Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014

No, not at all. Please proceed.

Mr. President, I would like to take my time off the general debate time; is that appropriate?

I thank the Chair. I am so pleased to be on the floor because the Senate has to be heard on this issue of the highway trust fund and our whole transportation system for that matter. I do wish to praise Senators Wyden and Hatch for coming together across party lines and making some real improvements in the pay-fors that are associated with this extension. I am very much in favor of the way they handled this bill, and I am also very much in favor of the way the pension smoothing was handled in the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment because that does away with it altogether, because we shorten the timeframe so we don't need any pension smoothing in there.

Before I speak specifically about the wisdom of what the Finance Committee did and my hope that we can get it over the finish line today, I want to give kind of an overview of where we are in general.

For 2 years we have known that our Transportation bill expired September 30. We have known this for 2 years. Yet, and still, here we are at the 11th hour with an extension.

This is probably, I think, the 12th extension in a few years. I think that is so unfair to the people of this great country who rely on their bridges and their highways and their transportation systems. It is so unfair to the thousands of businesses that work to rebuild our infrastructure, and it is very unfair to the millions of workers who work in construction.

We still have 700,000 unemployed construction workers. When we do a piecemeal bill like this, of course, it is better than doing nothing-- there is no doubt about that; I would not argue that--but it still sends a message of indecision and, frankly, I think of incompetence on our part, and I step to the plate on that.

But I am very proud to say that my committee--100 percent bipartisan; we did not have a dissenting vote--passed the 6-year transportation bill. When we did that, I went to my colleagues and said: I know you have the hard job. You have to figure out the long-term funding. I want to help you. I came forward and I said: Why don't we look at several proposals. One is what they are doing in Virginia. This was a Republican idea. It is to do away with the gas tax completely and replace it with a fee at the refinery level. That would be a more broad-based tax. We would do away with the gas tax. No more Federal gas tax at the pump. That would solve our problems. You set it at a rate where it floats, and we would have 100 percent certainty. Senator Wyden was quite open to it. He took a look at it. I know he floated it. Clearly, we did not have the type of support we would need.

Then the Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO said: Do you know what. We have not raised the gas tax in 21 years. Mr. President, we have not raised the gas tax in 21 years. I did a little reading and found out the first President to initiate the gas tax--and I say to Senator Hatch, he might be interested in this--the first President to formulate a gas tax--and it came in at a penny--was Herbert Hoover. The next President who raised it was President Eisenhower, who had that great vision to then put it into a trust fund for highways, and he raised it a couple of cents. So it was about 3 cents. The next President to raise it was President Reagan. And the next President to raise it was George Herbert Walker Bush. They were all Republican Presidents. Then President Clinton raised it.

Clearly the Congress supported it each and every time because it is a user fee. So that is an alternative. There are many other ideas. I know Senator Wyden and Senator Hatch have a number of ideas, and I know Senator Hatch prefers a user fee. It makes sense. But because of the time crunch--because of, because of, because of--we did not get it done.

I am proud. Senator Vitter is proud. We got it out of our committee, a 6-year bill. It is not a great, massive bill. It just takes the current program, adds inflation, and extends it for 6 years. I can tell you, if Senator Vitter and I can agree, if Senator Carper and Senator Barrasso can agree, if Senator Cardin can agree with Senator Sessions, and Senator Sanders with Senator Fischer--I could go on. Our committee goes from left to right, and everybody agreed we should have the 6-year bill.

So as I stand here today, I am distressed that we do not have that before us, but I am still grateful to my friends for doing what they could politically do. But I feel it is a sad day for us, and I know and I hope we pass this Wyden-Hatch substitute. It is a much-improved way to pay for the extension. But we are extending all the way to May, right up against the next construction season. Now, if you are a State--whether it is Utah or California or West Virginia or Maryland or Oregon; it does not matter--you are not going to enter into any agreement. No businessperson is going to take this on where you do not know what the future holds.

So we are putting it off again, and it is sad we are doing it, and we have 60, 70, 80 groups out there, which I will list later, that are supporting our shortening the timeframe.

Now, my friend says artificial deadlines are bad. But let's face it. Their bill raises--I think it is $11 billion. Am I right on that? So we know it takes it to May 31. That is their deadline. Our bill, in the Carper-Corker-Boxer rewrite, takes it to December. We cut it back. We totally eliminate pension smoothing--totally eliminate it--and we take it back to $8 billion, and that forces us to do the job in December.

Look, this Congress has to do its work. The trust fund expires during this Congress. Now we are kicking it down the road to the next Congress.

Whatever the Senate wishes, I will go along with it. If the Senate says, no, we are going to go with that longer term extension, so be it. I will fight just as hard to move forward with a 6-year bill, I say to my colleagues, when we get back or in a lameduck.

I want to close by talking a little bit about pension smoothing for just a minute because I so agree with Senator Hatch when he says this is not his favorite thing. It is not my favorite thing either, and we come from different sides of the aisle.

So just to be clear, what we are saying to companies is, you can set aside less money for your pension requirements to your employees. Now, I have to admit in the light of day, I voted for that the last time when Senator Baucus brought that forward. I did. But it also was a company buy, an increase in the amount of money companies had to pay into the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. If a company goes broke and they cannot pay their pensions because they have not set aside enough--and with our help they are not having to set aside enough--what happens then? The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp kicks in, and that is funded by the companies. But if that does not have enough--and my information is it is short $34 billion, as we speak--the taxpayers will have to bail it out. So this pension smoothing is really, really dangerous. It is an offset that is not a good one.

Now, the Wyden-Hatch proposal is much, much better than the House proposal because it cuts it basically in half. The Carper-Corker bill cuts it out completely. So we just have to step to the plate. I think Senator Wyden is right. Here we are bailing out--if I could use those terms--the highway trust fund until May, while we set up another potential weakness in our pension system. It is not smart. It should not be done. We had 2 years to figure this out.

But no question--no question--the Wyden-Hatch proposal is a far better proposal. Just making sure people pay their taxes, that is something we should all believe in, and, for the first time, the two Senators brought that issue forward to a successful conclusion. I am very, very grateful to them for that. So I very strongly support this.

