To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to restore the Highway Trust Fund balance.

Mr. President, I come to the floor this evening to talk about the emergency we are facing in the highway trust fund. The highway trust fund is the primary means of funding all of our highway construction and repair projects in every State in this Nation.

Last Friday, President Bush's Transportation Secretary, Mary Peters, acknowledged finally what we on this side have been warning about for months: that the highway account of our highway trust fund is broke.

We have been hearing denials of this crisis for some time, but the Bush administration has now finally taken a closer look at the real receipts that are coming in from the Federal gas tax and discovered their estimates have been off by some $3 billion just since May. Now they tell us they are preparing to default on their bills to our States.

Let me make it very clear to everyone how serious the impact could be. If we do not pass the bill that is before the Senate this evening, my Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee is going to be forced to slash money for Federal highway investments in every State across the country, and it is going to cost each of our States tens of millions of dollars in the next month alone.

Not only does this threaten the safety of our Nation's roads and bridges, it could also very easily mean tens of thousands of jobs lost, as the Federal Government defaults on the contracts in every State of our Union.

Now, this nightmare is going to become a reality just as the unemployment rate has reached the highest it has been in nearly 5 years. Our country lost 84,000 jobs in August alone--84,000 jobs--which came on top of job losses in July and June and, in fact, every month of this year.

We know people across this country are hurting. Many are wondering how they are going to be able to pay their bills as the weather now starts to get colder and they have to begin turning on their heat.

If we do not shore up this trust fund, we are going to be forced to halt ongoing highway projects dead in their tracks. That means thousands upon thousands of people who go to work every day in the construction industry in our Nation to build our highways and bridges are going to be told to go home and do not come back to work the next morning.

The urgency of this bill is very critical. We cannot delay it. I hope we can put aside the ideology and partisanship for the evening and everyone can work together for the good of the Nation on this critical issue because we literally cannot afford to wait any longer.

I want to explain the situation so my colleagues understand where we stand this evening. This coming Thursday--that is tomorrow--may be the last time the Federal Government will be able to reimburse 100 percent of their expenses. The Department of Transportation has told my Transportation and Housing Appropriations Subcommittee that on Thursday, September 18--that is a week from tomorrow--reimbursements could drop to as little as 64 percent of the funds that States are due. They simply have to offer the States an IOU for the rest.

In my home State of Washington, 21 percent of the transportation budget is supported by the Federal gas tax. Local agencies spend between $15 million and $30 million per month in Federal dollars. If the Federal Government has to cut back or cut off funds, Washington State will lose between $33 million and $54 million a month over the next 5 months.

That is only one State, one example in this country. In other States, the Federal Government's share is a lot bigger than in Washington State. In fact, at a hearing this morning, the Oklahoma Transportation Director, Gary Ridley, testified to the Senate about the impact it will have in his State. In answer to questions, he said, in Oklahoma, 85 percent of the State's construction program--85 percent--is paid for with Federal funds. He said the kind of crisis we are talking about will have a ``dramatic effect'' on his State's ability to move forward on road construction.

He told us that in Oklahoma they just opened bids on $80 million in highway work, including a $40 million project to replace a bridge in Oklahoma City that has been identified as having numerous safety vulnerabilities. But Mr. Ridley testified this morning he has had to ask his State highway commission to hold off on those contracts. In fact, he said he might even have to stop all right-of-way acquisition and construction projects until we here in Congress find a solution to this trust fund crisis.

So this is a desperate situation in every State across the country. What is most disturbing to me is it is not as though we did not know this was coming. I have been sounding the alarm about the highway trust fund for almost 2 years. My Democratic colleagues and I have warned repeatedly that we face a looming disaster. We have proposed a solution that would enable these funds to stay solvent, so our States are whole, so our construction industry can continue during this construction season to move forward on these critical safety transportation projects. We have made it clear that

without action this year, we would face a financial disaster, and that it was coming upon us very fast.

Well, the situation is so serious that after months of blocking our legislative solution, this administration, the Bush administration, did a 180 and is now asking us--in fact, telling us--we have to get a bill on the President's desk by the end of this week. So I am very hopeful this evening we can finally move this bill and provide a solution to our States.

What this bill does is replace $8 billion that was taken out of the highway trust fund back at the end of 1998. This is not a bailout from the general fund of the Treasury. That $8 billion was collected from our gas taxes for the purposes of being deposited into the highway trust fund.

Now, at the time, the trust fund was flush with money and people did not think we needed it. Well, clearly, we need it now. We are proposing to restore that $8 billion that was paid in gas tax receipts to the trust fund, and we are not asking for a penny more.

This is not new to anyone in this body. We have debated this proposal before. I and my ranking member on the Transportation Appropriations Subcommittee, Senator Bond, included this proposed transfer in our Transportation, Housing and Urban Development appropriations bill. So it has been a bipartisan effort in our Senate Transportation Subcommittee.

