Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, the amendment that has just been offered is an amendment the distinguished senior Senator from Utah, Mr. Hatch, and I have worked on for many weeks. It is a bipartisan agreement on emergency transportation funding that the Senate Finance Committee reported virtually unanimously 2 weeks ago.

I urge our colleagues to support this amendment as a replacement for title II of the House legislation. I will briefly describe why.

As the Senate debates transportation funding, it is abundantly clear that all sides agree on the need for a long-term plan to rebuild the Nation's infrastructure. A number of our colleagues, led by Chair Boxer, a number of Republicans, Senator Corker, and Senator Carper have made that point repeatedly, and it is one I share.

We cannot have a big-league economy with little-league transportation, and the chair of the Environment and Public Works committee, Senator Boxer, has consistently been on target, calling for a long-term plan to rebuild the Nation's infrastructure. The reality is that every Member of this body has constituents who are driving on highways full of potholes and ruts, and our citizens end up having to write a big check for car repairs because of it.

The best way to fix America's transportation system is with a long-term plan. The reality, however, is that to get to the long-term plan, what is needed first is a short-term path so we do not have the transportation equivalent of a government shutdown where we don't have the contracts being let and thousands of our people are put out of work, and a big set of economic dominos starts to fall. We need a short-term solution to prevent that from happening. That is what the Senate has before us today under a proposal from the Senate Finance Committee which Senator Hatch and I developed in a bipartisan fashion, working under the regular order. This bill is before the Senate under regular order and it includes with Democratic proposals and Republican proposals. Senator Hatch and I worked with every member of the committee to draft our bill.

The House has offered its own plan, and Senator Hatch and I agreed to incorporate to the greatest extent possible House ideas in drafting our alternative, including adopting a measure of customs user fees and some pension smoothing as revenue sources.

I would like to take a moment early on to highlight three major differences between what the Senate has done and what the House has done because I think they are at the heart of the bipartisan case for passing this amendment.

First, I think the other body simply overuses pension smoothing. I was struck in conversations with Senator Hatch and conversations with colleagues--one of our colleagues said: What is really striking about what the House is talking about today is that instead of having one problem, we would have two. We already know we have a huge challenge in paying for transportation long-term, as Senator Boxer has noted, but if you go with the House approach, it overuses pension smoothing. You are going to have two challenges--one, to pay for transportation, and second, what are you going to do with the hopes and aspirations of all those workers who are depending on their pensions?

The second is the House ignores the whole concept of tax compliance--something else that has had a strong bipartisan tradition here in the Congress. Tax compliance is not increasing taxes. It is not tax hikes. It is not somebody jacking up people's taxes in the dead of night. This is about collecting taxes owed under current law. Let me emphasize that. It is taxes owed under current law. Grover Norquist--somebody who is not exactly soft on taxes, and I probably wouldn't quote him on everything--makes that point as well, agreeing that what is in the Senate finance bill involves collecting taxes that are owed.

Finally, the House bill again ignores some of the important bipartisan legislation that Senator Hatch and I have included on matters that are of great interest to many Senators, including the distinguished President of the Senate.

Our bill promotes natural gas vehicles--natural gas, 50 percent cleaner than the other fossil fuels. Senator Bennet and Senator Burr came together with some very good ideas on that. Senator Isakson and Senator Nelson also came up with an approach to strengthen pensions and how they are accounted for. And I was very pleased that Senator Crapo was very involved with Senator Bennet in improving water transportation--something hugely important for the West, particularly right now when it is so dry back home and in all of the Western States.

So these are major differences between the House and the Senate efforts, and, again, each of those ideas I describe is a sensible, bipartisan approach that comes about because we used our regular order. For example, the Bennet-Burr amendment adjusts tax laws to treat liquid natural gas and diesel fuel on an energy-equivalent basis. That is going to reduce the tax on liquefied natural gas. That is going to help us encourage more use.

What Senator Isakson and Senator Nelson did clarifies pension rules and ensures that workers receive their earned benefits. Many of these individuals took their jobs in their teens and put in three decades of work by their late forties. When I look at what the House did in terms of pension smoothing, this raises real questions in my mind about whether the Congress, without really thinking through an alternative set of pay-fors, is going to cause those young workers additional problems.

Finally, as I have touched on, Senator Crapo and Senator Bennet have done very good work. As we all know--particularly the chairman of the Environmental Public Works Committee--it is dry, dry, dry in the West, and what Senator Crapo and Senator Bennet did was come up with a bipartisan proposal that Senator Hatch and I have included that is going to help deliver water to farmers across the West.

With those bipartisan initiatives, we were able to pick up support from such important groups as America's Natural Gas Alliance, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, and the Western Agriculture and Conservation Association. They know that the only way to advance these important ideas is by adopting the amendment the distinguished Senator from Utah and I have offered.

