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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I come to the floor of the Senate this evening to urge Speaker Boehner and the House of Representatives to pass the bipartisan Senate highway jobs bill now. This is an important bill that would save or create nearly 3 million jobs with really a stroke of the President's pen.

From Washington in the Northwest, 33,700 jobs, to Rhode Island in the Northeast, 9,000 jobs in our small State, to Florida in the South, 81,700 jobs, this is the jobs bill on which we need to act.

Rhode Island would receive $227 million a year for highways, roads, and bridges from this bill, and that would hold us steady at funding this year's funding levels.

Rhode Island would also receive an additional $30.5 million each year for transit projects, which would be a 10-percent increase over this year's Federal aid.

Importantly, this bipartisan Senate bill that will be so good for jobs across this country includes language authorizing the Projects of National and Regional Significance Program. That will help fund critical infrastructure projects such as the Providence Viaduct. Where I 95, the main northeast highway corridor, comes through Rhode Island, it goes through our capital city, Providence, next to the Providence Place Mall, and it proceeds through Providence as a bridge. It is a big, long land bridge. Its condition is so poor that when you go underneath it, as you do to drive down and enter the back parking entrance of the mall, and you look up, you see that between the I-beams that support the highway have been laid planks. The planks are there to keep the highway that is falling in from landing on the cars that pass underneath the highway below.

If you look just to the side where Amtrak, the main rail corridor for the Northeast passes under the Viaduct, you see the same thing: Planks across the I-beams so the road that is falling in does not land on the trains as they pass or block the tracks.

It takes a program like the Projects of National and Regional Significance Program to address repairs of this magnitude, particularly in a small State like mine, which simply does not have the resources to repair a facility like that built in 1964.

The Senate bill would send significant funds to States to build badly needed projects like these. All of those projects not only repair crumbling, broken, and deteriorating infrastructure, but they put Americans back to work at a time when we still urgently need these jobs.

So we passed this bill in the Senate. We passed it with 74 votes, and another Senator making it 75, expressing that had he not been required to be at a funeral in his home State, he would have voted for it. So we have 75 votes on a bipartisan bill that spent, if I remember correctly, 5 weeks on the floor of this body getting amendments, bipartisan amendments, amendments of all kinds being worked on and improved to the point where it could pass out of this body with that kind of a majority--even in the contentious and partisan atmosphere that often prevails in Washington.

It is a good bill, it is a bipartisan bill, it is a highway bill, it is a jobs bill, and the House should move on it.

What have they done instead?

Well, the House Republicans initially proposed funding transportation programs with a 30-percent cut in existing transportation funding. That, obviously, would have been a disaster. It would have resulted in the loss of an estimated 600,000 jobs across the country. So, of course, it was overwhelmingly opposed by transportation advocates and by business groups.

The House Republicans then tried to introduce something called the American Energy and Infrastructure Jobs Act back at the end of January. This bill was so extreme and so flawed that it was even opposed by many House Republicans. It removed dedicated funding for transit programs and went after things like offshore drilling.

Transportation Secretary LaHood was a Republican Member of the House of Representatives himself for many years. He said about that House bill that it was ``the worst transportation bill I have ever seen'' and that it would ``take us back to the horse and buggy era.''

So with bipartisan opposition to this extreme, the worst bill that Secretary LaHood had ever seen, Speaker Boehner was forced to pull it, and that was that for that effort.

Then they spent months going after budget proposals that would reduce spending on our highways and on our bridges. Ultimately, they have thrown in the towel. They have no transportation bill in the House. They cannot get one up for a vote. So they have fallen back on trying to pass short-term extensions.

Well, first of all, that is not a great outcome for jobs and for the economy. According to the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, short-term extensions have had significant detrimental effects. These include delaying $80 million worth of projects, which equates to the loss of 1,000 job-years of work; delaying planning for needed safety and structural improvements of a $300 million to $400 million interchange that is in deplorable condition; delaying the advertising and awarding of the entire 2012 formula-funded construction program, which may cause the State to miss an entire construction season, putting the entire road construction industry out of work for that season; making long-range planning and the development of a sound State Transportation Improvement Program nearly impossible; and, last, jeopardizing the State's plans to design and construct the replacement of the Providence Viaduct I spoke about.

So the idea that an extension just carries on the status quo, it is more or less OK, it will not create harm, and it will not cost jobs is just plain dead wrong. There is job loss and there is economic loss associated with these extensions.

So how have they done on the extensions? Well, they have not even managed to pull themselves together to deal with the extensions. The House leadership has proposed 60-day extensions and 90-day extensions to the Federal transportation programs. Twice they have placed these proposals over on their calendar, but both times they have had to pull the proposals down because they do not have the votes.

So what do they have over there? They have no bill they can vote for. The bill they did put up was called one of the worst and most extreme transportation bills in history by a former Republican Congressman. They cannot get their act together to pass an extension. Even assuming it is not a bad idea to pass an extension for our economy, they still cannot do it, even as bad of an idea as that is. So they have nothing, and we are coming up on a deadline. On March 31, the authority to draw funds from the Highway Trust Fund runs out. So we are up against a pretty serious time constraint. As we whittle away to those last days, and as they get ready to leave the House and head home without having done their work on transportation, it is becoming more and more urgent that they take some action. If they cannot do a bill of their own, if they cannot pass a 90-day extension, if they cannot pass a 60-day extension, there is one obvious solution that is standing there as big as the proverbial rhinoceros in the living room; that is, pass the Senate highway transportation bill.

It is right there. It is ready to go. It could be on the President's desk in just days. It is bipartisan, with 75 votes in the Senate. It preserves these important programs and saves or creates nearly 3 million jobs in this country. The people of America understand that our highways, our roads, and bridges are important. They want us to go forward on this bill. This is not controversial. This should be easy.

So the House needs to take a look at where they are and make a hard decision.

They should not go home without addressing this problem and let us hit the deadline wall--particularly not with a good, solid, bipartisan Senate highway bill waiting to be taken up, waiting to be voted on, and waiting to be signed. All of the indications are that if the Senate highway bill were taken up by the House, it would pass overwhelmingly. Who would vote against a bill that creates 2.9 million jobs? Who would vote against a bill that maintains our highways, our roads, and our bridges? Who doesn't get it that in this country, our highway, bridge, and road infrastructure is in terrible shape? We understand this. The Nation's civil engineers have given our infrastructure near-failing grades in these areas. Other countries spend 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 percent of their gross domestic product on infrastructure, keeping it right, knowing it helps grow their economy. We are down below that.

It is very unfortunate that the House at this point cannot sort itself out to come up with its own transportation bill, cannot sort itself out to pass an extension--they cannot even do that. A deadline is coming at them that is nonnegotiable. Ideology, partisanship, rhetoric--all of those things don't matter against the hard deadline they are driving this country toward. I hope and urge that they take up the Senate Transportation bill, put it to a vote, let's get going, let's put 2.9 million people to work rebuilding our roads and highways, and let's get America moving and working again.

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

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