In fact, Democrats also tried to pass this proposal back in June on the FAA bill. We included it in the tax extender package. We tried to pass it as part of the stimulus bill.

Well, we are back this evening. We have another chance. We are working on a bipartisan basis to move this critical bill forward, and I urge my colleagues again to get this done this evening because, as I said, we are going to start seeing severe consequences to this crisis if we do not act and work together on this now.

As I said, this Thursday--tomorrow--could be the last day that our States are fully reimbursed for construction work. So by this time next week, States may have to start doing without. The stakes could not be higher. Mr. President, 84,000 jobs were lost last month. We cannot afford to put another job at risk. But, importantly, these construction contracts are out there and we are in the middle of construction season. Our States need to know we stand by our word and this money is going to go out to them in a timely fashion.

I thank my Democratic colleagues, as well as our Republican colleagues, who have been working with us this evening in a bipartisan way to finally move this bill forward and solve this crisis that is in front of us.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. President, I would request I be notified when I have used 12 minutes.

Mr. President, I wish to join my colleague from New Hampshire in raising some alarm--not intemperate, not hysterical alarm, but alarm nonetheless--about the recent reports that the Federal deficit has now risen in excess of $400 billion. Of course, what that means is that the Federal Government continues to spend money it does not have, and I think the American people are rightfully concerned that we are on a course of significant fiscal irresponsibility for which a tremendous price is going to be paid by our children and grandchildren.

The Senator from New Hampshire mentioned the fact that here we are in September, and this Congress, under the Democratic control conferred upon them in the last election, has yet to pass a single appropriations bill. I know that in the blame game--which in Washington, DC, is a world-class sport--our colleagues on the other side of the aisle like to point to the President of the United States as the person responsible for the high budget deficit. But the fact is that the President can't appropriate a penny of money. The President does not have that authority under the Constitution of the United States. Only Congress can appropriate money, and Congress is the one that should bear the responsibility for this tremendous state of fiscal neglect and irresponsibility that brings us here today.

We also know that in this election season, Senator Obama, our colleague from Illinois, has already proposed $350 billion in new Federal spending. The $400 billion deficit apparently is not enough to satisfy Senator Obama. He wants to spend $350 billion more in new spending. And these are not on existing spending programs, this is new spending. Over 5 years, his proposals would cost almost $1.7 trillion. Well, I have to tell you that in the 5 weeks I was back in Texas traveling the State and listening to my constituents, the last thing that was on their to-do list for us here in Congress was to come up with new ways to spend their money. What they wanted was for Congress to accept the responsibility that goes along with the privilege of holding the offices we hold and to actually do something about the problems that confront our Nation when it comes to fiscal irresponsibility.

It is a troubling sign that our deficit has ballooned from $161 billion to more than $400 billion. Yet what do we find out yesterday or the day before but that the Federal Government is now going to have to take over, in essence, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. This move could potentially cost taxpayers as much as $200 billion more on top of the $400 billion deficit.

Since the 2006 election, Democrats have been in control. And this year alone, spending has increased by 8.3 percent. Now, I don't know any business, I don't know any family who increased their spending 8.3 percent from last year to this year. Only the Federal Government-- which, of course, prints money, which is then added to the deficit and the bill passed on to our children and grandchildren--only the Federal Government could get away with that.

Regarding the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle, no one actually knows how much this bailout is going to cost the American taxpayer. I have very serious concerns whether the poor investment decisions of the CEOs and the shareholders should be guaranteed by the paychecks of taxpayers.

As a matter of fact, I think they should not be. While they were granted a backstop against catastrophic losses, certainly the taxpayers were not there to share in the profit during the heyday of those Government-sponsored enterprises. And the most disturbing to me is that the collapse of Fannie and Freddie was, in all likelihood, contributed to by corrupt actions of its corporate officers.

As a matter of fact, in May of 2006, a report by Fannie Mae's oversight authority, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, noted that:

By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting

to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized bonuses

and the executive compensation they received at the expense

of shareholders.

Now, there was an investigation into these corrupt practices. But, amazingly enough, there were no criminal charges pursued, only civil fines against the top three corporate officers. So while three corporate officers overstated Fannie Mae's earnings by approximately $10.6 billion, they have been given a slap on the wrist and no real sense of accountability, no accountability in any sense of the word.

We know they contributed to what ultimately happened by the

Treasury Secretary using the power Congress conferred in him

to essentially take over and bail out these two enterprises.

I have written a letter to the Attorney General of the United States asking him to conduct a criminal investigation into the activities of the corporate officers and anyone else who may have contributed to the overstatement of assets on the books of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to make sure a thorough criminal investigation is undertaken and that those responsible for violating any of the criminal laws of the United States be held accountable.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter to the Attorney General be printed in the Record after my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Nelson of Nebraska.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

(See exhibit 1.)

