Transportation Infrastructure
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, for well over a decade we have failed to adequately invest in transportation infrastructure. According to DOT, there is an $808 billion backlog of investment needs on highways and bridges, including $480 billion in critical repair work. Public transit has an $86 billion backlog of critical maintenance and repair needs, which increases by $2.5 billion each year as bus and rail infrastructure ages.
The American Society of Civil Engineers has given U.S. infrastructure an overall grade of D-minus because 54 percent of our major roads are rated poor or mediocre. One out of every four bridges in the United States, or 147,000 bridges, is structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and 45 percent of Americans do not have access to transit.
Federal land management agencies need over $11 billion to address deferred maintenance needs on our roads and bridges. The Federal Highway Administration estimates that the cost of upgrading and repairing our deteriorating bridges is over $106 billion. An investment of $20 billion annually by all levels of government is needed through 2030 to draw down the backlog.
Bringing existing transit assets just up to a state of good repair will require an annualized investment level of $18.5 billion through the year 2030, an amount far in excess of current funding levels. An additional $4.3 billion over current spending levels from all levels of government is needed annually to eliminate the current backlog by 2030.
To accommodate future transit ridership growth and preserve transit systems, as much as $24.5 billion per year would need to be invested compared to only $14.2 billion currently invested, a gap of $10 billion a year.
The cost to our economy of not meeting our infrastructure needs is great. According to the 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers report, 42 percent of America's major urban highways remain congested. Congestion costs commuters $121 billion a year in wasted time and fuel, or an average of $818 per commuter. I would guarantee you each commuter would rather spend the equivalent amount in taxes than waste that money sitting on a clogged highway.
In 2011, congestion caused urban Americans to travel 5.5 billion hours more and to purchase an extra 2.9 billion gallons of unnecessary fuel. Without existing transit services in place in 2011, travelers would have suffered an additional 865 million hours of delays and consumed 450 million more gallons of fuel.
Despite the condition of our infrastructure system caused by years of underinvestment, we are spending way too little today on roads, bridges, transit, and rail. The highway trust fund currently collects about $35 billion per year for the highway account and $5 billion for the transit account. According to CBO, the highway trust fund faces a shortfall of about $170 billion over the next 10 years. By 2020, the highway trust fund's purchasing power will have dropped by nearly half since 1990 because of inflation at a time when the country's population will have increased 30 percent.
We currently spend about $50 billion a year on highways and transit, and most of the recent fights over revenue for the transportation bill have been merely to fill the gap to maintain current funding levels. The discussion should be much broader. It should be about how we can fund the program at a higher level to eliminate the backlog, increase capacity, meet a state of good repair, and eliminate the congestion in this country.
Today, this country spends about 1.7 percent of GDP of the entire economy on infrastructure. We used to spend almost 4 percent on infrastructure. Europe is spending 4 to 5 percent, and China is spending 9 percent. Who do you think, 30 years from now, is going to have a competitive economic system which depends on adequate up-to-date competitive transportation infrastructure and broadband?
In particular, for example, we have been underinvesting in our rail infrastructure as well. The passenger rail system needs at least $52 billion, or $2.5 billion per year for 20 years, just to meet ridership demands such as capacity improvements, such as tunnels to New York and to bring the system into a state of good repair. Of that amount, $21 billion is necessary for the backlog of projects on the Northeast corridor.
The Northeast corridor serves 51 million people and is the major corridor for Amtrak in the country. The $21 billion for the backlog of projects includes $13.8 billion in major infrastructure project backlog and $7.2 billion in basic infrastructure backlog.
Some of these major project needs include $1.5 billion to replace the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel, which dates back to 1873; $950 million to replace the Gunpowder and Bush River Bridges; $850 million to replace the Susquehanna River Bridge; $350 million to replace the Highline Bridge and add a fourth track between Newark and New York; $750 million to replace the Portal Bridge, which can stop the entire Northeast corridor if it should fail; $1 billion for catenary, communication, and signal upgrades and bridge replacements near New Haven; $2.8 billion in upgrades to other movable bridges; $1.8 billion in additional catenary upgrades from Washington, D.C., to New York.
All this is basic backlog, just to make sure that the current system continues to operate and doesn't fail. Additional funding over and above the $21 billion backlog, for a total of $64 billion, is needed for service improvements and projected increases in capacity on the Northeast corridor; yet Amtrak gets just $1.4 billion in the annual appropriations bill--or less than 2 percent of Federal transportation funding.
The Appropriations Committee recommended the other day that this be reduced to $1.1 billion, with a $64 billion backlog.
