Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am delighted to follow my colleague from Louisiana because I am rising this evening to talk about a bill she has put an enormous amount of effort into, and she has had a very significant role in the success of the bill that I am going to talk about. We have a bill in Congress that is perhaps the most significant jobs bill that will be able to pass in this session. It is described as producing 2.9 million jobs--nearly 3 million jobs.

Rhode Island is a relatively small State, but it means 9,000 jobs in the State of Rhode Island. We have about 60,000 people out of work right now in Rhode Island; 9,000 would take a significant number of those folks and enable them to get to work.

It is a serious jobs bill. It also went through a completely impeccable process in the Senate. It passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee with the strong support of our chairman, Barbara Boxer, and the equally strong support of her ranking member, Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma.

They come from quite different political persuasions, but they were together on this bill and it passed unanimously out of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

It came to the floor. We had a completely open process on the floor. It spent 5 weeks on this floor being discussed, debated, and amended. It was quite thoroughly amended. There were more than 40 amendments that were either voted on or accepted while it was on the floor. So from a process point of view, it was exactly what everybody hopes for in a piece of legislation. It passed out of the Senate with 74 Senators voting for it; a 75th who would have voted for it but had to be away in his home State. So the final tally, in effect, would be 75 to 22--a landslide, bipartisan vote; a jobs bill that passed with an impeccable legislative process and produced a landslide bipartisan bill.

What is that bill? It is the highway bill. It is a bill we have been working on now in Congress since the days of the Federal highway system under President Eisenhower. It is not complicated, everybody understands it, and 3 million jobs depend on its passage.

Unfortunately, it is snarled up, for reasons that are hard to explain, over
in the House of Representatives. The Speaker has not called up this bipartisan, very well regarded Senate bill. It has support outside this institution from everybody from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to the Laborers' International Union. It has environmental support. This is a bill that is not being held up in the House because there is an important interest that was overlooked or that is an adversary to it. It is being held up for, I don't know, I would say Washington insider reasons having to do with the politics of the House of Representatives. So when there are 3 million jobs at stake, that is a real shame.

It started to be noticed by, for instance, the ratings agencies. Standard & Poor's just published on April 2 a report entitled ``Increasingly Unpredictable Federal Funding Could Stall U.S. Transportation Infrastructure Projects.'' When we stall U.S. transportation infrastructure projects, we kill jobs. That is what is happening.

Here is how they describe it: Currently, the surface transportation bill remains mired in uncertainty. Holdups in funding reauthorizations and/or significant cuts in infrastructure programs are delaying some projects and forcing others to be scaled back.

Delaying some projects means taking away jobs. Forcing others to be scaled back means taking away jobs.

Here is what happened, as they describe it: With the March 31 expiration of the highway trust fund looming, Congress passed on March 29--last minute--yet another extension to fund U.S. highway programs. This latest continuing resolution--the ninth--provides funding through June 30, 2012. As construction season begins in the northern half of the country, this continuing uncertainty in funding could force States to delay projects rather than risk funding changes or political gridlock come July.

That is exactly what is happening in Rhode Island and in many other States. I was home over our recess and met with our very capable director of transportation Michael Lewis, who has served under Republican and Independent administrations. He said: SHELDON, I have a list of all the projects we want to get done this summer, in the summer highway construction season. We can't build highways in the winter in Rhode Island and in much of the country so the work has to be done in the summer construction season. He said: Here is my list if we have to live with this extension. If we don't find out until maybe July 4 what kind of money we actually have to build these projects, he said, I can't take chances. I have to start dropping projects off my list. Every one of the projects that falls off his list represents jobs. Every project that falls off his list is an unemployed Rhode Islander. He estimated there would be 1,000 unemployed Rhode Islanders because of this extension to June 30. So when people say: Oh, we have extended the highway program until June 30, don't buy it. That is not a neutral act. That is a harmful act. That costs 100,000 jobs just in Rhode Island. So if it is extended further, the problem gets even worse. We cannot tolerate these continued extensions. We have to get action on a long-term authorization.