What the American people want in Washington is accountability. And what they see is dysfunction and no accountability. If there is one thing I heard from my constituents in Texas as I was there during the month of August is that no one is happy with what is happening in Washington, in Congress in particular, not Democrats, not Republicans, and certainly not me.

I think to see, for example, a $400-billion-plus deficit, a bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that is going to cost probably somewhere on the order of $200 billion, and then to hear Speaker Pelosi in the other body talk about a second stimulus bill which is going to, of course, increase Government spending, spending money we do not have and pass that debt along to our children and grandchildren, I wonder whether Congress has lost leave of its senses entirely, because there seems to be absolutely no recognition of our fiscal responsibility here. I point to the fact that there has actually been an effort to try to figure out how to eliminate wasteful spending projects. The Office of Management and Budget has done a review of about 1,000 Government programs and actually concluded that about 22 percent of them were either ineffective or else they could not tell whether they were effective.

In other words, out of 1,000 Government programs chosen by the Office of Management and Budget, 22 percent were either found ineffective or else it was impossible to say whether they were effective. I do not know which is worse, whether they are ineffective or whether you do not have the information to tell one way or the other.

What Congress needs to do as it sets about spending more money is not grow the size of Government and raise taxes or else pass the bills down to our children and grandchildren, Congress needs to start cutting ineffective programs. That is why I have introduced a bill that would create a sunset commission like the sunset commission in many States, including mine, which would actually periodically review Federal Government agencies and programs and cut wasteful or ineffective programs.

That is the kind of commonsense, practical, bipartisan solution the American people are crying out for, but apparently in vain, because Congress persists down this road of fiscal irresponsibility, and there is no apparent end in sight.

Mr. President, how much time remains on our side?

I thank the Chair.

Mr. President, I am here to talk about the need to replenish the funds in the highway trust fund. I have to tell you, I have visited our State, and you know that about a year ago a bridge just fell down in the middle of the Mississippi River. I was thinking as I listened to the Senator from Oklahoma talk about the promises that we make to our children, that we make to future generations. I think the people of this country think we made a promise to them that we are going to have safe roads and safe bridges. We didn't keep up that promise to the 13 people who died that day when they plummeted into the Mississippi River. We didn't keep the promise to the hundreds of people who were injured in all the cars that went crashing down on an eight-lane highway in the middle of the Mississippi River six blocks from my house. We need to keep that promise.

When you look at the history of the highway trust fund, it was raided once before, many years before I came to Congress, by the exact amount of money. I believe it was something like $8 billion. It was raided of that money, and it was taken out of the fund and put into the general fund.

What we are doing today, at the request of the Bush administration, is taking that money from the general fund and putting it back into the highway trust fund because we have a promise for public safety to the people of this country.

My colleagues have been talking about priorities. I think there has been an issue of priorities. I would like to pay for some of the things that are going on in this country when we see that deficit. I can tell you how I would do it, how I would pay for that deficit. I would start bringing our troops home from Iraq. That is $10 billion a month.

It is ironic--that figure--because Senator Inhofe was at the hearing we had in the Environment and Public Works Committee about bridges and about the expenditures on bridges and trying to keep bridges safe, with Congressman Oberstar and others. One of the witnesses told us that it would be about $10 billion a year to start bringing up our bridges to safety over the next few years. I thought that is exactly the amount of money we are spending per month in Iraq. So that is one way we can get the money if we really wanted to and if some of my friends on the other side would have the will to want to pay for this important infrastructure investment.

Another is to close the loopholes that have allowed people to store money in the Cayman Islands and hide their money. Another is to change the capital gains rate. Another is to roll back tax cuts on the wealthiest people, couples making over $250,000 a year and individuals making over $200,000 a year. That would bring in between $50 billion and $60 billion a year.

I don't have trouble trying too find money to pay for this. We have been unable to get our friends on the other side--whether it is the AMT fix or any other tax fixes for the middle class, we have been unable to get them to pay for this. We are left where we are now with a request from the administration to pay for this from the general fund so we don't have contractors or people out of work who are supposedly working on construction projects. This means something to me because I see it every day. That bridge is going up and it is going to be opening on Monday. It is kind of ironic to me that we are debating whether we are going to replenish our Nation's highways--when everybody is giving glorious speeches about the need to invest for infrastructure--on the anniversary of that bridge going up again. Some people are actually saying we should let this highway trust fund die on the vine and let these jobs die on the vine.

I am going to use some examples for bridges. We learned today that fully one-quarter of America's 600,000 bridges have aged so much that their physical condition, or ability to withstand current traffic levels, is simply inadequate. One of the things we have seen on our roads and bridges in the last few years is that we are seeing something of a boon in our world economy, with the new energy economy. We are seeing wind turbines being transported on our roads and rails. We are seeing biofuels and more wear and tear on our roads and rails.

As we move to the next century, economics with the next century energy, looking at more of our energy being produced from the workers and farmers of this country, we cannot be stuck in last century's transportation system. I am not going to pretend that replenishing the money into the highway trust fund is going to bring us to where we need to be with public transportation and where we truly need to go

with infrastructure in this country to compete on the world stage. At least it will stop the bleed so we are going to be able to keep up with the ongoing projects we have right now.

