Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2014

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. COONS. Madam President, President Barack Obama today is in the Midwest talking to folks about how important it is that Congress return its focus to our Nation's economic recovery. I couldn't agree more. Flustered by filibusters and paralyzed by politics, Washington has gotten off track, and it is time that changes.

The Senate this week has an opportunity to pass an appropriations bill. I am grateful for the leadership of Senator Murray of Washington and ranking member Senator Collins of Maine in bringing this appropriations bill to the floor. I am still fairly new here, relatively speaking, but I am told it wasn't an unusual or shocking occurrence back in the day for the two parties to come together to negotiate and pass a bipartisan spending bill.

The bill in front of us would fund the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. While I think to most people these agencies aren't especially related to their daily lives, both are actually fundamentally about investing in our Nation and its critical infrastructure--the roads we drive on, the homes we live in, the trains and planes we ride on, the ports our goods are shipped through. This bill is about infrastructure. We know that when we invest in America's infrastructure, we are actually investing in America's communities and in America's future.

This bill is about building the infrastructure for the long-term strength and stability of our communities and our country, and it is about putting Americans back to work. This bill will put Americans back to work on a wide range of major transportation projects in communities across our country. The programs in this bill have meant an enormous amount to my home State of Delaware, as I know they have to the Presiding Officer's. They can continue to have an important, positive impact on communities across our country, but only if we can come together to fund them.

The so-called TIGER grants program helps States and local governments pay for new highways and bridges, public transit projects, railways and port infrastructure. It is a competitive, highly sought-after program. For the current fiscal year, the Department of Transportation received nearly 600 applications from across all 50 States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa--$9 billion in requests for just $470 million in available funds. That competition helped focus these resources where they were best leveraged and where they would have the best impact. In my view, our communities need these funds, and they need this bill to make possible this program.

TIGER grants in Delaware made possible the building of the Newark Regional Transportation Center, which will support 350 high-skilled, high-wage construction jobs a year while it is being built. This new center will give folks in New Castle County new options for public transportation, cutting down on the number of cars on I-95 and our local roads, and strengthening the community.

TIGER grants are a core part of our Nation's infrastructure strategy, and they will be at risk if we don't move this bill forward.

The new Bridges in the Critical Corridors Program is another significant part of our infrastructure strategy, and I commend Senator Murray for her efforts to ensure that our Nation's bridges are safe. At home in Delaware, one out of five bridges is deemed structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Let me repeat that. One out of five bridges in my little home State of Delaware is structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. They may have major defects and need major repairs or may have been built so long ago that they are not up to current code. Either way, I think we would agree that this Nation, our constituents, our communities need our bridges to work, and work safely.

We also need and rely on our highways. The Federal-Aid Highway Program uses the highway trust fund to help States and local governments to help plan, build, and repair our Nation's needed roadways. It is a true Federal-State-local partnership and has helped ensure consistent quality and safety standards on highways across our country for nearly a century.

I shouldn't have to explain to this body why having functional roads is important to businesses, to families, or even to the public's safety, but I will say this: There are more vehicles on the roads year over year than ever before. Part of our responsibility is to make sure those roads work--and work safely. Another part is to offer our citizens other options to reduce the traffic burden on those roads.

This bill also contains two new programs to do just that, that I think are worth highlighting. The New Starts Transit Program supports projects to provide new or expanded public transportation services. The passenger rail grants, of particular interest to me, are focused more narrowly on intercity passenger rail services designed to reduce traffic congestion.

How are we going to move this country forward if we can't move around within this country? As a Congress, we have to do more to strengthen our Nation's infrastructure, and that is a big part of what this bill does.

I recently joined the Appropriations Committee after the passing of a great senior Senator--Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey--who was for many years a great and tireless champion of Amtrak. He fought harder than anybody to build Amtrak into what it is today because he saw that with our population steadily growing we needed to be prepared to provide reliable, safe, affordable transportation, in particular here in the eastern region.

At his funeral, Vice President Biden said that, ``If it wasn't for Frank, Amtrak wouldn't be what it is today.'' He is right. And, of course, our Vice President famously rode Amtrak down to Washington every morning and home to Delaware every night that he served as a Senator, as I do now. I took the 6:25 down, and I hope, God willing, to be on the 7:00 home. We will see.

Amtrak, in this region in particular, isn't a luxury, it is a fundamental and critical part of the economy, not just in my home State of Delaware and at least a dozen States on the Atlantic seaboard but across the country for communities that rely on passenger rail to connect with the Nation's major economic centers.

Senator Lautenberg once said,

If we shut down the Northeast Corridor rail service, you'd have to build seven new lanes on Interstate 95 just to carry all the travelers that use these trains every day.

In the last fiscal year, Amtrak achieved a new milestone of 31.2 million riders. In fact, they had record ridership 9 out of the last 10 years, and Amtrak continues to make steady progress in reliability, capacity, and on-time performance. How could we possibly afford to replace this vital service with, as Senator Lautenberg suggested, seven new lanes of interstate running up the entire length of the east coast?

