Providing for Consideration of Conference Report on H.R. 2112, Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012

Floor Speech

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Mr. McGOVERN. I thank my ranking member for yielding to me.

Mr. Speaker, there are some good things in this minibus. I'm especially pleased with the funding levels for the SNAP and the WIC programs, which will ensure that hungry people have access to nutritious food during these tough economic times. And I regret very much that those programs were under attack by the Republican majority in this House, but in this minibus, those levels are adequate. And I'll likely support the final passage of this bill.

But, Mr. Speaker, for the life of me, I can't understand why policy riders were allowed to be included in the final bill. Some were even airdropped in the dark of night without being considered by either the House or the Senate. Most troubling, the underlying bill includes a special carve-out for Maine and Vermont to allow 100,000-pound trucks on their interstate highways for the next 20 years.

Mr. Speaker, current law allows only trucks up to 80,000 pounds to travel on interstates--and for good reason. Bigger, heavier trucks are an enormous safety threat. Oversized rigs are more likely to be involved in crashes, not to mention that it's unnerving to see one in your rearview mirror bearing down on you on the highway. And if the safety risks are not convincing enough as to why heavier trucks are a bad idea, consider the economic arguments. We're here talking about deficit reduction, and already bigger trucks don't pay their fair share for the damage they incur on our roads and our bridges. An 80,000-pound truck only pays 80 percent of its damage costs, and a 97,000-pound truck would pay only half of the damage it causes.

Our Nation's infrastructure is crumbling, and the highway trust fund is woefully underfunded. Where are we going to get this money to repair our infrastructure? And the Maine and the Vermont exemptions will only make this problem worse.

And it also starts us down a slippery slope of allowing other States to ask for special weight-limit exemptions. We'll end up with a patchwork of truck-size and truck-weight laws that will make the business of transporting goods by truck across State lines a confusing mess.

Mr. Speaker, there were no hearings--none, zero--no hearings held in the House on the Maine and Vermont exemption. The House didn't even consider a Transportation Appropriations bill. So to be making such a major policy change without thoughtful consideration and vigorous debate is absurd.

I would remind my colleagues that there's bipartisan opposition to increasing truck size and truck weight. I have a bill to freeze truck size and truck weight at 80,000 pounds across the entire national highway system, and it has 60 bipartisan cosponsors. The issue of increasing truck size and weight needs to be fully understood and debated before making any long-term policy changes. I strongly oppose the Maine and Vermont policy rider in this appropriations bill; and I regret very, very much that this was included without the appropriate hearings, without the appropriate oversight, and without doing it out in the open so people could understand what the policy implications are by making this exemption.

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