Restoring Highway Trust Fund Balance

Floor Speech

RESTORING HIGHWAY TRUST FUND BALANCE -- (Senate - September 10, 2008)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. 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.

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