I am glad the administration is finally supporting doing something about this. It has been sad that we have gone to the other side three times to try to fund this important transit fund. As President Kennedy once said, building a road or highway isn't pretty, but it is something that our economy needs to have. We see that with that bridge in Minnesota, but we see it over and over again in the rural areas with the development of the wind farms and development of solar and ethanol.

Just to give you a sense of what we are seeing in our State, for the first 6 months in 2007 ethanol production in the United States totaled nearly 3 billion gallons or 32 percent higher than the same period last year. Of course, we are going to move to cellulosic, but that will still meet transportation needs in rural areas. Currently, there are 128 ethanol plants nationwide, with total annual production capacity nearing 7 billion gallons, and an additional 85 plants are under construction. Total ethanol production is expected to exceed 13 billion gallons per year by early 2009.

In terms of transportation, this means that an average square mile of land in southern Minnesota, which generates now the equivalent of 80 loaded semitrucks per year, could soon produce double that or 160 loads of grain per year. So we are seeing more wear and tear on our roads. It is a good thing. We want to produce wind and solar and biofuel and homegrown energy in this country. That will mean having a transportation system that can keep up with our growing economy.

Mr. President, I will end with what I began with. We are going to be opening a new bridge in Minnesota. Every time I go by that bridge, which is six blocks from my house, I always think about that schoolbus with kids in it that was perched precariously and by some miracle it didn't go over the side. Every kid was saved. They called it the miracle bus. We have a promise to those kids that were on that bus that this isn't going to happen again. We will keep our roads and highways as a No. 1 goal of our Government--public safety. That means not just safety on our streets but safety in our streets. That means better roads, bridges, and a better transportation system. So that is why we would have liked to have done this in another way, but we are in a crisis situation with our transit funds, and we should support it and replenish the funds.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, earlier today I came to the floor and indicated I had received calls from the administration--specifically, one call from the Secretary of Transportation, Mary Peters, who pleaded with me to do everything I could to replenish the money from the highway trust fund. The House has passed legislation that that will take place on or about October 1 of this year. What we want to do, at the request of the administration, is move that forward and do that now. The money is gone. The Secretary has informed me and everyone else that she is going to start doling the money out, first 80 percent and then, as I understand what she said to me, it will be 50 percent, and pretty soon nothing. We have major projects around the country that will go unfunded and will have to cease construction.

It is extremely important we do this. We have asked, on many occasions prior to today, that this take place. We knew the trust fund was down. But we have asked this be done before, and we received word from the White House that this was something they did not want to do. Now it appears the White House wants to have it done--as they should have wanted it done a long time ago.

Mr. President, having said that, I ask unanimous consent the Finance Committee be discharged from H.R. 6532 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the amendment at the desk be considered and agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table and any statements relating to this matter be printed at its appropriate place in the Record with no intervening action or debate.

That is the consent. I add that what this would do is replenish--take from the general fund money in the sum of $8 billion and put it in the highway trust fund.

As I said a number of times, I so appreciate the ability that I have--and I hope he, the distinguished senior Senator from New Hampshire,

has with me--to talk with each other, even though we disagree on matters. He is always very upfront. He told me what amendments he thinks should be offered and I appreciate that very much. But at this stage we cannot do that. It would take days to get to this matter and then, of course, amendments would take time.

I would also add this. This is not the first time the highway trust fund has been used in some manner. In 1998 we took approximately $8 billion from the highway trust fund and put it in the general fund. So now this is an opportunity to pay that back. We should have done it some time ago. We didn't do that.

I appreciate the concern of the Senator from New Hampshire, but I hope, during the night, people will think about this. I hope the Secretary of Transportation will let the Republicans know how desperate the country is for this money. We will renew this request tomorrow.

I am happy to yield for a question.

It was 84,000.

I say to my friend, the chair of the committee of jurisdiction, the highway trust fund is broke. As a result of that, there are roads being built and bridges being built and that is simply going to stop. The people there, going to work, in the near future are not going to be able to go to work anymore because there is no money to pay them.

I would also say this. One of the things that so concerns me about the Bush-Cheney-McCain operation is no one seems to care about all the red ink we have spent over the last 8 years. In Iraq alone we are spending $5,000 a second. During the time we have been here since this vote started, 40 minutes--I don't know how much money that is. I tried to figure out what it would be, 40 times 60 times 240. It is lots of money. Everything we have done this last 8 years has been basically done on borrowed money.

Here is a situation where the administration is asking us to take money from the general fund. They will borrow that money as they have done with everything here. That is why we have a $11 or $12 trillion debt. I cannot imagine that self-righteous people are all of a sudden wanting things paid for.

That is borrowed money.