I hope we will see a lot of support for the amendment that Senators Carper,

Corker, and I brought forward because we do away with pension smoothing. So if you do not like pension smoothing, vote for that one; and we cut back the money so we can take this whole thing up in December and give some certainty to all the groups out there, whether it is the Chamber of Commerce or the general contractors or the cement people or the gravel people or the AFL-CIO or the laborers. All these folks want to make sure we are not just doing a little cut and paste and get us up against the next thing.

I keep saying ``in closing,'' but I really mean it now. What you are dealing with here, if you want to use an analogy, is: You find a house you really like, so you go to the bank, and the bank looks at you and says: Well, you are a good risk. Yes, we will definitely give you a mortgage, but it is only for 9 months. Nobody is going to take that mortgage. Our States are not going to enter into 3-year contracts when they know they only are going to get the funding for 9 months. We have an amendment by Senator Lee which would cut the Federal Government's ability to help the States and wind up with an 80-percent cut in funding. So it is very risky moving out with all these things hanging over our head.

But I am still pleased with what the Finance Committee did. I thank Senators Reid and McConnell for allowing us to have this time on the floor and all of my colleagues for agreeing, because this is a debate that has to start somewhere. So it is starting today. We know whatever happens, we are just doing a patch, and we are going to have to sit down together with good will and good ideas and solve this problem for the good of our country.

Would the Senator yield for a question?

I thank my friend. I wanted to ask him a question. Because I think the way the Senator responded to the Toomey amendment was exactly right on point. It was almost a deja vu as I listened to my friend from Pennsylvania, because he is not on the committee of jurisdiction. But we had this debate, as my friend pointed out. As a matter of fact, I started to get a little stressed as he related what we went through to get to the point where we have an expedited procedure that takes care of the problems my friend from Pennsylvania talks about.

But we do not throw out every landmark environmental law. That would be a disaster. I can give you an example and ask my friend if he agrees with this example.

I also want to point out the American Public Health Association strongly opposes Senator Toomey's amendment, because they know the health of the people is at stake.

But let's say you had a situation where you brought in a contractor to clean up after there was a disaster, collapse, let's say, of a highway. There was a body of water nearby. The contractor came in. Instead of having a good clean operation, he started dumping his fuel and chemicals and everything else into this waterway. Mind you, under our law he has already got an expedited permit, he is ready to roll. But he or she, they have to be good citizens and not make matters worse.

Does my friend not agree that these landmark laws, such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, should be respected, and the Toomey amendment throws them out the window, and we can endanger the health of the people?

Mr. President, it is really almost hard to know where to start in my opposition to this amendment, but let me say that some people call it devolution, meaning you devolve all responsibility for the highways and transits to the States. I call it not devolution but complete and utter destruction of a system that has been in place that the States have grown to count on. That is why the States that my friend speaks from, the States' point of view--they oppose this amendment strongly. AASHTO--they represent not one State but every single State.

There are so many things my friend said that we can't refute--that a State should have the right to spend whatever they want. Sure, they can. They can spend anything they want right now. But they count on the basic bread and butter of these grants.

If we look at history, it has been Republican Presidents who have stepped to the plate on this all through history. That is why I think this is so radical. It is shocking to me. It is shocking to me because some of the biggest proponents of the Interstate Highway System and aid to the States have been Republican Presidents.

Let's be clear. If, God forbid, this were to become the law, immediately the States would see a cut in their transportation funding of 80 percent. That is my friend's answer to gridlock--cut the funding to the States by 80 percent.

The last time I heard and listened, we were one nation under God, indivisible. That is why the visionary Dwight Eisenhower saw this. He knew we had to be able to move equipment. He knew logistics because he was a general. He knew we were one Nation, sea to shining sea. And my friend would have us lose that.

I really wish my colleague Senator Inhofe would come to the floor because I think he has a voting record that is as conservative as any, and he feels transportation is a basic function, along with defense.

I think it is important to note that counties and cities and States depend on this program, and they have for years. Again, this is a national interest, to have this one Nation.

If we really want to see Republicans and Democrats united around the country, look at who is opposing the Lee amendment: the American Trucking Association, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Highway Users Alliance, the National Stone, Sand, and Gravel Association, the general contractors, the Associated Equipment Distributors, and the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. And if they agreed with Senator Lee--set us free; set us free; we are going to build so much--I don't know what he is talking about, set us free. Set us free with 80 percent less money? That is really great. What are we going to build? Nothing. We are going to have to raise taxes. I was a county supervisor. That doesn't work.

Proponents of this amendment weakly claim that with the completion of the interstate system, we don't need a Federal role in transportation. Well, guess what. We have to maintain our Federal highways even though they have been built. We have to maintain our bridges even though they have been built.

I said on a TV show the other day: I know I have gotten a little older. I need more maintenance. That is just the way it is. I am not happy about it.

Stop laughing. But that is a fact of life.

So don't tell me ``we are free at last; do away with this'' and then think the States are going to be happy when the very States my friend says he speaks for are totally against his amendment. We would be massively cutting transportation infrastructure spending.

Let's talk about the impact on thousands of businesses and millions of workers. I don't know if we have the picture of the stadium. I wish to show my friend--when he comes here and makes an ideological speech, I like to talk about the real world. Here is the real world. This is a Super Bowl game. This is a stadium that holds 100,000 people. We have seven stadiums full of unemployed construction workers. He wants to cut the Federal involvement by 80 percent. Just don't see some of these workers. It started out that we filled 20 of these stadiums in the height of the recession. Now we have got it down to seven, and we still don't have enough work.

And this isn't make work. This is work our American businesspeople want. This is work our American workers want. This is work that can't be outsourced. This is work that pays a good wage. What a time to cut back our investment by 80 percent and sock it to the workers.

The same people who vote for this amendment won't raise the minimum wage--support this pension smoothing that is taking away dollars from our employees' pensions.

So I am at my wit's end to understand. My friend is a nice man, and I know he believes this. But don't come on the floor and say let's forget about Eisenhower's vision and have a new vision, which is that there is no more Federal role.

Some will get up and say: Maybe it is better to do this than to do nothing. Maybe this is better.

No. We have to do our job around here, and that is a multiyear bill. We are faced with a short-term extension because we haven't done our work.

