Securing American Jobs Through Exports Act of 2012--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, earlier this week, the conference committee on the surface transportation reauthorization--more commonly known as the highway bill--met for its initial meeting. In the opening remarks that were made on Tuesday, it was encouraging that there seemed to be a general agreement on how important that Transportation bill is to our Nation.

As I will describe later, it is 2.9 million jobs that are associated with this bill. I should be specific and say 2.9 million jobs a year, since those jobs do not extend for eternity. But it is the most important piece of jobs legislation we could consider. I appreciated hearing from the Senator from Utah about the jobs concern of his energy proposal. Those are real jobs, they are immediate jobs. They are jobs that everybody understands, building our roads, highways, and bridges.

These local construction jobs are not only important in and of themselves, but they also help to maintain the transportation infrastructure that lowers the cost of goods and helps our economy across the board. We have had to close a bridge where I 95 crosses over the Blackstone River in Pawtucket. It is reopening. In the meantime people have to drive around 295. That costs time and fuel for shippers--and delays. It was an economic cost.

This is the real jobs bill that we can do something about. It is pending right now in conference. So it is imperative not only that the conference get this bill done but that they get it done as soon as possible.

Why do I say that? Well, there was a deadline of March 31 to get a new bill done, and the House of Representatives, unfortunately, did not pass a highway bill by the March 31 deadline. So on the eve of the expiration of that deadline, they passed an extension, and we are operating under that and a subsequent extension right now. The effect of that is not good for jobs. State departments of transportation and the private sector companies that provide the services that rebuild our roads and highways cannot make long-range plans when funding is based on short-term extensions. Particularly in this economy, our States, our counties, and the companies that do this business simply cannot afford to extend themselves on contracts and on work where they do not know that the highway funding is going to be there to backstop them when it comes time to make the payments.

In many instances, for many products, a short-term extension actually requires the underlying construction project to be dropped. In Rhode Island, our State department of transportation, led by transportation director Michael Lewis, who is a very capable and experienced individual, has shown me their list of 96 major projects that they plan to do this year. But because of the uncertainty here on the highway bill, because the conference has not produced a result yet, because we are still operating under the extension, he says that about 40 of those projects may have to be shelved because until we get the bill done, he cannot count on Federal funds being there to help pay for them.

So every day, every week that goes by without a highway bill costs us jobs. It does not just postpone the jobs, it actually costs us jobs. The at-risk projects range from things as simple as lane striping to road repaving to major bridge repairs.

What they all have in common is that each one of those transportation projects means jobs for the construction workers who build them, the engineers who design them, and the companies that supply the materials. It is not just me saying this. Standard & Poor's recently published a report warning us that unpredictable Federal funding could stall our national transportation projects. A quote from the report:

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. Once a long-term authorization 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. But if the authorization is extended by even more continuing resolutions, such high-priority projects will remain in limbo.

As time goes by, jobs evaporate. Continuing delays in transportation funding are putting this year's construction season at risk and are making it impossible for States to keep their construction projects moving. So it is not enough that we pass a highway bill out of this conference; it is imperative that we pass it soon. There have been enough delays already. We were supposed to have had it done on March 31, except that the House never actually passed a highway bill.

The Senate bill, fortunately, provides a solid framework for action, and for rapid action. This Senate transportation bill, called MAP 21, first passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee last year, and it passed out of the Environment and Public Works Committee on a bipartisan basis--indeed on a unanimous basis. There is not a lot that every member of the Environment and Public Works Committee agrees on. There is not a lot, frankly, that our chairman Barbara Boxer and our ranking member Jim Inhofe agree on. But we all agreed that this was an important piece of legislation and reported it out of the committee on a unanimous basis. Then the bill came to the floor. There were no fast tracks, no ``hide the ball.'' This bill spent 5 weeks on the Senate floor. There were a great number of amendments that were considered during that period of deliberation. I believe the total is at 40 which were accepted either by vote or by agreement. And after that long, open, transparent, robust, regular legislative process in which Republicans and Democrats both contributed, the bill passed with strong bipartisan support of 75 Senators. That is pretty unusual around here.

MAP 21 is projected to save or create 1.9 million jobs. As I said, those are not jobs that last for eternity. The conjecture, I believe, is that they last for a year. This is 1.9 million jobs with a potential to create an additional million jobs through the increased investment in the TIFIA financing program, so a total of 2.9 million jobs.

In Rhode Island, that means the bill is expected to save or create up to 9,000 jobs. If its provisions for projects of national and regional significance are incorporated in the final bill, and if funding is provided through our appropriations process, that number actually goes up, because some additional projects can be added that are overdue in Rhode Island for work.

So MAP 21, the Senate highway bill, is a true compromise bill. It reflects the hard work of Chairman Boxer and Senator Inhofe, and it is a strong bipartisan signal from this body as to what our transportation bill should look like. Procedurally, the conference committee is reconciling this Senate bipartisan compromise bill with basically an empty envelope of a bill, a 90-day extension passed by the House, with an authorization to go to conference. Some controversial provisions were thrown in, unfortunately, that

will make things more difficult and slower to get done, and more difficult and slower is not good when you are talking about passing the highway bill and the construction season is already beginning to get underway.

The most acceptable action and the one in the best interests of our country, the one in the best interests of our economy, the one in the best interests of our infrastructure, the one in the best interests of jobs in these construction projects, would be for the conference committee to report out the bipartisan Senate bill without a lot of controversial riders so that we can get a long-term reauthorization signed into law while there is still a full construction season ahead and get hard-working Americans back to work rebuilding--as every American knows we need to do--our Nation's beat-up and decrepit transportation infrastructure.

I am pleased the conference is off to a good start. I am sorry we had to wait this long to get to this point. It would have been nice to have had this done on March 31 when the deadline came. But now that we are here, I urge all of the conferees to come to a quick resolution that honors the extensive bipartisan work that went into the Senate bill which has gotten us to this point.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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