Mr. President, I did not dream up the idea that projects were going to be terminated. That is what the Secretary of Transportation told me. Now, maybe I misunderstood her. Maybe she was exaggerating. But that is what I took away from my conversation with her.

It is difficult for me to argue with the Senator from New Hampshire because I think it is fair to say that he has been trying to raise a red flag for a number of years about the wild spending of this administration. Even though he is a stalwart Republican and close to the administration, he has not been quiet about this.

Now, this is an issue I brought up today because I was asked to do so by the White House. Let the record be clear: Democrats have been very supportive of funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We want to support the troops. And we can go into another discussion--and none of us want to get into that tonight--about what is going on in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But the highway trust fund, part of it--and I believe, if we ever get to a point where we are debating amendments on taking money out of mass transit--maybe 20, 25 years ago, when Nevada didn't have these tremendously difficult problems we have with traffic, with roads, and we were not concerned about mass transit, maybe we would have joined with the Senator from New Hampshire. But we in Nevada, as with many metropolitan areas around the country, are desperately in need of more transit money, not less--more transit money rather than less. So it would exacerbate a tremendously difficult problem if the idea of the Senator from New Hampshire bore fruit; that is, we take the money out of mass transit and put it in for highways. That would be the wrong thing to do.

You can no longer say that the highway trust fund is just for highways because for decades now, we have used part of this money-- rightfully so--because of actions of the Congress, along with the administrations, taking this money and doing very important mass- transit projects.

So here is where we are. If we were able to have a vote on this piece of legislation tonight or tomorrow, it would pass overwhelmingly. But, as with the Senate, we cannot move to things just because we want to. We have a lot ahead of this. We have the Defense authorization bill, we have an energy issue we have to take up. That is next week. Every day that goes by, according to the Secretary of Transportation, is a bad day for the Department of Transportation.

The Senator is right. I see on the floor a poster child for the necessity to do this, and that is the junior Senator from Minnesota. We had a bridge collapse from lack of money, and we, on an emergency basis, came to this floor, recognizing what a catastrophe that was for Minnesota and our country. That bridge is now being built with borrowed money.

Absolutely true.

The Senator from Washington is exactly correct.

When I talked to her, I believe last Friday, she indicated to me that she was going to have to make those difficult decisions. Then I also read her press release later, after she had been able, I guess, to put more numbers in the paper, and that is what I read, which is an elaboration of what she told me.

Mr. President, in July, the House of Representatives responsibly passed legislation to prevent the highway trust fund from running out of money. They put the date that the $8 billion would be transferred at October 1, the end of the fiscal year, the beginning of the new fiscal year. That legislation passed by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 387 to 37.

The reason the bill receives such strong support is Democrats and Republicans in the House recognize that funding for these critical transportation projects is extremely important. This is infrastructure. For every billion dollars we spend in infrastructure, there are 47,500 high-paying jobs, and a lot of other jobs spin off from that amount. So this $8 billion is about half a million jobs. Yes, that is a lot when you think about the problems we have in the country today economically.

But when that bill reached the Senate before we left for the convention recesses, Republicans objected to it. Since that time, the legislation has even taken on more urgency. Gas prices have skyrocketed. Fewer Americans are driving, which has decreased the flow of the money into the trust fund.

Second, the Bush-McCain economy has plunged America further into economic peril. Just last month, 84,000 jobs were lost, bringing to the total this year during the Bush-McCain era over 600,000 jobs lost this year alone. And today it was announced that this year will be the largest deficit in the history of our country. So we have an economy that is in deep trouble, we have 84,000 jobs lost just last month and more than 600,000 this year, and it

has just been announced that the deficit is the largest we have ever seen as a country.

The investments in this highway trust fund make our transportation safe. It is not just roads, it is mass-transit projects that are so important to this country. As I told the distinguished ranking member of the Budget Committee who was here objecting yesterday, maybe two or three decades ago, my being from Nevada, I may not have been concerned about mass transit, but we are now. Las Vegas is a metropolitan area with traffic congestion. We have to do something with mass transit. It cannot be handled on the highways.

With this new urgency in mind, the Bush administration joined us in calling for a transfer of these funds immediately. I received a call from the Secretary of Transportation saying this needs to be done. I said: Why didn't you help us before? Basically, the Bush-McCain crew was just hoping they could squeeze through before the new President is elected before anything would happen. But even this President has acknowledged that we have to do something.

Democrats and Republicans in the House, I repeat, have already voted to have this money transferred, and they did it last July. We want to follow suit. Yet some in the President's own party continue to refuse this economically vital legislation that is so important.

We have had 92 filibusters led by the Republicans so far. I am not sure if we counted the last one. Anyway, we will say 92. I have expressed many times my disappointment about the Republicans blocking legislation supported by a majority of Senators--a majority of Senators. They have blocked legislation not only that we Democrats support but a majority of Senators, Democrats and Republicans.