Senators Carper and Corker and I are going to put forward an amendment that is going to force us to do our work in December if we are lucky enough to have it passed. We hope it will pass because if we vote for that amendment, we are cutting back the short-term money we have to pay, and we are cutting back the time. And that is good. But we are not walking away from the responsibility we have as a nation, one nation under God, indivisible, from sea to shining sea, a vision of America that my friend's amendment would destroy. It is not devolution, it is destruction, and I hope we will vote no.

I thank my colleagues, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I will be very brief. I know my colleagues want to present the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment. I will just say that we just did the math. The Senator cuts the gas tax to such a degree that the States would get an 80-percent cut. The Senator can do the math himself, but I am happy to work with the Senator on it.

It is not convenient--it is not right to speak about another Member when they are not here, but my understanding is Senator Inhofe does not currently support this. I could be wrong. We will find out in a couple hours. One of us can apologize. But I will apologize if I misstated his objection to this.

I yield the floor.

Amendment No. 3583

Mr. President, I wish to thank Senator Corker for his remarks because I have been here a while, and I haven't heard a more honest speech in my life on the Senate floor. I haven't heard a more passionate speech, a speech in which the Senator just spoke from his heart and with his brain, which is quite competent. I thank the Senator for it because there are some times when you do feel like shouting. I guess that was a movie, ``I Can't Take It Anymore.''

It is ridiculous that we are where we are. We knew for 2 years--2 years--that the highway trust fund was going to run out of money. We knew it for 2 years. That is why in May Senator Vitter and I, Senator Carper, Senator Barrasso, and others on both sides of the aisle passed a 6-year bill. We knew it was coming. We wanted to wake up our colleagues. And we did wake them up but, sadly, to a short-term fix instead of a long-term fix, a multiyear bill.

I so agree with my friend. It is the political will that is lacking. There is always an excuse followed by an excuse. The next thing we know they will say: The dog ate my homework. We have heard every excuse. And the Senator is so right. We will be in Presidential races, and then we will start with more Senate races and more congressional races, and people won't want to take a tough vote again.

This is the greatest Nation on Earth, but we have to reflect the greatness in our work here, and we are not.

The one thing I disagree with my friend on--he said we are only doing one thing in this amendment. We are actually doing two things in this amendment. One is we are getting rid of that gimmick called pension smoothing. I have kind of studied it over the last few weeks to really understand what we are doing, which is when you use this pension smoothing, you are saying to companies: Don't put any money into your pension obligations. And through some smoke and mirrors--because then it means they get to pay a little more income taxes--by the way, some don't pay more income taxes--it comes out a plus. The fact is, it is in essence telling companies they don't have to set aside money for their workers' pensions. That is not something that is good, especially since the pension guaranty corporation is short $34 billion.

I don't know if my friend knows this. The last time we used pension smoothing for a short-term fix, at least we had in the committee a comparable measure that ensured that companies gave more to the pension guaranty corp. So although they had a chance not to put the money into the pensions, they did have to pay more to the pension guaranty corp. If the pension guaranty corp. isn't there--the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. is broke--the taxpayers have to pick up the tab. I am looking at my friend in the Presiding Officer's chair, the Senator from Massachusetts, Ms. Warren, who knows what happens when everybody is broke and the Federal Government says: Oh my God. That is too big to fail.

So this attack that you make on smoothing as a gimmick--it is worse than a gimmick because it has real-life impacts, and those real-life impacts are that the companies aren't putting aside enough money. So let's think about what we are saying. We are saying the highway trust fund is going broke, so to fix it we are going to endanger another fund, the pension funds of our workers. That is terrible.

That is why I love the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment, and I thank my friends for their leadership on the pay-for. It does two things, this good amendment. It says we are not going to use the smoothing; we are going to protect our pensions. Secondly, we are going to attack the long-term issues of the highway trust fund in December, in the lameduck, after the elections, and everybody knows that is the best time to do it.

So I stand proudly with my friends. I hope we pass this. I don't know what happens or what the House will do, but my dad used to say you can only control what you can control. We can't control them, but we can control us.

So I hope anyone listening to this debate--I am going to support the Wyden amendment because it does strip some of the pension smoothing. I am going to oppose the Toomey amendment and the Lee amendment because I think they are dangerous, and I am going to strongly support the Carper-Corker-Boxer amendment.

I thank my colleagues. I know there is some very important business about to come to the floor, so I will yield the floor at this time.

Madam President, I know my friends Senator Mikulski and Senator Shelby are doing everything they can to work the will of the Senate. I know how they both want to get something done on this appropriations bill.

I simply want to say that I looked at the modification of my Republican friend--and he is my friend--that he offered, and I think for the good of America, who could be watching, I want to make a couple of points that will take me 30 seconds.

First of all, there is no limit on the number of amendments. We do not know if it will be 5, 10, 20 or 1,000 or 2,000 or 1 million. We have no idea. They would not even have to be related to the bill at hand, and they will not tell us what this list of amendments is.

I have looked back at some recent requests, and I want to be very honest with my friend. The recent requests I have seen before have been attacks on the Clean Air Act, attacks on the Clean Water Act, attacks on the Safe Drinking Water Act, attacks on women's health care. Frankly, that is not something I can agree to.

So I just want to say I am so saddened that we cannot seem to take up the most popular bill. I know how hard everybody has worked on MILCON- VA, and my friend, Senator Shelby, said: Our side is eager to schedule floor consideration of appropriations bills. Well, if they are really eager, they should work together with Senator Mikulski. You could not find anyone more fair. Get a finite list of amendments. If they are controversial, we have the 60-vote threshold. We know how to do our work around here.

So I am sorry it has come to this, and I appreciate the leadership of both Senators.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, will we still have 2 minutes before each amendment then? It will be in between?

Mr. President, I would like to address another issue connected to this debate. Before I do so, I would yield a moment of my time to my distinguished colleague, the junior Senator from Pennsylvania.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to temporarily set aside the pending amendment so I can call up my amendment No. 3584, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, we are here today because our Federal highway policy status quo is not working, and it hasn't been working for a long time. This is the sixth time American taxpayers have been asked to bail out the highway trust fund since 2008--the sixth time since 2008.

None of those patches, $52 billion worth of bailouts in 7 years, fixed the problem, and neither will the $10.8 billion authorized by the bill that is before us today. It will buy us only a few months before we are right back in the same place once again, the same place where we are now.