The fiscal year 2016 transportation appropriations bill, just marked up in committee the day after the accident north of Philadelphia, cuts capital funding for Amtrak by $290 million, providing only $1.1 billion in FY 2016, $1 billion below the President's request.
The President's request for this year's budget includes $5 billion for rail. Half of that is for Amtrak, to bring the system to a state of good repair, including $550 billion for the Northeast corridor.
As we await the results of the full investigation, the tragedy of Amtrak train 188 shows the importance of a reliable rail system to the Northeast region of this country. We cannot continue the decades of neglect that have left our system desperately underfunded and resulted in a multibillion-dollar backlog to bring the system to a state of good repair.
It should not require a tragedy to spur action to address the glaring deficiencies in our transportation and infrastructure network. We should act before accidents occur.
Rail safety is not a luxury; it is of fundamental importance to our citizens and our economy. Thousands of businesses and commuters in the Northeast depend on the rail for commerce and transportation every day. Congress must finally provide the resources necessary for ensuring the safety and reliability of our transportation and infrastructure system.
While this Congress has failed to make transportation funding a priority, the administration has taken the lead and proposed a long-term surface transportation reauthorization bill.
The GROW AMERICA Act provides a total of $478 billion over 6 years, a 45 percent increase for highways, bridges, public transportation, highway safety, and rail programs. It provides $317 billion for programs under the Federal Highway Administration, an increase of 29 percent over current levels. It allocates $18 billion for a new dedicated multimodal freight system. How is our economy supposed to operate without an efficient freight transportation system?
It provides $115 billion for programs under the Federal Transit Administration, an increase of 76 percent over current levels, and significantly boosts New Starts funding.
It provides $28 billion for programs under the Federal Railroad Administration, $6 billion for vehicle safety programs under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, $4.7 billion for truck and bus safety programs, and $16 billion for the Highway Safety Improvement Program.
It provides $7.5 for TIGER grants and $6 billion for TIFIA that could support $60 billion in loans. It provides $3.5 billion to leverage research and innovation to move people.
Several of the members of the Transportation Committee just introduced the GROW AMERICA Act in the House. Not all of us agree with everything in that bill.
For example, the Transportation Committee's Special Panel on Freight, which I was the ranking Democrat on, made several unanimous bipartisan recommendations, including providing dedicated guaranteed funding for projects of national and regional significance. Reauthorizing this program is a top priority for many of us on the committee and should be included in any final bill.
It is important to start moving a long-term bill, where we can have an opportunity to shape these policy provisions, and the GROW AMERICA Act would serve as a good starting point.
The last surface transportation bill, MAP-21, expired last fall. The President first proposed the GROW AMERICA Act last spring to provide an alternative for MAP-21 before it expired.
Unfortunately, we failed to reauthorize MAP-21 on time and passed an extension until the end of this month, to give us more time to work on a long-term bill. We just passed another 2-month extension, the 33rd extension, to take us to the end of July.
We have known for months that this day was coming; yet we have made no progress in finding a solution to funding highways, transit, and other important surface transportation programs.
MAP-21 itself was only a 2-year bill, breaking the tradition of Congress passing 5- or 6-year bills to provide the reliable funding necessary to complete long-term capital plans and projects that require a commitment beyond 1 fiscal year.
The last time we passed a long-term bill was 10 years ago, in 2005, in SAFETEA-LU. That bill was underfunded because of a resistance to raising the gasoline tax and identifying new revenue sources.
House and Senate leadership couldn't come up with the additional $60 billion needed to fill the gap in the highway trust fund just to do a long-term bill at current levels, but this week, they put on the floor a tax extender that will cost $182 billion over 10 years, completely unpaid for.
The priorities of this Congress are completely out of whack. Our infrastructure is crumbling around us, and the majority continues to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, while leaving transportation funding to wither on the vine.
I am concerned we will be back here in July having this same conversation. We must demand now that this Congress spend the next 2 months, once and for all, making transportation funding a priority.
We must realize that what we have based our transportation program on since 1955, the gasoline tax, is a wasting asset. It is down 30 percent since 1993 because of inflation, and every year, we use fewer gallons because of an intelligent policy of energy conservation, of higher mileage per gallon; but that means fewer gallons of gasoline. We must either raise the gasoline tax or bring in a new source of revenue or both.
Finally, let me say that interest rates are at negative rates now. When interest rates are at negative rates, when you can borrow money and pay it back more
cheaply, that is the time to borrow money to invest so that our children inherit not a great debt, but inherit an efficiently functioning economy and an investment in the country that makes the economy function.