Here we have an interesting thing now. This is new. Republicans are blocking a bill supported by an overwhelming majority of both parties in the House and in the Senate and supported by the President of their own party. They are even blocking that. They are doing everything within their power to maintain the status quo. Yesterday, Republicans prevented us from passing this bill. It is so important that it be done. I have trouble understanding why the Republicans are objecting to a bill that Democrats and Republicans in the House support, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate support, and the President supports. They are objecting to their own best interests, it seems to me. But that is what they are doing. I think we should send this bill to the President's desk, as the President has requested.

The people who are objecting are using all kinds of excuses. Yesterday, they said they had a few amendments. Tonight, I guess they have a few more amendments. They think it is really not right to take the money to replenish the highway trust fund from the general fund, but they haven't objected to almost spending a trillion dollars of borrowed money going to Iraq. They haven't objected to taking tens of billions of dollars from the general fund to give tax breaks to big oil companies. That didn't seem to bother them. But when it comes to $8 billion to maintain our highways and our mass-transit projects that create jobs at a time when we have about 10 million Americans out of work, they are even blocking that. This legislation is prudent and necessary. It is a prudent and necessary investment in the economic well-being of our struggling Nation. I hope our Republican colleagues answer the call of President Bush and Secretary Chertoff. Judge Chertoff said the lack of investment in U.S. infrastructure is ``kind of like playing Russian roulette with our citizens' safety.'' That is what President Bush's Secretary of Homeland Security has said. So this is no time for games such as that.

So, Mr. President, here is my unanimous consent request: That the Finance Committee be discharged from its consideration of H.R. 6532 and the Senate proceed to its consideration; that the amendment at the desk be considered agreed to, the bill, as amended, be read a third time, passed, the motion to reconsider be laid on the table, and any statements relating to this matter be printed at the appropriate place in the Record, with no intervening action or debate.

But we don't have a Republican here to object, and so I am not going to take advantage of their not being here. But I hope the American people see what is going on. It is another day gone by with our not having the ability here because of the Republicans refusing to approve legislation that is extremely urgent. It is emergency legislation. We have been told so by the President and his Secretary of Treasury, and they still would not let us do this.

I wonder where John McCain is. What is his idea on this? Should we let the fund go belly up? Where is John McCain? Couldn't he send a statement, a message from somebody saying: I agree with President Bush, or does he disagree, for one of the rare, 10 percent of the times when he disagrees? The word out is he supports the President 90 percent of the time. It is really 95 percent of the time.

But is he now going to be part of the 5 percent where he says: I disagree with the President; I don't think that money should be replenished.

Where is John McCain? Let us hear from John McCain.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Finance Committee be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 6532, and that the Senate then proceed to its consideration; that the only amendment in order be the Baucus amendment which is at the desk; that the amendment be considered as agreed to and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table; and that there then be 90 minutes of debate with respect to the bill, as amended, with the time equally divided and controlled between the leaders or their designees; and that upon the use or yielding back, the Senate proceed to vote on passage of the bill, as amended, without further intervening action or debate.

Madam President, this is an important moment for us, not just for us as legislators acting responsibly but for our States and for the working people of this country. We were perilously close to having a shortfall in the highway trust fund which would have resulted in slowing down contracts on repairing bridges, building highways, et cetera. Six times the Senate has brought up legislation to restore money to the highway trust fund and protect those jobs, but until now my Republican friends on the other side of the aisle have put up roadblocks and filibustered us.

Today, at a hearing we held on the status of our bridges, the condition of our bridges, the Bush administration itself urged us to act. I was very grateful to Senator Inhofe for his work. Because we have been facing objections from Senators DeMint, Gregg, and others, we were unable to move forward. We are very grateful we have reached this moment so we may vote on this important legislation and solve the immediate crisis.

We all know what has been happening with the trust fund. First, $8 billion was borrowed from the trust fund in 1998. We need to restore those funds. That is what we are doing today. Beyond that, we have to figure out a way to finance highways and transit systems and repair bridges and the rest with a more secure source of funding. Senator Inhofe and I are working together on that, along with Senators Isakson, Baucus, and the rest of the members of the Environment and Public Works Committee. We know our colleagues in the House are doing it as well. We are going to have to look at how we keep pace with the many billions of dollars needed for repair. We have to make sure we pay attention to our Nation's infrastructure if we care about a thriving economy, moving goods, moving people, all the rest. If we ignore this, it is to our detriment. We saw a bridge collapse in Minnesota. We were reminded of that today at the hearing. All of us were appalled to see what that looks like. I know bridges in California, in Oklahoma, bridges all over the country are in need of repair. We can't play politics. That is why we have been on the Senate floor. We have sent letters, asked our friends to back off. If they want to make a statement about how to fund transit and highways, that is very appropriate as we write the new highway bill.

What is happening out there is, obviously, because of the horrible price of gas, which, thank goodness, has come down a little bit, people are turning away from driving or they are doubling up. They are switching to hybrid cars. Hopefully, soon we will see more opportunities for electric cars. As a result, however, the trust fund, which gets its funding from the gas tax, has been going down. That, coupled with the borrowing that we did in 1998 from the trust fund, has led us to this day.