Indeed, this debate is itself the dysfunction of Washington, DC, in miniature. Here--as in health care, higher education, assistance for the poor, energy, and so many other areas--the Federal Government has created a permanent structural problem, and it responds with duct tape. Worse, this bill solves only Washington problems, only the problems of Washington, DC, not those of the American people.

Under the broken status quo this bill not only protects but also extends, in 6 months--and in 6 years--our roads will still remain congested. Too many single moms will still live on a knife's edge trying to make it to their second jobs all the way across town. Too many dads will still have to leave for work before breakfast just to make it to their job and then do the same thing again as they try to make it home for dinner. Children will still look in vain into the empty seats at their piano recitals and at their Little League games. Commuters will still squeeze onto overcrowded subway cars, hold their breath, and hope they don't break down again. Young families will still be unfairly priced out of neighborhoods near the best jobs and the best schools, and diverse communities will still be subject to the monotonous inefficiency of an outmoded Federal bureaucracy.

But it doesn't have to be this way. There is a better way. The Interstate Highway System is one of the greatest achievements not only in the history of the Federal Government but in all of American history. It unified a sprawling continental nation by investing in our common destiny. It simultaneously met the economic, social, cultural, and security needs of an emerging superpower. It was and it remains a wonder of American innovation and self-government.

More than that, the Interstate Highway System was the daring, audacious work of a young nation literally on the move, bristling with confidence in its future and in its people. With the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, Congress threw off the yoke of the status quo and it met the emerging needs of a new generation.

Yet today, some 58 years later, in a new century with new needs, new technologies, and a new economy, Congress anxiously clings to that exact same policy like some kind of a tattered security blanket.

Six decades ago, Federal highway policy represented a triumph of imagination. Today, our refusal to modernize that same policy represents a failure of imagination. So we are here with the duct tape and WD-40 trying to keep this 20th century bureaucracy in place, rather than embracing the worthy challenge of building a new mobility policy, one that is well suited for the 21st century. That is exactly what my amendment, the Transportation Empowerment Act, would do.

In 1956, it made sense for the Federal Government to collect the majority of gas taxes from around the country and then coordinate the construction of a national system. We needed it. But with the interstate system now largely complete and most transportation issues that we see today existing at the local level, there is no longer the same need for Washington to serve as the central coordinator. We have become an intrusive middleman. We need to refocus the Federal Government solely on interstate priorities and to empower a diverse, flexible, open-source transportation network controlled by the States.

My amendment would empower States and communities to customize their own infrastructure according to their own needs, their own values, and their own imagination.

It would, over 5 years, gradually transfer funding and spending authority over local transportation infrastructure projects to the States.

Today the Federal gasoline tax stands at 18.4 cents per gallon. My amendment would lower it by 2019 to 3.7 cents per gallon.

In the interim, we would gradually send States more of their allotment without strings to prepare them for the eventual transfer of this differential. After this gradual transition, Congress would retain enough revenue to continue to maintain the Interstate Highway System, which rightfully, properly remains a Federal priority and a core competence of our government at a national level, but States and communities would be newly empowered to launch a new era of local investment and local innovation.

The idea behind this plan is not only that there is a better way to improve America's infrastructure, there are 50 better ways and even thousands of better ways. In our increasingly decentralized world, there are as many ideal transportation policies as there are communities across this great country.

Washington is standing in the way, imposing obsolete conformity on a vibrant, diverse society. For if we truly love local transportation infrastructure--and who doesn't--we should set it free.

Under the Transportation Empowerment Act, Americans could finally enjoy the local infrastructure they want. More environmentally conscious States and towns could finally have the flexibility to invest in more green transit projects and bike lanes. Regions reaping the benefits of America's recent energy renaissance could accelerate their own infrastructure and their own buildouts to keep up with their explosive growth. Dense cities could invest in more sustainable public transit networks. Meanwhile, surrounding counties could reopen the frontiers of the suburbs to a new generation of far more livable communities. State and local governments will also be free to experiment with innovative funding mechanisms not necessarily tied to the unreliable, unpredictable, gasoline tax. By cutting out the Washington middlemen, all of those States, communities, and taxpayers will be able to get more for less.

My amendment would not reduce America's investment in infrastructure any more than Uber reduces America's investment in car services. In the real world, value is not a cost. Rather, my plan would empower a nation hungry for greater mobility to spend its infrastructure dollars on steel and on concrete instead of on bureaucracy and special interests.

Some of my colleagues oppose this plan. Some will offer Washington's eternal promise. The status quo will work, it just needs more money. That is all it needs, and it will work. The Federal gasoline tax has not changed since 1994, they will say. We are starving the trust fund, they will add.

But it is not true--at least it is an inaccurate and incomplete picture. For in the 12 years prior to 1994, the gasoline tax skyrocketed by an alarming 460 percent from 4 cents per gallon to 18.4 cents per gallon.

Put another way, since 1982, the Federal gasoline tax has grown by an equivalent of 6.1 percent per year. Chasing ever more money will not solve this problem. That is what we have been doing, and the bill before us today is incontrovertible proof that it hasn't worked.

Others argue that reducing Washington's role in local transportation would invite economic and infrastructural catastrophe. This makes two very peculiar assumptions.

First, it assumes that Washington is uniquely competent in the area of local transportation, even as a long train of abusive boondoggles and bridges to nowhere tell us exactly the opposite.

Even more bizarrely, this argument assumes that the 50 States of our exceptional Republic, many of which would rank among the wealthiest nations in the world on their own, are unstable banana republics nursing the development of primitive hunter-gatherer societies whose only transportation services involve the clearing of woodland paths for their pig-drawn carts.

State and local governments already pay for 75 percent of all surface transportation infrastructure projects in this country.

In my home State of Utah, one of the best run in the country, only 20 percent of our transportation money comes from Washington. The other 80 percent we raise ourselves. Of course, we raise most of that 20 percent too. It is just that under the broken status quo, Washington middlemen take their cut before sending that back to us.

Why not just leave that extra 25 percent to the States and communities who need and use it in the first place?

The States already own and maintain the highways and local transit projects that are inherently local. So why not let the Federal Government focus on interstates and let Oregonians plan, finance, and build their bike paths; San Franciscans their green energy transit experiments; and Texans their eight-lane expressways, in their own way, tailored to their local needs and their own local values? All we add to the process in Washington, DC, is unnecessary overhead and self- congratulating press releases, trying to take credit for it all.