We have had some talk about how there is just not enough time to send a Senate amendment back to the House. I heard that statement made earlier today. I have made it clear to all concerned and I will state it again: This work is going to be done this week. This is non-negotiable. The Congress is going to get this resolved this week, and in no way, shape, or form are we going to have the transportation equivalent of a government shutdown.

But the idea that the other body says, ``Hey, it is our way or no highway,'' I don't think is a way to advance the kind of bipartisan, bicameral approach that is going to help us deal with the big challenges.

I have already indicated, as Senator Boxer, the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, has said so eloquently, we are going to have to deal with the long term. There are a lot of good ideas for the long term. I think Senator Paul from Kentucky deserves to have his ideas on repatriation addressed. We have a number of colleagues who are interested in the innovative approach used in Virginia. So we are going to have a variety of ideas to look at transportation funding for the long term, but we have to get the short-term patch resolved in order to get to the long term.

That is why I think for the House to just say, Our way or no highway--I think for us to accept it today would simply be to abdicate our responsibilities. I don't think we are sent here to just wring our hands and say, Oh, my goodness, we can't do anything. There is no time.

We are going to get this done this week. I believe the approach we have built in the Finance Committee is a more responsible approach. There certainly is time to compromise. The reality is our staff--and Senator Hatch and I have had a number of conversations with Chairman Camp on this, as I indicated earlier--Senator Hatch and I have agreed to adopt many of the House proposals. There is no reason this body can't quickly come to agreement with the House. The Congress has addressed much bigger pieces of legislation and differences between the Senate and the House on tight timeframes in the past. The reality is the Senate has to act first or we are sending a message--and I will close with this because my colleague from Utah has been very patient and the distinguished chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee has been very patient. If we simply say all we are going to do today is accept this House approach, this ``our way or no highway'' kind of approach, we are going to advance a bill that overuses pension smoothing, and we are going to move away from an approach both political parties have felt very strongly about, which is that tax compliance should be an ongoing part of our work. It should be a part of our work today and it should be part of the bipartisan efforts for tax reform that Senator Hatch and I are pursuing. It is not in the House bill. It is in the Senate bill. We would be walking away from that provision by accepting the House approach, and we also would, as I have indicated, be walking away from bipartisan efforts that are going to promote cleaner natural gas vehicles, bipartisan efforts that will promote water use, and the good work done by Senator Isakson and Senator Nelson on pensions at a time when we are very concerned about their future. We shouldn't do that today.

I am going to yield to my colleagues who have been doing very good work on this issue. I think our plan is now Senator Hatch will make remarks on behalf of the bipartisan efforts in the Finance Committee. Senator Boxer, the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, will speak after Senator Hatch. It is my intention to stay here throughout the afternoon. I think both sides would like to get this done expeditiously, and I hope we can.

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, this debate has shown the urgency of moving on both a short-term patch for funding transportation and a long-term solution. Senator Hatch and I, with the first amendment, offer a bipartisan path forward. We take ideas from the other Chamber. We take ideas from both parties. We take ideas that both sides can build on for the long term, as Chairwoman Boxer has recommended.

There are important differences between the other body and the Senate. The other Chamber overuses pension smoothing. That creates two problems rather than solving one: They ignore the issue of tax compliance. That has always been bipartisan--paying taxes on taxes owed. Not tax hikes, not increases, not jacking revenues through the stratosphere, paying taxes on what is owed.

The other body abandons important bipartisan initiatives, initiatives from Senator Burr and Senator Bennet to promote natural gas vehicles; from Senator Isakson and Senator Nelson to protect earned pension rights; and Senators Bennet and Crapo to make sure we can deliver water to farmers across the Nation. The American Farm Bureau has endorsed this amendment.

The other body is saying: It is our way or no highway. I would ask colleagues, is that what we are sent here to the Senate to do, that we accept every dotted I and every crossed T from the other body and say that is just fine?

Colleagues, we talk about regular order. How is it regular order to be a rubberstamp for the other body?

This is going to be done this week. That is nonnegotiable. This bill will be finished this week. What should be negotiable is that the Senate and the other body should have a chance to work out differences. Working that out is as much a part of regular order as voting on amendments. So let's vote to be the Senate, and not have the other body dictate that it is either their way or no highway.

I urge my colleagues strongly to support the first amendment. It is a bipartisan amendment from Senator Hatch and me. It passed with virtual unanimity in the finance committee.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, as Senator Hatch and I--very briefly--offer a bipartisan amendment, it is a bipartisan amendment based on the ideas from both bodies. It reflects the fact that we have tried to come up with an approach we can finish this week that does not overuse pension smoothing, that ensures we comply with our tax laws, and includes bipartisan initiatives that promote natural gas vehicles, help our farmers, and ensure that earned pension rights are protected.

The other body offers what amounts to our way or no highway. We offer a bipartisan alternative. I hope all of my colleagues will support it. It is the first vote at hand.

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