I don't have much more of a statement except I want to thank certain people who weighed in to push us and my friends on the other side. I hope they were pushed by this to back off and say: Let's have a clean bill. Let's fix the problem. Then we will debate how we get a highway trust fund that is necessary for the needs of the country.

AAA was very helpful, as was the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials; the American Society of Civil Engineers; the American Road and Transportation Builders Association; the American Highway Users Alliance; the American Trucking Association; the Associated General Contractors of America; the National Association of Counties; the National Association of Manufacturers; the National Governors Association; the National Conference of State Legislatures; Midwestern Governors' Association; the Coalition of Northeastern Governors; the Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Again, what we are doing is simply restoring the revenue that was shifted out of the trust fund 10 years ago when the balances were high. What we are doing is saying to many working people that we are not going to let them run the risk of being laid off, fired, having to come home and tell their family they can't work. We know that is a fact because each billion dollars of

Federal funding is estimated to support 34,000 jobs. If we didn't act on this and that $8 billion was not restored, we would have lost 379,000 jobs all across America; in my own State, 32,000 jobs. This is not the time to play games. In August, we lost 84,000 jobs in America. Imagine if we had added another 379,000 lost jobs.

Today, through the wonders of communication I can say to State and local officials watching us have confidence that the flow of funds to build and operate transportation systems, to build highways and bridges, to make sure communities are insured, those funds are going to be there. Again, as we move behind this crisis, I do look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Senator Inhofe and I, Senators Baucus and Isakson, we call ourselves the big four of the committee. We have met. Our staffs are meeting every day. We are meeting. We are coming up with principles, what is the fair way to fund infrastructure needs. These meetings have been very important. They are not ideological. They are only business. How do we take care of business? That means moving goods, people, keeping the country going. I can't tell my colleagues how pleased I am that we can have the opportunity today to vote on a clean bill, simply restoring the $8 billion that was borrowed from this fund and sending a signal to the 300,000-plus people who would have lost their jobs, at least this is some bit of good news for them in what has been a very bleak economy.

I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of my time through the leader's office on our side.

Amendment No. 5427

(Purpose: To change the date of restoration.)

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

We didn't have to be here today. We could have acted more responsibly in 2005, when we reauthorized the highway bill. At that time, I heard a number of people, appropriators and others, stand up and say: We are authorizing more than we will have money for. We knew it at the time. Anybody who really looked at this knew that we were authorizing more than the highway trust fund contained for projects.

To make matters worse, and part of the reason we had far more than we could fund is we had over 6,300 earmarks in the highway bill. That is why this thing was so big. That accounted for about $24 billion of the highway bill.

Now, some of those projects, I grant you, would have been funded anyway in the highway bill. There were projects that a Member wanted that would have been funded out of that State's formula anyway. But there are a lot of projects that would not.

We all know about the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. That was part of this bill. But some of the lesser known things that are in this bill that have far too little to do with transportation, I would submit:

$16 million for the Bremerton Pedestrian Transportation Center in Washington State; $3 million for a parking garage in suburban Chicago; $3.5 million for pedestrian walkways and streetscaping in the village of Western Springs, Illinois; $3.5 million to improve the Pennsylvania Executive Mansion exhibit; $1.5 for the American Tobacco Trail in North Carolina; $800,000 for a transportation and heritage museum in Tennessee; $4 million for bike trails and park space in California; $1 million for the Please Touch Me Museum in Philadelphia; $1 million for the Blue Ridge Mountain Center in Virginia.

These are earmarks that are funded in this bill, part of the reason we are having to steal money from the general fund and fund back the highway trust fund, because we just went hog wild back in 2005.

Just a few examples of some others:

$2.75 million for renovations to the National Packard Museum in Ohio; $2.4 for the National Infantry Museum. Might be a good museum; probably shouldn't be funded out of the highway trust fund.

Yet, instead of going in and saying we are going to rescind these earmarks if they haven't been funded yet, some have, some haven't, we are saying we are going to take from the general fund. When you start doing that, you set a horrible precedent in this place, because we know the amount of logrolling that goes on in a highway bill. And if you don't have the natural ceiling that exists with the highway trust fund, where you say we can spend that much and no more; if you can say, well, when we run out, we will just go out and take from the general fund, then ``Katie bar the door,'' this place is going to be out of money sooner than you think. Because when you have this amount of money and you pass around the projects and you have so much buy-in, then very few will vote against that bill because their own projects are in it, and soon we are taking more and more money from the general fund.

We cannot start that process with this bill, and that is what this bill is doing. That is what this amendment is doing today. We have got to act more fiscally responsible.

Let me just go through a few more.

$1.2 million for the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan. Now, might be a good museum, probably shouldn't be funded with your highway dollars. $500,000 for the Railroad Museum in Georgia; $200,000 for the Brooklyn Children's Museum.