Now is not the time, in my view, given all these standards of progress that they have met, to gut

Amtrak, as our counterparts in the House seem determined to do. Now is the time to help Amtrak build on its steady gains and progress and continue to grow. Amtrak is a vital part of dozens, even hundreds, of communities across this country. So in my view, to invest in Amtrak is to invest in those communities and their future.

The other major portion of this bill that we consider today is housing, the transportation and housing appropriations bill. As our economy continues to recover, people in communities all across our country are looking to us to help them grow. Housing infrastructure is just as important a part of the foundation of our country and our communities as is transportation. In low-income neighborhoods, restoring community infrastructure is the foundation for future economic growth. That is why this bill's strong investment in the Community Development Block Grant Program, one of HUD's longest running and in many ways most successful programs, is so critical.

As the Presiding Officer knows, I served as a county executive before joining the Senate. In that role, our local government made efficient, focused, targeted use of CDB grants to provide for housing assistance for low-income seniors, for the disabled, for communities across our country in New Castle County, DE.

CDB grants are high-yield investments that work all over this country, that are controlled in many ways at the local level, and that enable communities to rehabilitate buildings, streets, and sewer systems that literally lay the groundwork for new business growth and vibrant revitalized communities. As the hardest hit Americans work tirelessly to get back to work and back on their feet, housing programs, also included in this vital bill, ensure they can keep a roof over their heads or that they have the possibility of safe, clean, sanitary, affordable housing in their future.

In Delaware, nearly 4,000 people were homeless in our small State at least once last year, and more than 200 of them were veterans. All over this country, I know many of our colleagues are concerned about the number of our veterans who fought for us overseas and now face and endure homelessness here at home. For those who felt the despair and loss and loneliness of homelessness, those who lived with this fear that they will one day experience it as well, the housing programs funded in this bill are a lifeline. I want to particularly thank Senator Murray for her leadership on ensuring that we end the scourge of veteran homelessness in our country.

Homeless assistance grants, another key provision in this bill, help Delaware organizations, and organizations all over this country, to offer permanent and transitional housing to once-homeless persons, while providing services including job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, and childcare.

And last, the HOME Investment Partnerships Program helps to expand the supply and affordability of housing to low-income families and individuals, many of whom are elderly or disabled. In my home State of Delaware, a recent grant from the Project Rental Assistance Demonstration Program will create and sustain 170 units of affordable housing over 5 years for persons with disabilities.

For millions of Americans and for thousands of Delaware families, the key to a better home lies in good counseling, in home ownership, and in these sorts of investments in a stable, affordable housing market.

Elisa, one of my constituents from Middletown, did not believe she would ever be able to purchase a home for herself and two children, but a federally funded class called Preparing for Home Ownership helped her navigate the housing market and find a home that she could afford. She is now spending less on her three-bedroom home than she had on her two-bedroom rental, and her children have a backyard of their own for the first time.

If we want families to succeed, if we want children to focus in school, if we want to create communities with safety and stability, moving toward sustainable home ownership is a vital investment by this country in creating and sustaining quality communities.

Dedicated organizations, such as NCALL and Interfaith Community Housing of Delaware, have leveraged Federal funding such as this to help with mortgages, loan modifications, and private capital to help put more than 1,000 families each year in Delaware into better housing. Their services include workshops, foreclosure prevention services, and counseling.

Another constituent who contacted me, Eva from Rehoboth, was in danger of losing her home when she met with a foreclosure prevention counselor to discuss her personal situation. A counselor helped her to develop a plan to stabilize her finances and to modify her mortgage into a more affordable interest rate. Because of a counseling program funded by this bill, Eva avoided foreclosure and was able to save her home.

The National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program, administered through NeighborWorks, has helped hundreds of households in Delaware to avoid the pain, loss, and dislocation of foreclosure. Last year, counselors from NCALL, First State, and YWCA conducted more than 5,000 home ownership counseling and education activities, including one-on-one counseling appointments, workshops, and homebuyer fairs. Funding from this program will allow them to reach even more Delawareans in need in the year ahead.

We may have made some progress as a Chamber last week in getting through the executive branch nominations that had been the subject of a number of filibusters and quite a bit of contention, and I was pleased that this bill earned six Republican votes in the Appropriations Committee when taken up and considered. Surely it can earn enough votes in this full Senate to move forward to debate, to consideration, and, I hope, to final passage. It is the challenge of this Chamber to listen to each other, to work together, and to provide the vital investments in infrastructure and in housing that ensure a steady recovery and a brighter future.

Senator Lautenberg once said that his career in business taught him that if you want to be successful tomorrow, you have to lay the foundation today. That is exactly what this bill does. That is what we are voting on--the foundation of tomorrow's success for America's families and communities.

I earnestly hope we will come together to pass this bill, to create jobs, and to invest in our country's future.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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