Finally, many who admit that the status quo is unsustainable nonetheless support it because they believe their particular State benefits by receiving more money back from the highway trust fund than it puts in. Washington perpetuates the myth that transportation money is free, especially for these so-called net donee States. But as in every other middleman arrangement, the status quo policy ensures that States actually get less value back than they should.

Federal regulatory strings not only make infrastructure projects unnecessarily expensive, they specifically divert resources away from actual infrastructure and waste it on special interests and bureaucratic redtape.

The Federal Davis-Bacon Act, for instance, costs States an additional 10 cents for every single dollar they spend on infrastructure construction projects.

Numerous regulations under the National Environmental Policy Act--or NEPA, as it is frequently called--collectively cost State governments an additional 9 cents on the dollar. No wonder the trust fund needs to be bailed out every year. Washington is charging taxpayers a 20-percent processing fee off the top.

I encourage my colleagues to work out the math for their own States.

But for Utah, that means that of the $335 million we receive annually from the highway trust fund, nearly $64 million goes to political overhead instead of steel and concrete.

Everything in our economy and our society today is moving away from rigid, centralized, bureaucratic control and toward flexible, open- sourced community and individual empowerment. This is a simple question of old versus new, of bold versus unimaginative.

The Interstate Highway System met a crucial need in its time and represented a wonder of innovation, but so did Borders bookstores at one time, so did Blockbuster Video at one time, so did record stores, and so did rotary telephones.

America still needs books, movies, music, and communication, and it still gets those things. Today those goods are just delivered more efficiently, more affordably, through flexible models customized to the needs of individual customers. In the very same way Americans still need highways, bridges, subways, and bike paths. Indeed, we need them now more than ever, but Federal policy hasn't kept up with the times. That is why, even without my amendment, more than 30 States have begun or are considering their own transportation modernization programs.

This is just one more piece of evidence that the transportation renaissance America needs is one that our centralized bureaucratic status quo cannot deliver--not with another $10.8 billion or 10 times as much.

After six decades and historic successes, the time has come for a new Federal transportation policy--one that taps the creativity of our diverse Nation. Today, Americans are unnecessarily stuck in traffic, stuck in overcrowded subway cars, missing their kids' games and recitals, priced out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, and they spend almost a full 40-hour workweek per year stuck in gridlock. They deserve better than what Washington is offering--which is just the status quo, plus a little more money. A new era demands a new approach.

The Interstate Highway System is a success, and the people who created it deserve our great admiration and gratitude. But the way to honor their legacy is to stop imitating them and start emulating them by investing in an innovative transportation network for our own era, just as they did for theirs. Just as it was in 1956, the status quo is once again no longer good enough. We need to transcend it.

The future of America's mobility is not a rigid, monolithic, centralized bureaucracy frozen in amber; it is a flexible, organic, open-sourced network of empowered individuals and communities as diverse as the Nation itself.

My amendment would empower Americans to start to build that future together, and I respectfully ask my colleagues to support it.

Mr. President, I strongly, respectfully disagree with the characterization my distinguished colleague from California has made suggesting that this somehow represents an 80-

percent cut in the transportation funding. That simply is not true. The idea here is to transfer both the revenue collection authority and the spending authority back to where most of it belongs, which is at the State and the local level.

There isn't a State in the Union that wants to do away with transportation infrastructure spending. Quite to the contrary, our States and localities and those who assist the contractors, who provide the services, provide the gravel and other materials that go into these roads and bridges and transit projects--they want to get to work, but they want to put this money into steel and concrete in the ground rather than spending so much of it on lobbying, rather than spending so much of it on things that have nothing to do with steel and concrete in the ground.

I also wish to refer to something my colleague said with regard to the fact that it costs money to maintain the Interstate Highway System. I absolutely agree--I could not agree more--which is exactly why I wrote this amendment so as to retain a 3.7-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax that would be collected and spent better to make sure we would maintain the Interstate Highway System. That is exactly what we do.

A reference was made to my distinguished colleague from Oklahoma, Mr. Inhofe, expressing remorse over the fact that he is not here with us at this moment to have a discussion and wondering what he would say about it. To respond to my colleague's point, Senator Inhofe has voted for this provision in the past. In fact, in the past Senator Inhofe himself has introduced a version of this very piece of legislation.

My colleague also referred to groups that happen to oppose this legislation. I would encourage those groups to learn more about it and also point out that there are lots of groups that support my legislation, including Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Heritage Action, Club for Growth, National Taxpayers Freedom, Freedom Works, and the list goes on and on.

It is also important to remember that our Federal gasoline tax did increase substantially between 1992 and 1994, increased from just 4 cents per gallon to 18.4 cents per gallon. During that time period we were told that if the gasoline tax was increased at the Federal level, we would be backing up the highway trust fund, that we would make sure it was secure.

Did that happen? No. What happened instead was the Federal Government overreached. The Federal Government started getting more and more involved in surface streets and things that have nothing to do with our Interstate Highway System. That is why we are here today.

I therefore yield back the floor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

At the end of this month, States across the country will be forced to put road construction on hold if Congress cannot address the highway trust fund. At risk are hundreds of thousands of jobs in the construction industry.

A strong infrastructure is central to commerce, and at a time when millions of Americans are packing their bags to take a vacation or just traveling to work, we must ensure that projects can be completed so that the roads, bridges, and highways they travel on are modernized and safe.

The bill before us today, H.R. 5021, will provide enough funding to get us through May 21, 2015, giving States the ability to complete projects.

This bill is the only package with all provisions having a proven history of getting big bipartisan votes in both the House and the Senate. The three provisions--pension smoothing, custom user fees, and leaking underground storage tanks--have all been used previously in bills that received strong bipartisan votes.

Pension smoothing and LUST were included in the last bipartisan highway trust fund legislation. These are policies everyone is familiar with. They are policies that will provide the funding we need, and they are the only policies that will pass both the House and Senate in time to fund our highways after the end of this month.

A long-term solution would be my preference, and an important feature of my tax reform discussion draft would provide enough revenue to maintain the solvency of the highway trust fund for 8 years.

