Infrastructure

Floor Speech

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, spring in Washington, DC, is one of
the most beautiful times of the year, as it is in Connecticut and
around the country. We have endured a tough winter in the Northeast--a
lot of snow and a lot of cold. And now a lot of potholes are all around
the country. Spring means potholes, which are endemic not only to the
Northeast but to our roads all around America. Potholes are just the
latest reminder of infrastructure challenges facing our Nation. That is
one reason why this week is, in fact, Infrastructure Week, a time when
we should be focusing on rail and roads, the decaying and aging
infrastructure that bedevils and hobbles our Nation as we seek to
compete globally. And our businesses in Connecticut seek to compete
nationally as well as globally.

This time of year is also the beginning of the construction season,
especially in the colder regions of the country, such as the Northeast
and Iowa, Nebraska, and the Midwest.

In Connecticut, construction workers are ready to go, ready to take
advantage of this chance to address our aging and decaying
transportation assets.

I know that trade is on our agenda this week. I urge and implore that
trade be set aside, that the trade bill be delayed--not forever, by any
means. As the leader of our caucus has urged--our leader Harry Reid has
implored that we focus on infrastructure. We face a deadline. May marks
the last month of MAP-21, the law governing surface transportation
funding. On May 31--just 20 days from now--the authorization governing
our highway trust fund will expire. That is right. There is a highway
cliff that we are just days away from going over. This Nation will go
over that cliff unless we act, and now is the moment. Now is the time.
Now is our opportunity, and it is an opportunity that will not excuse
us from acting.

The bill covers more than just funding. It is crucial to keeping our
roadways safe. Now, 2014 was a record year for auto recalls, auto
problems, and issues. So part of what needs to be done in addressing
the expiration of MAP-21 is to make safety a priority. But it cannot be
achieved if we don't address the fundamental challenges of our aging
infrastructure.

Fundamental reforms are needed at the NHTSA and other safety
watchdogs to make sure our constituents are safe. So one would think
now would be the time to discuss legislation that would fix our streets
and stop potholes from imperiling our drivers and put construction
workers back on the job, providing a lifeline to nearly 2 million
Americans who have jobs directly tied to the transportation sector.

One would think we would want to cut down on our unemployment. In the
construction sector, joblessness remains at a 10-percent level. You
would think that now is the time to be advancing a multiyear, long-term
bill that will provide certainty to States and municipalities so they
can finalize planning for long-term projects. You would think that now
is the time to take a hard look at our safety oversight agencies--
NHTSA, the FRA, the Federal Highway Administration--and to make reforms
and increase the tools that they have in fines and penalties they can
exact to protect all who rely on our transportation network.

Unfortunately, the approach of this Congress is going to be, as
engineers say, patch and pray. Patch the potholes, patch the roads,
patch the railroads--even when the tracks are cracked, even when
ballasts are failing. Patch the bridges. Patch and pray. We are about
to become a nation of patch and pray when it comes to decaying,
deficient roads, bridges, railroads, and all the vital nuts and bolts,
literally, that transport our Nation.

How ironic it is at this moment--when it is spring, when the
construction industry is about to rely on the opportunities it has to
put people back to work, and when many of us in this Chamber and others
at school commencements will be talking about the big ideas, the big
challenges, the big dreams and hopes that our graduates have for the
future--that we are thinking small. We are thinking about patching--
patching our highway transit fund for months, maybe until the end of
the year. A nation that patches and prays cannot be exceptional, cannot
be a great nation when it comes to shortchanging investments in the
vital facilities, in the nuts and bolts, in the roads and bridges that
make it a national competitor.

This kind of short-term extension of a highway and transit system
fails to match the challenges that our Nation faces. We spend less and
invest less as a percentage of our gross domestic product than many
other industrialized nations. Europe and China spend far more as a
percentage of their gross domestic product than we do.

So I call on the leadership, my good friends and colleagues on the
other side of the aisle, to make infrastructure our priority for this
week, as it should be for this decade. Within this decade, according to
some projections, one in four of our bridges will be 65 years or older,
making them even more prone to decay and disrepair.

The consequences are real and costly. Bridges collapse, such as the
50-year old Skagit River Bridge in Washington. The bridge collapsed
sending cars into the river below. That wasn't a remote bridge. It was
over Interstate 5, a major artery on the west coast. Of course, we all
remember the 2007 bridge collapse in Minneapolis. We remember the
Mianus River Bridge collapse in Connecticut, the Bridgeport derailment
due to decaying and cracking tracks that were improperly repaired. We
remember where lives were lost because of a derailment and the failure
to invest in train communication and signaling that could have
prevented that tragedy. We remember the railroad grade crossings where
insufficient investment in modern technology causes deaths all around
the country--hundreds of them every year--not to mention billions of
dollars due to these collisions, derailments, crashes on the roads,
costing lives and imperiling our Nation's future.

A short-term patch robs our States and municipalities of the
certainty they need to contract what is essential to construction at the lowest
possible cost in the most efficient way. The certainty and reliability
in funding are essential to our municipalities, knowing what their
resources will be not just this year but into the future and driving
the bargaining with contractors and subcontractors.

It is not just because of our rebuilding needs that we need this
investment. There are also many other significant related issues that
we must address to keep our roads and bridges safe and reliable. We
need to ensure that trucks on the road aren't too big, that truck
drivers have enough rest, that our railroads are properly overseen,
that constant train control is implemented, that testing for physical
and emotional problems is done regularly and reliably. And the long
list of NTSB regulations needs to be finally addressed and implemented.

We are in a time when we are talking to young men and women as they
graduate from school about those big ideas and about their futures and
dreams, when we invoke what is best and brightest about America, our
foresight, our strength, our courage to take risks, to invest in
ourselves and our future. It is the same spirit that led to the
building of the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad, and the
interstate highway system. Those initiatives were not partisan
initiatives. The greatest generation came back from World War II and
built the interstate highways under the leadership of President Dwight
Eisenhower. He was committed to making America one Nation in its roads,
tying us and binding us together as a Nation through that investment.
He had the courage--as we should today--to say that what is great about
America is what we give back, what we are willing to invest--not only
for today, but for tomorrow.

And we are in danger today in this Chamber, in this Nation, of being
one of the first generations that left a lesser America for our
children. Think of it--a lesser America at a time when the words
``exceptional'' and ``exceptionalism'' trip off the tongues of many of
our colleagues here in the Chamber. We need to match that rhetoric with
real action.

So today, let us resolve that we will debate and act on a long-term
investment program to make sure that our roads and bridges, our
railroads and airports, and the ports that could make our Nation the
envy of the world are matching our rhetoric and our goals; that they
truly make us competitive for businesses in Connecticut and around the
Nation, competitive on the global scene, where competition has never
been tougher and where our infrastructure needs to be better.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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