Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014

Floor Speech

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, today really demonstrates the House Republican fear of even trying. Their guiding strategic principle in this Congress is to do nothing and to be sure that no one else can do anything; and when they are eventually overwhelmed by a self-created crisis, as they have done with our transportation system, then to do next to nothing.

Bridges can literally fall down, highways crumble, public transportation systems are hobbled, but the House Republicans continue to reject a normal reauthorization of the Transportation Act of the type that, for decades, had broad bipartisan support in this House.

The only thing bipartisan about this last-gasp desperate effort to prevent a stoppage of transportation projects and the various groups that have endorsed it is that, after having had presented as a purported serious proposal by House Republicans that the way to stop the traffic slowdown was to have a mail or postal slowdown to finance it, they see this as a chance finally to at least prevent temporarily a total shutdown of our transportation project system. And so they are going along with it. I am not.

I realize that to have a sound transportation system, you can't do it week to week or month to month. There has to be some long-term planning. These bridges cannot repair themselves. These potholes don't fill themselves. We often hear that freedom is not free. Well, neither are freeways.

We have to have the revenue to have the kind of responsible national transportation system of the type that Dwight Eisenhower once provided the lead on when there was bipartisan support for reasonable public investment. Our competitors understand this. They are out there designing a 21st century transportation system that will be competitive, and we are being left in the potholes.

It is essential that we have a long-term bill, not this type of stopgap measure.

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