In the meantime, I hope all Members of Congress can work on a longer- term solution by the end of May next year. This won't be an easy task, so it is important that Congress has time to have a deliberative, open debate about bipartisan solutions, rather than trying to hit Americans who are already paying more for gas with a gas tax hike.

It is time to act now. State transportation departments have already started delaying or stopping certain highway projects to prepare for the fact that funding may fall short. Americans across the country deserve to see less gridlock on the roads and from their elected representatives.

These policies are straightforward and have a history of bipartisan, bicameral support.

I am encouraged that the White House issued their support for the House highway bill, so we have an opportunity to solve this problem today.

Mr. Speaker, I will enter into the Record the administration's statement of support.

Statement of Administration Policy

H.R. 5021--Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014

(Rep. Camp, R-Michigan, and Rep. Shuster, R-Pennsylvania, July 14,

2014)

With surface transportation funding running out and

hundreds of thousands of jobs

at risk later this summer, the Administration supports House

passage of H.R. 5021. This legislation would provide for

continuity of funding for the Highway Trust Fund during the

height of the summer construction season and keep Americans

at work repairing the Nation's crumbling roads, bridges, and

transit systems.

However, this legislation only provides a short-term fix to

the Highway Trust Fund. It does not address the continued

need to pass a long-term authorization bill that creates jobs

and provides certainty for cities, States, and businesses.

Congress should work to pass a long-term authorization bill

well before the expiration date set forth in H.R. 5021. The

President has been very clear that increasing investment in

the Nation's infrastructure is a top priority. That is why

the President laid out a vision for a 21st century surface

transportation infrastructure, the GROW AMERICA Act, which

would streamline project approval processes and implement

innovative transportation policies that will make better use

of taxpayer dollars while supporting millions of jobs and

positioning the Nation's economy for lasting growth. That

proposal is fully paid for through existing revenues and by

reforming business taxes to help create jobs and spur

investment while eliminating loopholes that reward companies

for moving profits overseas.

The Administration is focused every day on what can be done

to expand opportunity for every American. In today's economy,

that means building a first-class infrastructure that

attracts first-class jobs and takes American businesses'

goods all across the world.

We also have strong industry support in a letter to Congress from 62 organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, American Road and Transportation Builders Association, the American Trucking Association, and the National Association of Manufacturers, which stated, ``A long-term Federal commitment to prioritize and invest in our aging infrastructure and safety needs is essential to achieve this goal. Keeping the highway trust fund solvent is the first step.''

Mr. Speaker, I will enter their statement of support into the Record as well.

July 14, 2014

To Members of the U.S. Congress:

The undersigned organizations representing every sector of

the economy urge the House of Representatives and Senate to

pass bipartisan legislation that will stabilize the Highway

Trust Fund and prevent a shutdown of federal highway and

public transportation investments across the country.

Our transportation infrastructure network is the foundation

on which the nation's economy functions. American

manufacturers, industries and businesses depend on this

complex system to move people, products and services every

day of the year.

As the World Economic Forum (WEF) noted in its 2013-2014

Global Competitiveness Report, infrastructure connects

regions, integrates markets and provides access to markets

and services. While this latest report places the U.S.

economy fifth in its ``Global Competitiveness Index,''

America's infrastructure network now ranks 15th globally.

Shortchanging the Highway Trust Fund is not the path to

future economic growth, jobs and increased competitiveness.

The possibility of a deficient Highway Trust Fund that

shutters 100,000 construction projects that support 700,000

jobs and puts all new highway, bridge and public

transportation investments on hold will further harm an

already fragile economy.

The U.S. economy requires a surface transportation

infrastructure network that can keep pace with growing

demands. A long-term federal commitment to prioritize and

invest in our aging infrastructure and safety needs is

essential to achieve this goal. Keeping the Highway Trust

Fund solvent is the first step.

We urge Congress to avoid the immediate transportation

cliff and improve the long-term fiscal condition of the

Highway Trust Fund during 2014.

Sincerely,

National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of

Commerce, American Road & Transportation Builders

Association, Associated General Contractors of America,

National Retail Federation, American Trucking Association,

U.S. Travel Association, American Farm Bureau Federation,

Mothers Against Drunk Driving, NAACP, American Association of

State Highway and Transportation Officials, International

Union of Operating Engineers, American Society of Civil

Engineers, Laborers International Union of North America,

National Association of Development Organizations, NAIOP, the

Commercial Real Estate Development Association, American

Public Transportation Association, Airports Council

International--North America, Transportation for America,

Building America's Future.

Smart Growth America, Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance,

The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators,

Governors Highway Safety Association, American Highway Users

Alliance, American Public Works Association, American Council

of Engineering Companies, National Stone Sand and Gravel

Association, Transportation Intermediaries Association, The

American Society of Landscape Architects, American Iron and

Steel Institute, National Utility Contractors Association,

American Concrete Pipe Association, American Concrete

Pavement Association, National Ready Mixed Concrete

Association, National Asphalt Pavement Association, Truckload

Carriers Association, American Association of Airport

Executives, International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike

Association, Intelligent Transportation Society of America

(ITS America).

Safe Routes to School National Partnership, League of

American Bicyclists, Alliance for Biking & Walking,

Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals, National

Tank Truck Carriers, American Moving & Storage Association,

NATSO, representing America's Truckstops and Travel Plazas,

National Recreation and Park Association, Metropolitan

Planning Council (Chicago, IL), American Traffic Safety

Services Association, SMART--Transportation Division, Safe

Kids Worldwide, PeopleForBikes--Business Network, PolicyLink,

International Warehouse Logistics Association, The National

Industrial Transportation League, The Coalition for America's

Gateways and Trade Corridors, Association of Equipment

Manufacturers, Portland Cement Association, Associated

Equipment Distributors, National Electrical Contractors

Association National Electrical Manufacturers Association

(NEMA).

A ``yes'' vote will avoid a last-minute crisis. We also need to fund important highway projects and ensure that thousands of jobs are not at risk.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

In addition to the Statement of Administration Policy in support of the legislation which has been entered into the record, as well as a letter from 62 organizations in support of the legislation--including the American Trucking Association, American Farm Bureau, National Association of Manufacturers--I also have a letter from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is the world's largest business federation, which represents more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, is key voting this legislation and has written a separate letter in support of this bill.

