Highway Trust Fund

Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, May 31--today is May 12. On May 31, the Federal highway trust fund authorization expires. What it means is at that point in time, the Federal Government will stop sending Federal dollars back to our States to build highways and bridges and support buses and mass transit--May 31.

What are we going to do about it? We have 19 days to do something about it. Sadly, we know what we are going to do about it. The Republicans who control the House and the Senate have failed to come up with any means of extending the highway trust fund. What they are going to do probably is ask us for a short-term extension--1 month, 2 months.

The reason we think this will happen is that in the past 6 years, there have been 32 extensions of the highway trust fund. We used to pass highway trust fund bills to last 6 years, for obvious reasons. You cannot build highways a month at a time. You have to know you have money that is going to be there for years to build a highway, to repair a bridge, to make certain you have new mass transit modernization. But the Republicans have been unable to reauthorize the highway trust fund for any period of time. They want to extend it 30 days at a time, 60 days at a time.

There are some realities that we need to accept. We cannot patch our way to prosperity in America. You cannot fill enough potholes to build a highway. If we are going to accept our responsibility to be a great nation and a great leader in the world economy, we need an infrastructure to support it.

The Republican failure to extend the highway trust fund for 5 or 6 years, sadly, is going to cost us jobs in America--not just good-paying construction jobs but jobs in businesses that count on infrastructure. I have them all over Illinois. There are thousands of workers in Illinois who depend on them. But because the Republicans have failed to come up with an extension of the highway trust fund, we are going to limp along here and, sadly, not meet our national obligation to create an infrastructure to support our economy.

I am hoping that cooler heads will prevail and leadership will prevail, and that the Republican leadership in the House and the Senate--they are in the majority in both Chambers--will step forward with a plan to create a highway trust fund for 6 years. The President has; he put it on the table. Republicans rejected it. They have no alternative--none.

Let's get down to business. Let's put America back to work. Let's create the infrastructure we need to build our economy.

Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democrats have 5 minutes remaining.

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I want to make a statement on Syria and humanitarian concerns in Syria, but it will take longer than that. I know my colleague from Vermont is here, and I would like to yield the remaining 5 minutes.

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