Opposing the Conference Report to Accompany H.R, 4348

Floor Speech

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I have declined to add my signature to the Conference Report to accompany H.R. 4348, legislation to reauthorize the highway trust fund.

While the highway bill has traditionally been the product of reasonable, bipartisan compromise, the House Republican's version of this year's bill was so extreme the Conference Report was hobbled from the start.

House Republicans took the jobs and economic development promised by this highway bill hostage--with unrelated provisions like the Keystone pipeline as the ransom--and the Senate had no choice but to negotiate with the hostage takers.

Provisions allocating critical conservation funding across the country, through the Land and Water Conservation Fund and a National Endowment for the Oceans, was struck from the Conference Report; only funding for the five Gulf States--Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida and Texas--has survived. That funding will certainly be beneficial but the broader conservation programs should have been included, as well.

The Conference Report also includes provisions prohibiting the National Park Service from complying with the law limiting the impacts of aircraft noise on Grand Canyon National Park. Why we would want to use a transportation bill to make one of the crown jewels of the National Park System louder and dirtier is a mystery.

Most troubling, the Conference Report includes unjustified and harmful provisions which will undermine environmental reviews of highway and transit projects. Republicans have claimed environmental reviews delay highway projects but the facts are that most transportation projects already proceed under expedited environmental reviews and there is no evidence whatsoever that these reviews cause delay.

Nevertheless, the Conference Report includes several broad new categorical exclusions from the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. These new exclusions lack flexibility or adequate standards and will limit public participation and careful consideration of transportation projects that can have devastating impacts on neighborhoods and our natural, cultural and historic resources. In the end, the purpose of these provisions is to speed up highway construction, not by cutting alleged ``red-tape'' but by making it harder for local communities to gather information and have input in projects that may go right through their backyards.

Unbelievably, the Conference Report also includes a radical new idea that agencies should be fined, through rescission of up to 7 percent of their budgets, for missing arbitrary deadlines for environmental reviews. Given that the main reason agencies struggle to complete these reviews quickly is a lack of funding and staff, cutting their budgets as punishment will only make the problem worse.

Inclusion of funding for the Secure Rural Schools and the Payment in Lieu of Taxes programs are positive steps, while removal of divisive, unrelated provisions on coal ash and the Keystone Pipeline are welcome improvements, compared to the House Republican bill.

Finally, the process used to develop this Conference Report was unfortunate. Conferees have been asked to sign an agreement we have had little or no time to review and the substance of the agreement was negotiated largely without input from most conferees.

This Conference Report will harm those living and working near transportation projects in the future and fails to address some of the most pressing conservation needs facing this nation. We can and should do better.

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