I would enter into the Record the Chamber of Commerce letter regarding H.R. 5021.

Chamber of Commerce

of the United States of America,

Washington, DC, July 15, 2014.

To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: The

U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the world's largest business

federation representing the interests of more than three

million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as

well as state and local chambers and industry associations,

and dedicated to promoting, protecting and defending

America's free enterprise system, strongly urges you to vote

for H.R. 5021, the ``Highway and Transportation Funding Act

of 2014,'' which would extend federal surface transportation

programs and provide for a short-term solution for the

Highway Trust Fund (HTF) shortfall. By the end of July,

Congress must send to the President a measure that generates

the necessary cash flows to support continued outlays from

the HTF and affords much-needed continuity in the short-term

for economic development, international trade, and job

creation.

Then, it is imperative to immediately turn to identifying

and advancing a bipartisan, sustainable, and long-term

solution to the HTF that can achieve bicameral success. The

Chamber urges leaders of both parties to put politics aside

and come together on a shared solution to the HTF's

structural deficiencies. The user-supported HTF has been a

bipartisan compromise from its beginning. It is the offspring

of a Democratic-controlled House and Senate in the 84th

Congress and the Republican Eisenhower Administration. For 58

years the HTF has served America's transportation

infrastructure well and helped to create the world's largest

economy; however, its long-term solvency has been compromised

by a lack of action in both the legislative and executive

branches.

The Chamber recognizes action on a short-term HTF fix as an

important step and looks forward to working with you in the

months ahead on a long-lasting remedy for the Highway Trust

Fund. The Chamber urges the House to pass H.R. 5021, and may

include votes on, or in relation to, this bill in our annual

How They Voted Scorecard.

Sincerely,

R. Bruce Josten.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to submit for the Record a letter from the Associated General Contractors of America in support of H.R. 5021 and urging its passage.

The Associated General

Contractors of America,

Arlington, VA, July 15, 2014.

Re Support H.R. 5021, the Highway and Transportation Funding

Act of 2014

Hon. John Boehner,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Boehner: On behalf of the Associated

General Contractors of America (AGC), I urge you to support

H.R. 5021, the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of

2014.

The Highway Trust Fund is running on fumes. The United

States Department of Transportation (DOT) recently announced

they will initiate cash management procedures for programs

funded out of the Highway Account of the trust fund on August

1, 2014. This will force DOT to delay reimbursements to state

departments of transportation for projects under construction

or, in some cases, already completed. Further, if no

additional revenue is found, the trust fund will not be able

to support any new projects in 2015.

Bipartisan action is required to give states the funding

certainty they need to issue highway construction contracts

and to give the 10,000 construction firms engaged in highway,

road and bridge construction the confidence they need to make

hiring and capital investment decisions at the peak of the

summer highway construction season. Providing revenue for the

Highway Trust Fund will also guarantee the federal government

can meet its obligations to reimburse states for highway and

bridge construction projects already underway.

The looming insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund and the

lack of long-term authorization stifles the economic impact

of road construction. It undermines states' ability to best

plan and manage their highway, bridge and transit

construction programs It also stretches state budgets and may

increase their borrowing costs.

To that end, AGC urges the House to pass bipartisan

legislation that can provide the certainty states need to

make investment decisions and the industry needs to make

critical business decisions. Focus must then turn to finding

a bipartisan, bicameral solution this year to fund a multi-

year reauthorization of MAP-21.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey D. Shoaf,

Senior Executive Director,

Government Affairs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I would add to the gentleman from Alaska's remarks by saying the Ways and Means Committee proposed a tax reform discussion draft that actually funded the highway trust fund for 8 years. Now my friends on the other side would like to shorten this temporary measure, which goes through the end of May, to just go through the end of December, and that is wrong for a couple of reasons.

First, the Senate bill that is being considered has the same length of time as the current House bill, so that would be out of step with the direction that the Senate is trying to go. We are obviously trying to form a bipartisan, bicameral piece of legislation here.

The second is that, if we only were to pass this along for a few months, all of the problems that the Members on the other side talked about would only be made worse, that is, there would not be the ability to plan over the winter, for example, for spring construction projects. To just extend it for a few months, again, makes it so temporary and so short that you would immediately have companies, States, employers hedging their bets on whether funding is going to continue after that time.

The construction season isn't just in the good months of the year, it also goes through the winter, and that is why it is so important that we get through the end of May to June 1 to give the Congress time to really come up with a long-term solution, which clearly everyone prefers on both sides.

So with that, I urge support for the legislation and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. President, I call up amendment 3582 from the desk, and I ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to dispense with the reading.

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.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order with respect to H.R. 5021 be modified to allow for 2 minutes equally divided in the usual form between the votes and that all after the first vote be 10-minute votes, with all other provisions of the previous order remaining in effect.

Madam President, just for purposes of making a unanimous consent request, I ask unanimous consent that the only remaining time be 5 minutes each for the following Senators and the Senate then proceed to vote on the amendments and the bill as provided under the previous order: Senator Carper, Senator Flake, Senator Wyden, and Senator King. The unanimous consent request is for 5 minutes each, and then the votes.

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.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me the customary time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, today, we are considering the rule for H.R. 5021, the Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2014. While this bill provides an extension of Federal highway programs, frankly, our Nation deserves a long-term solution to support our transportation infrastructure needs that will allow for a more effective and efficient use of resources through public-private partnerships and long-term contracts. In effect, by engaging in short-term legislating, we are actually raising the cost of infrastructure projects across the country, making it less efficient rather than more than efficient.

Unfortunately, this bill is a closed rule, which I do not support. It limits debate. It doesn't allow Democrats or Republicans to come up with ideas for amendments to improve the bill. That should be what this legislative body is all about.

I have friends on both sides of the aisle who have ideas to make this more efficient, to save taxpayers money, and to get more infrastructure bang for their buck, ideas like a national infrastructure bank, a bipartisan bill by my colleague, Mr. Delaney, that would allow for lower-cost financing with locally driven infrastructure projects, at no taxpayer cost.

None of us are even allowed to discuss for not 10 minutes, not 1 minute, not a single moment, any amendments under this closed rule, and I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote ``no'' on this closed rule.

In 2012, Congress passed the Moving Ahead for Progress program that my colleague, Mr. Webster, mentioned, which reauthorized Federal surface transportation programs and maintained the solvency of the highway

trust fund through the end of September 2014.