We have always known this. The Republican Party and their precursor, the Whigs, have always known this. They were the party in the 19th century of the American systems. What was the American system? Henry Clay's system to invest public funds in internal improvements in roads and canals and bridges and railroads, rather than the European system of letting the private sector do it.
Abraham Lincoln continued that tradition with the transcontinental railroad at a time of civil war, and Dwight Eisenhower did the Interstate Highway System, which we are still living with. These were Republican Party projects. I only wish the Republican Party wasn't completely turning its back on its own heritage.
We have, for the last century, a bipartisan heritage of funding our infrastructure so that the country can grow and the economy can prosper, but the Republican Party seems to have turned this back on this. I urge you to reconsider.
Stop turning your back. Join us in the Democratic Party in continuing our tradition of making this an economy that can function for all our people, where people can move and not waste their time sitting in traffic jams, where goods can move and the economy can function, businesses can flourish. That is what is at stake.
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Mr. NADLER. Well, you have to remember the reason why Amtrak was created in the first place. We didn't have public railroads in the 19th century. We didn't have public railroads in the first half of the 20th century, but by 1960 and 1970, many of the freight railroads were going bankrupt, and certainly, the passenger lines could no longer pay for themselves. They were all going bankrupt.
Congress faced the reality in 1970 that if it didn't create something called Amtrak--it was named Amtrak--but something as a public corporation or publicly funded corporation, there would be no passenger rail in the United States.
The States did the same thing. What became various commuter rail agencies, like MTA in New York or SEPTA in Philadelphia and others, were created out of the bankrupt passenger operations of the private rail lines. No one could make money at it.
Amtrak has survived and has flourished in the sense of attracting more and more passengers, and it now has 77 percent of the market against the airlines in the Northeast corridor; and, thank God, it saves energy and time and congestion, despite the fact that it has been grossly underfunded by Congress.
The only section of Amtrak that makes money is the Northeast corridor from Washington to Boston. It subsidizes everything else. There would be no rail lines outside the Northeast corridor--not to Florida, not to Chicago, not to Denver, not to any place outside the Washington to Boston corridor--if they had to pay for themselves.
We, the Northeast corridor, subsidize the rest of Amtrak. From my point of view as a New Yorker, I would rather that weren't the case; but I am an American. I think everybody ought to have the ability to travel and the ability to have an economy that functions, and so we cross-subsidize.
It would be better if Congress put money in and other sections of the country could become self-sustaining in rail, but the fact is the history is that is very difficult.
I am not aware of any rail system or public transit system in the world that isn't publicly subsidized. We subsidize every transportation system in this country. We subsidize the highway; we subsidize the airlines with the air traffic control, and we do it because we know the country has to move.
If we want an economy that generates goods and services for people, it has to move. Freight has to move. It has to move by rail. It has to move by barge, by boat. We have to invest in it.
If Amtrak stops funding the line to Florida, that line wouldn't exist anymore; everything would be on the road. The roads would be more congested; people would waste more time. The one exception to that right now is the Northeast corridor. We are willing, because we are Americans, to participate in a national system, and the rest of the country should be willing, too.
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Mr. NADLER. You are obviously completely right, and that is why I quoted the figures I did earlier in my remarks.
Prior to 1980, roughly, we used to spend about 4, 4 1/2 percent of GDP on infrastructure. Now, we are spending 1.7 percent of GDP on infrastructure. Of course, we are underinvesting, and our infrastructure is decaying. By infrastructure, I mean roads, highway, bridges, rail, airports, broadband--you name it.
China is spending 9 percent of GDP on infrastructure. We are competing with China. We are competing with other countries. If they can move goods and people more efficiently, that means their economy is going to be more efficient; their economy is going to be more competitive; they are going to be able to sell things more cheaply, generate things more cheaply, and outsell us.
We have to compete in a world economy. We can't be insulated. If we are going to compete in a world economy and have an economy that can generate the jobs, we can only compete if we have a transportation system. We also need an efficient energy system and other things, too, but an efficient transportation system. We are eating our seed corn. We benefited from prior generations' investment, and now, we are not doing that investment.
I hear rhetoric on this floor all the time that we shouldn't leave a debt. We have to have a balanced budget, and we shouldn't leave a debt to our children.
Frankly, I would rather leave a debt to our children if we use that debt to build up the investments in this country so that there are roads for our children to travel on, rails to ride on, airports to land in, schools to attend. That is an investment.
We have to make a distinction. It is one thing to waste money or spend it on something ephemeral. But to invest it so that our children inherit a country with a functioning economy and with assets that we give them that they can use to make a more functioning economy, that is worth it.
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