is done on a 5-year increment, has sanctity, has consistency so that State DOT's like yours in Kentucky or Maryland or Connecticut can actually move forward on multiyear projects which, of course, most road construction, bridge construction falls into that timeline.

Well, you know, this has been the operating rules of the House since 1998. Yesterday, the Republican rule which was adopted astonishingly rescinded that protection in terms of procedure for the transportation trust fund, again, the mechanism which ensures that States get appropriate funding for highways.

So a coalition grew up over the last 3 days, including Laborers' International Union, Ironworkers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Trucking Association, the Motorcycle Riders of America, people who actually care about making sure that our roads and bridges have the adequate support to make sure that, again, as a growing country we are going to be able to move people and goods from one place to the other in appropriate fashion.

By the way, our competitors around the world are moving past us at Mach speed in terms of their transportation infrastructure investment.

Nonetheless, this coalition warned the new majority that this new rule was going to upset, again, the consistency which transportation funding requires. The new majority went ahead with that rule, adopted it, claims that they, in fact, were not doing that to the transportation trust fund, but interestingly, the markets say otherwise.

UBS-PaineWebber issued a downgrade to transportation construction companies on the Wall Street stock exchanges, and their stocks declined yesterday in the wake of the adoption of this rule. And again I, earlier today, submitted press accounts that describe, in fact, the sequence of what actually happened.

We are talking here about a sector of the U.S. economy that's not in a recession; it's in a depression. The construction trades right now are looking at unemployment rates of 25 percent. Rather than shrinking and inhibiting the transportation and infrastructure of this country, we should be investing in it. And let's be very clear here. There is not going to be any private investment that's going to fill the gap that's being created by undercutting the sanctity of the highway trust fund.

The fact of the matter is this is done through public dollars, and every generation going back to, really, Jefferson has understood that this is essential to have an economy that can actually thrive and grow. And as I said, we have now left the highway funding of this country subject to the whims of the annual appropriations process. That is not the type of horizon in which planning can actually take place at State DOTs, and it doesn't surprise me that the folks in Kentucky have contacted you. The people at DOT in Connecticut have certainly done the same, and all across the country. Again, management, labor, public sector groups that care about highways, they are just incredulous, particularly at this time with the weakness of this economy, that this House has adopted that type of rule.

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Mr. COURTNEY. That's right. And families make that decision to make capital investments along exactly the same lines, whether it's to fix a roof, you know, put a new driveway in, buy a house. Again, that's done through financing, debt financing. And it's, again, the way that particularly the middle class kind of deals with those challenges. But there's no question that in terms of our own country's history, going back in time, again, even to the beginning of our government, even during the Civil War when the finances of this country were completely going from almost day to day, Abraham Lincoln did not pull back in terms of the need for us to invest in rail, land-grant colleges.

Again, this was in the middle of the worst conflict in the history of this country, but yet he still saw the need for us, as a Nation, to still continue to invest in the future, and we borrowed funds. Because those types of investments, investing in people through education or investing in infrastructure comes back to benefit the economy long term, and the multiplier effect is much higher than the actual pricetag of those initial investments.

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