That seemed like a little ways off at the time, but here we are in July of 2014, fast approaching insolvency of the trust fund in September of 2014. How inconvenient to members of the Republican Party that this might occur before an election. Suddenly, there is an impetus to do something about it, to actually address the issue or at least to kick the can down the road a few months until, conveniently, after the election when we actually have a national discussion about how to meet our infrastructure needs and to pay for them.

This bill is simply a very short-term highway trust fund patch. It only extends the highway programs through May 31, 2015, and transfers $10.8 billion to the highway trust fund.

As Transportation Secretary Foxx said, without a patch, tens of thousands of critical projects and 700,000 jobs will be jeopardized. In fact, States are already preparing to delay or halt ongoing projects if the funding runs out in September. My home State of Colorado alone has nearly 50 active construction projects that could be at risk if we don't pass some kind of patch.

But this approach is just another kick the can down the road approach, to have a national discussion about infrastructure, to encourage efficiency of our Federal dollars rather than forcing contractors to bid out higher amounts because of uncertainty about whether their contracts will be long-term or short-term.

There are several easy ways that we could pay for a long-term transportation fix. The simplest would be immigration reform. H.R. 15 would generate over $200 billion in the first 10 years and close to a trillion over 20 years that could be used to invest in infrastructure across our country.

Others have talked about using some kind of user fee. Traditionally, the gas tax has been used as a proxy for people who use our highways.

I am very disappointed that not only are we not considering any long- term solutions to reauthorizing MAP-21, but we are not even allowed to improve this current bill before us, not just to make it longer term, but to offer simple, efficient ideas to make it work better and get more bang for our buck.

Our Nation relies on Congress to pass measures that ensure that our roadways, bridges, and transit systems are the best in the world. This bill falls short on that account. The American Society of Civil Engineers has given our country's infrastructure a D-plus grade on its 2013 report. In this increasingly competitive global economy, a D-plus is not enough to get us by as a nation to create jobs and grow our economy.

My home State of Colorado has increasing transportation needs, as do many other States. In the wake of floods last September, rockslides, landslides, and mudslides caused damage to roadways and bridges in Colorado. Five hundred miles of roadway were affected at the peak of the flood and 120 bridges were damaged, resulting in over $500 million of additional repairs to our already beleaguered transportation infrastructure. While the Colorado Department of Transportation did an excellent job completing short-term fixes to get traffic moving, there remain many long-term projects along our canyons and roadways where we need permanent repairs to our roads. There simply isn't enough of an investment in this highway infrastructure bill to address our infrastructure needs.

Again, we don't necessarily need to spend more money. We can simply pass the Partnership to Build America Act--if it were allowed to be introduced as an amendment under this bill, I would be happy to--a bipartisan bill by Representative Delaney with 70 sponsors from both sides of the aisle that would essentially help finance locally driven projects to the tune of $750 billion at a low interest rate by allowing U.S. multinational companies who have tax-deferred profits oversees to bring back their earnings to the United States, where they can invest them in growing employment and infrastructure here. It is a win-win scenario. Yet under this closed amendment process, we are not even allowed to bring up this bill.

This measure falls short on a number of accounts. Its short-term nature makes the growing importance of public-private partnerships more difficult. And yet if we could simply amend this bill and improve it or make it longer term, we could finally have a discussion about our national infrastructure.

The House majority continues to have a closed process where bills are constructed and not allowed to be improved upon by Republicans or Democrats here in the House. I know that we can do better, and I encourage my colleagues to oppose this rule, bring down this rule so we can have an open process regarding transportation funding.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Butterfield).

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a leader on transportation issues.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire if the gentleman yielded back?

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Madam Speaker, if--or should I say when--we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will bring up legislation that will prevent employers from denying common birth control coverage to women, and it will fix the damage that has been done by the recent Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision. Now more than ever, it is critical to protect everyone's right to health services, including that of basic contraception.

To discuss our proposal, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy).

Madam Speaker, with due respect to my colleague from Florida, the gentleman is incorrect.

We have stated it and will offer the language on the previous question. So, as long as we can have the votes to defeat the previous question, we will be able to bring to the floor under the procedures of this body a bill that will ensure that women have access to contraception as part of basic health care. That is under the rules of this House--by defeating the previous question now being discussed and that I will offer--and we will be able to move forward on ensuring that women have access to comprehensive birth control.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Frankel).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a leader on the issue.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus).

Madam Speaker, I would like to inquire if the gentleman from Florida has any remaining speakers.

Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close. I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, this Congress seems committed to kicking the can down the road, avoiding discussions of real solutions, failing to solicit ideas from Members of both sides of the aisle to move our country forward, and just stumbling along.

I think we can do better as a Nation, and we need to do better with regard to our Nation's infrastructure.

Yes, this bill funds the highway trust fund until next May. That is important; but what happens after May 2015? Is that the magic month where we finally agree that we need to take long-term action to address our Nation's crumbling roads and bridges?

This Congress continues to manage self-imposed crisis to self-imposed crisis. That is no way to run a company. It is certainly no way to run a country.

As long as we kick the can down the road, we are reducing the certainty that developers and contractors need to plan for the future and increasing costs for taxpayers for supporting our existing infrastructure.

We are undercutting opportunities for public-private partnerships because of the lack of stability or even knowing when or if or in what form the highway trust fund will be funded in the future.

If we don't act to provide stability to the highway trust fund, we are not only putting our economy at risk, but the safety and well-being of all those who send us here as their representatives. It is not only a competitiveness issue. It is a safety issue for the American people.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

When we defeat the previous question, we can send our colleagues back to work with regard to infrastructure and a long-term solution and address an issue that my constituents have been writing me about and that American women and men across the country have been crying out for.

Contraception was a tremendous leap forward for women and for the American people. It empowers women to make the reproductive choices that make sense for them and their families. It reduces the number of abortions. It helps ensure that children are planned and well-raised, yet the recent Supreme Court decision throws into jeopardy the availability of contraception as a basic part of comprehensive health care.

By defeating the previous question, we can bring to the floor a simple bill that I strongly support that would remedy that and ensure that women have access to contraceptive choices as part of their basic health care and prevent us returning to the pre-contraception era.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.