Alaska Rural Roads System

Floor Speech

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Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I too wish to address transportation infrastructure. I enjoyed the presentation of my colleague from Alaska. Her State certainly has some unique challenges in terms of creating a way for goods and people to move around the State effectively. I look forward to hearing the details of her amendment when we get to the Transportation bill.

Meanwhile, we are sitting here in this Chamber--both of us--unable to present our amendments before this body because we are not yet on the Transportation bill. Why would that be?

Well, apparently, there are Members of this body who have decided to obstruct the normal ability to assemble the bill that comes from four committees on this floor in order to do nongermane amendments that have nothing to do with transportation and to hold this entire body hostage, to hold hostage those on the left side of the aisle and to hold hostage those on the right side of the aisle, to hold transportation hostage, to hold, if you will, jobs across America hostage. This hostage-taking is just not right. It is just not right that when we should be building infrastructure in America, which is right in the short term for jobs and in the long term for our economy, we are instead sitting here talking about the amendments we would like to offer to make the transportation system work better, to improve upon the bill as it came out of committee.

Now, just to refresh the memories of my colleagues, this Transportation bill has gone through four committees successfully. It has gone through Commerce. It has gone through Finance. It has gone through Banking. It has gone through Environment and Public Works. In the course of that, in two of these committees, the bill was unanimous. And in the other two committees, it was not unanimous, but it was bipartisan. So we have had this bill come to the floor with the support of 85 Senators in the four committees. Yet we cannot get the conversation on the floor started. This is enormously frustrating to everyone across America.

I found it interesting to see this letter from 2 days ago. I thought I would just read it to you. It has a list of about 20 organizations that are appealing for the commonsense deliberation of transportation infrastructure. It is dated February 13, 2012.

It says:

To Members of the United States Senate:

The time is now to pass S. 1813, [the] Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century [bill], the bipartisan highway bill crafted by the Environment and Public Works Committee. Last Thursday, eighty-five Senators voted to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to S. 1813, clearly demonstrating bipartisan support for passing the highway and transit bill. While we are encouraged by this show of support, the undersigned organizations are concerned that progress may be impeded if non-germane amendments are offered as part of the deliberations on this bill.

The organizations that we represent may hold diverse views on social, energy, and fiscal issues, but we are united in our desire to see immediate action on the Senate's bipartisan highway and transit reauthorization measures.

This does come from a broad array of organizations. It comes from the AAA, the American Automobile Association. It comes from the American Association of State Highway and Transit Officials. It comes from the American Bus Association. It comes from the American Concrete Pavement Association. It comes from the American Council of Engineering Companies. It comes from the American Highway Users Alliance. It comes from the American Moving & Storage Association, from the American Public Transportation Association, from the Road and Transportation Builders Association, from the American Society of Civil Engineers, from the American Traffic Safety Services Association, from the American Trucking Associations, from the Associated General Contractors of America, the Associated Equipment Distributors, the Associated Equipment Manufacturers, the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations, the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance, the Governors Highway Safety Association, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, the National Asphalt Pavement Association, the National Association of Development Organizations, the National Construction Alliance II, the National Stone, Sand & Gravel Association, the Portland Cement Association, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

That is an extraordinary array of groups that are saying: Enough with the posturing on social issues. Let's get to work building the infrastructure of America.

Now, one of the amendments a colleague wants us to spend our time on is an amendment that says: If you are the owner of a business, anything you consider to be a health care perspective, you can impose on your employees. There is some interesting humor on this on late-night television.

I believe it was Jon Stewart's show, ``The Daily Show,'' in which he said: You know, in my business, I happen to think that humor is the best medicine. So I am going to impose a health care bill or a health care policy on all the folks who work for me that says, if you get sick, you have to go to a comedian for therapy or you have to read a joke book or something like that.

I mean, this is not a serious amendment, and it is not about highway infrastructure.

While we sit here doing nothing in this Chamber, China is spending 10 percent of its gross domestic product on infrastructure. I had a chance to go to China 14 years ago and then once again last year. In the intervening timespan, they went from a couple ring roads and virtually no connecting roads between major cities to an enormous highway system, an enormous expansion of the infrastructure in major cities, light rail systems, high-speed trains. It was enormously strange to get on a train in Beijing and go at 200 miles per hour to Tianjin. I cannot get on a train here in DC and go 200 miles per hour anywhere. There are vast infrastructure projects across that nation in cities we have never even heard of because they are spending 10 percent of their gross domestic product building the infrastructure that will be the foundation of a future thriving economy.

Europe is spending 5 percent--half of what China is spending but still substantial. What are we spending here in America? And when I ask this question in townhalls, normally folks say 1 percent or maybe they venture 5 percent.

But depending on how you count it, the answer is 2 percent. So it is a fraction of what Europe is spending and one-fifth of what China is spending. Thus, we are barely able to repair the infrastructure we have, let alone build the infrastructure for the economy of tomorrow.
Now here we are, spending our time awaiting the opportunity to have the highway and transit bill here on the floor of the Senate so that we can direct resources to build that infrastructure. But instead of debating, we wait.

So I say to my colleagues across the aisle, who somehow have lost sight of the fact that infrastructure is essential for building America, who have lost sight of the fact that the construction industry is flat on its back and ready to go to work, who have lost sight of the fact that right now with low interest rates and an unemployed construction business this is the best time to be investing in infrastructure, the most cost-effective time to be investing in infrastructure, I say to my colleagues who have lost sight of the fact that there is a responsibility to spend a dollar wisely, in construction and infrastructure, now is the time when you get the biggest bang for the buck, now is the time when it is wise.

This is not just about the infrastructure that makes our economy work better, it is about creating jobs. Maybe some folks in this Chamber say: Well, we want to play politics with jobs. We do not want people to go back to work. We want America to be broken so we can promote our Presidential candidate over someone else's Presidential candidate.

I say that is irresponsible. It is absolutely irresponsible to be playing these political games with the livelihood of working Americans.

The bill that came out of the House or the bill that was proposed in the House was a 35-percent reduction in highway spending, infrastructure spending. What would that mean for my State back home? Well, it would mean projects all over the State that address critical chokepoints in transit and transportation will not get addressed.

I have a 36-county tour. Every year I go and listen to folks in every one of my 36 counties, and I talk, and I have a special meeting with the county and city officials beforehand. Inevitably, they say: Here are our infrastructure challenges. Please go back and fight to do something so that we have the resources to tackle these challenges and make our economy stronger.

So I am here on the floor awaiting the embargo imposed by my colleagues who are not so concerned about infrastructure, who apparently have not talked to their city and county officials who are desperate to take on these chokepoints in their local economy. So I say to them: Stand aside. If you cannot get on board with making America work, stand aside so the rest of us can put America to work.

In Oregon, this is also 7,000 living-wage jobs--the difference between the vision the House had on the other side of this building and the vision the Senate had. The Senate vision is not, quite frankly, that ambitious. The Senate vision simply says that we are going to maintain the fiscal 2011 support for the transportation process, for the transportation infrastructure. It is not building beyond that. It should be, but it is not. So it is a modest vision. But compare it to the vision on the other side of the Capitol and the other side of the aisle which says: Let's not only not spend 2 percent, let's cut the entire budget by one-third--let's put 7,000 people out of work in Oregon who are not only building a foundation for their families, they are building the foundation for the future economy. I know that in every State there are similar portions of workers who want to be at work, getting up with a mission in their life to go out and do something useful for their society, to build something useful, and to have a paycheck to put the foundation under their family.

The time has long passed for us to be fully debating this bill. I urge my colleagues to come and do the work the American citizens expect of us all.

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