If you are catching a theme here, there are a lot of museums funded in this bill, again, money that is coming out of the highway trust fund that we overburdened the highway trust fund with that we now have to get money from the general fund for.

One of the previous speakers said that there is a national consensus or that the Nation is united on this topic that we need to take from the general fund. I would say, where the Nation is united is that we have got to stop this earmarking process. And if we get to it next week, hopefully we will, the appropriation bill for the Department of Defense, you will see more of it, because that bill contains 1,200 earmarks. The bill that has been marked up in

the subcommittee of appropriations for defense, 1,200 earmarks.

I took a look at it just to see. It is very difficult to see where the money is and where it is going, but one thing we could see is what we see in every bill that contains a lot of earmarks: A disproportionate number of the earmarks are going to those who chair committees, those in leadership positions, or those who are on the Appropriations Committee.

In fact, 1,200 earmarks, as I mentioned. Of these 1,200, more than 560 are associated with appropriators and members of leadership. That is a staggering 45 percent of the earmarks included in the committee print. That is not uncommon; that is what called the spoil system, and that is why it is unlikely that we will be able to stop this amendment today.

Please, let's be fiscally responsible.

Mr. President, how much time is available?

On this side?

Mr. President, I rise to discuss legislation vital to this Nation's transportation infrastructure. The highway trust fund, the means by which we fund our Nation's roads, highways, and bridges, is in trouble. Tomorrow, the U.S. Department of Transportation will slow down payments to States for infrastructure investments. That is highway projects. This is happening because forecasts now suggest that a shortfall of billions of dollars to the highway trust fund will occur in the near future.

The shortfall stems from the agreement of the 2005 highway bill negotiations, when the Bush administration and the Republican-led Congress agreed to spend down the balance of the fund.

Last year, we learned the trust fund would run out of money faster than anticipated. Accordingly, the Finance Committee reported out a bill at that time to address the problem. We tried to move a $5 billion highway fix earlier this year as part of a larger FAA reauthorization bill, and that proposal was blocked. So we had to find other ways to pass this critical highway fix. In the meantime, the highway trust fund problem worsened. As gas prices rose dramatically, fuel tax receipts, which finance the lion's share of the highway trust fund, dropped sharply. In short, as Americans drive less and purchase less fuel, the trust fund shortfall has worsened, even more so than we previously expected.

So we tried to pass the highway trust fund as a stand-alone bill. Recognizing the dramatically worsening state of the fund, we proposed an $8 billion fix--not $5 billion but up to $8 billion. In fact, the $8 billion fix matched the amount that was taken from the highway trust fund when its balance was deemed to be too large back in 1998.

We worked with the House in developing that measure, and the House sent it over to the Senate with a resounding vote of 387 to 87. We attempted to clear that bill through the Senate by unanimous consent on June 26, but the bill was blocked again.

Then before Congress recessed in August, I again attempted to move this $8 billion highway trust fund fix as part of the Jobs, Energy, Families, and Disaster Relief Act. But that measure also failed to pass.

Ensuring the highway trust fund remains solvent means my State of Montana will not have to suffer more than $98 million in funding cuts, as well as approximately 3,500 job losses in the next year.

Nationwide, the industry experts tell us the funding cuts to States would be at least $14 billion, with job losses approaching 400,000 if we fail to address this trust fund need. This will occur at a time when nationwide unemployment is at its highest level in 5 years.

In transferring $8 billion from the general fund into the highway trust fund, we will ensure delivery of the full $41.2 billion in guaranteed highway funding for fiscal year 2009.

It is important to remember the States have been relying on the 2005 agreement between the Bush administration and Congress when developing State budgets over the last several years. They relied on us.

Fixing the highway trust fund will preserve Federal funding for roads, highways, and bridges, and it will preserve good-paying jobs that rely on construction and maintenance projects.

An important point here, too, is no offset is required to fix the highway trust fund and that is because the $8 billion transferred is intergovernmental. The Congressional Budget Office indicates this fix does not constitute a spending outlay and, thus, would not violate the pay-go rules. Likewise, the Joint Committee on Taxation confirms this transfer will have no revenue effect.

I am pleased the Bush administration has finally come to its senses and realized the need to address this problem. I am pleased my colleagues in the Senate across the aisle have removed their objections, and I am pleased we are now finally going to do what needed to be done for over a year.

I wish to note that the chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, the senior Senator from Washington, has joined me in doing everything she could do to get this problem fixed. She talked with me innumerable times and many Senators. She was very concerned about this situation and worked so hard. She deserves the lion's share of the credit for all the work she has done. I congratulate her for her staying efforts in that regard.

We should not delay any further. We should remember the old adage: There are no Democratic roads, there are no Republican roads, only American roads. We need to fix this trust fund now. Our States and constituents are relying on it.

Mr. President, I yield back the remainder of our time.