To go back to the Standard & Poor's report, here is what they said: Once a long-term reauthorization is approved, we believe it will provide an impetus for transportation agencies to reconsider high-priority projects that had been shelved because of lack of funding.

Those high-priority projects that had been shelved because of lack of funding, when they get taken off the shelf and put into the street, that is jobs. That is why this is a 3-million jobs bill, nearly. But they say, if the authorization is extended by even more continuing resolutions, such high-priority projects will remain in limbo.

I intend to come to the floor as often as I can. I know there are other colleagues who want to come to the floor. We want to come every day. We want to set up a daily drumbeat of attention to the fact that a 3-million jobs bill is being held hostage in the House of Representatives by the Republican Speaker for political Washington insider reasons that have nothing to do with the merits. This is a bill that everybody is for. We will continue to urge the Speaker to take up the bipartisan, fully paid for, widely supported, very well legislated Senate MAP 21 highway bill. Three million jobs depend on it. I am here to urge the Speaker to please do his job.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Gladly.

Ms. LANDRIEU. Did the Senator have an opportunity today--because I had a group from Louisiana in my office on the same subject, and I appreciate the Senator's leadership. The group was the American Engineering Society that was in Washington today. I don't know if the Senator had an opportunity to meet with such a group, but have other groups come by the Senator's office to express, as this group did, their utter frustration with Congress's inability to get such a basic piece of legislation through? Did they tell the Senator the same thing they told me, which is: Senator, when engineers are not working in America, no one is working. We are the ones who are designing the projects to be built. If we are not designing them, they are not going to be built. If we don't get this Transportation bill passed for a longer period of time, we will not be going back to work.

Is that the Senator's understanding when he meets with groups in his office?

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Yes, exactly. I have met with the Rhode Island road builders who are concerned about where the work is going to be and how much of it is going to get done. As I said in my earlier remarks, I met with the State director of transportation. I have met with the mayor of our capital city, which has a very significant highway construction project that needs to get done in that city that would provide an enormous number of jobs in that city at a time when Rhode Island still has over 10 percent unemployment. So we need these jobs.

That project needs to be done. That infrastructure is crumbling. It is a land bridge that goes through the city above other roads. It is I 95. It is our main artery for the entire Northeast, and it is in such poor shape that they have had to put planks across, between the I-beams that hold up the roadway and the planks are there so that the pieces of roadway that are falling in don't land on the cars driving by on the roads underneath. Amtrak, the main rail artery for the Northeast, goes right under the same highway, the same deal. They have the planks up overhead to keep the roadway from falling on the trains below.

So this is an urgent matter. It certainly involves the road construction industry, but it is everybody who wants jobs and economic development that is around this infrastructure. It is the mayors who are concerned about it and, frankly, it is the people who drive over these highways and want to know--these roads are 50 years old. It is time to rebuild. Let's get on with it. This shouldn't be complicated.

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I very much appreciate the tenacity of the Senator from Louisiana on this subject. It is a characteristic of hers, but it is always a good thing to be her teammate and have that tenacity deployed on this side. I am delighted she is here. As Senator Landrieu said, she has bridges that are deficient. One in five Rhode Island bridges is deemed to be structurally deficient. One in five highways is in mediocre condition. This is work that needs to be done. The American Society of Engineers gives our infrastructure on average a D rating. That is the trouble we are in, and we can't sort this out.

I intend to urge as many of my colleagues as I can to come to the floor, and I hope we get the floor covered by some of our colleagues on a literally daily basis until we get this resolved. We need to point out the places where jobs are falling off around the country because this wasn't done, where people are getting laid off around the country because this isn't getting done. There is a direct link between construction jobs not getting put on the list, funds not getting put out for those jobs and folks not getting employed. In this economy, we can't afford that, and we certainly can't afford it for internal insider Washington, DC, reasons.

I thank the Presiding Officer and I yield the floor and I note the absence of a quorum.

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