Unanimous Consent Request -- H. R. 6532

Floor Speech

UNANIMOUS-CONSENT REQUEST--H.R. 6532 -- (Senate - September 08, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for his leadership. I am not surprised that the Transportation Secretary for the Bush administration would call the majority leader and ask this be done. She came to us today. She stood over that bridge the day after it happened. When I was listening to my friend from New Hampshire talk about the fact that we need to continue funding our soldiers, of course, we need to do that. But for me, this is an issue of priorities. Why this administration would decide to spend $10 billion a month in Iraq month after month after month, so that this war has gone on longer than World War II, while we have bridges collapsing, while we have levees falling apart, defies reality.

When I heard the Senator from New Hampshire talk about soldiers on the frontline, which this Congress has been more supportive of than any other Congress for continuing that funding, for those people on the bridge that day in Minnesota, they were on the frontline. Those people who plummeted into that cold water that day were on the frontline. People died at that bridge. The NTSB has not concluded its investigation of the cause for the bridge collapse, but what we do know is, if it had been fixed earlier, if there had been appropriate funds all over this country for bridge and levee repairs, we may not have experienced some of the disasters we have seen. I view this not only as fixing a bridge that, by the way, is six blocks from my house--I drive over it every day with my daughter in the back seat, an eight-lane bridge that fell into the Mississippi River--it is also about going into the next century's transportation system.

If we are going to move to the next century in this economy, if we are going to start talking about transportation and wind and solar and doing things with biofuels and building our own energy future, we cannot be stuck in the last century's transportation system. As we face difficult economic times and look at the number in terms of what we can generate in jobs with transportation funding, it is a winner. I want to have an infrastructure plan and a stimulus package that lasts long after the rebate checks are cashed, that is looking to the future with infrastructure funding.

When Dwight D. Eisenhower created the interstate highway system, when President Roosevelt did the rural electrification system, they saw it as not only moving the economy forward, they saw it as a way to generate jobs. That is what this is about.

It is shortsighted, indeed, and shows a lack of understanding of the country's priorities to say that we should let transportation funding go down the pot while we are constructing bridges in Iraq and as bridges in Minnesota are falling apart.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

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