Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I came to Congress at the same time as Amo Houghton. I think Congress is diminished by his departure. He was a gentleman. He was a rare spirit who was willing to stand up for what he thought was right even when he had to confront leaders on the other side, whether it was his own party or leaders on our side of the aisle. He spoke from his conscience and I think represented his district well. I just had the pleasure and opportunity to be with him again last weekend with the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis) to do the reenactment of the March For Bloody Sunday over the Pettus Bridge; and as usual, Amo was there in heart and spirit, and it was wonderful to see him again. So I am wholeheartedly in support of this; and I think everyone will be in support of that. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to this amendment, but do not oppose the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute. If this is to close the debate, the important message to the American people is that this is an investment that will pave their way, smooth their way to work and on their errands, in taking their kids to school, and make the kids safer going to school. It will put their friends, their neighbors and themselves to work. It will improve the efficiency of the United States economy. And these are all jobs and all investments that will be made 100 percent American, here at home in the United States of America. I believe it resolves a lot of problems with our economy. It will put a lot of folks to work. Real jobs for real people on needed projects, investing their tax dollars in the way they were intended when they paid that tax at the pump. As the ranking member pointed out, it could be more. If we keep full faith with the American people, we should invest that money now and not hold it back to create illusory deficit offsets. It cannot be spent on anything else but transportation infrastructure. This is a good bill today. Hopefully, it will be a better bill tomorrow and when we come back, before the end of May with the conference from the Senate. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking Democrat on the full committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Olver) who is the ranking member of the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury and Independent Agencies.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown), a friend and colleague and senior member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Holden), a prominent member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Salazar), a new member of the committee who has already made his mark.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello), the next-most senior member on the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), a senior member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen), my colleague, a member of the committee and a neighbor to the north.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Bishop), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Millender-McDonald), an outstanding member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson), a member of the committee and a leader on transportation issues.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds. I have worked closely with my colleague from Florida and always enjoy working with him. I would be happy to go for a trillion dollars in this bill. And I think we could spend that money wisely and make the country more competitive. I can guarantee him, if we could get to a trillion dollars, we could get him back 99 cents or maybe even a dollar on a dollar. So I am hopeful that as we move through the process we can increase the amount of money, which will allow us to accommodate States like Florida and others who need investments just like everyone else in this country. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), the ranking member of the committee and a champion of all modes of transportation.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The chairman has done a good job of talking about the people who do the real work around here, which is the staff, with good direction from the Members, and the chairman of the committee and the subcommittee chairman and the direction that I and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) have attempted to provide in this endeavor. This, I believe, may be the signature accomplishment of this Congress, as it goes to positive accomplishments for the economy of the United States and domestic programs. The investment in this bill, investment of taxes, paid by the American people at the pump, we are not creating new deficit or debt here; we are spending their tax money in the way it was intended when it was collected from them when they tanked up their car or their commercial vehicle. For every billion dollars in this bill of investment, of mitigating congestion, of repairing cracked bridges, of resurfacing highways, for transit, for every billion we spend, the President's Department of Transportation estimates that it creates about 47,000 jobs, not just direct good-wage construction jobs, but jobs that spill over to the contractors, the small businesses that subcontract, the communities where the projects take place with the spending in those communities, with improvement in the movement of freight so trucks do not have to take lengthy detours, so the just-in-time delivery can work better for American businesses, putting people to work in companies that are more competitive. All of that flows from this $284 billion investment. In an ideal world, I would invest more and I believe that the chairman has a similar position on that, but we are constrained by current budget reality, and this is a good step to be taken by the House of Representatives; and hopefully, this will move the process out of limbo in the Senate. In the last Congress, we could have gotten this job done had the Senate followed the lead of the House. They did not. Hopefully, this time they will be more amenable to getting this bill done and getting it done long before the temporary extension expires at the end of May. Our departments of transportation across the country need certainty. Many of them are restricted legislatively or constitutionally from obligating funds into larger projects or projects that will go more than 1 year because we are in this series of temporary extensions of the Transportation Efficiency Act as we move toward TEA-LU. With the adoption of TEA-LU and the certainty that will come with that, we will see a whole lot of on-the-shelf, ready-to-go vital projects across America, that will put tens of thousands to work this next summer, move forward. But only if they get that certainty. It is estimated in the last year $2 billion of necessary spending, investment in roads, bridges, highways, transit projects was foregone because of this uncertainty. I mean, everyone knows we are going to make these investments, but at what level and over what period of time and with what constraints on the spending. So the States themselves need this. In my own State, we have a tremendous problem with cracked bridges on Interstate 5, and it is interfering with international commerce and interstate commerce, and we want to move ahead; but we need the certainty of this legislation, the investment in this legislation to do that. I see that the ranking member of the full committee has come in. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of the time on this side since I believe we will probably hear from the other side of the aisle.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States, despite confusion in the press, does not have a plan to ensure the long-term financial solvency of Social Security. His privatization plan would actually reduce Social Security's income and accelerate its financial problems. His privatization commission, which met a few years ago, did have some solutions to the financial solvency of Social Security. Generally, their preferred solution was to dramatically reduce future benefits, to change from wage indexing to price indexing, which means a young person who retires in 40 years would see generally a Social Security benefit reduced by 40 percent, far in excess of the predicted possible shortfalls that Social Security might have if we did nothing. Now the President says he has not recommended that. He has not recommended dramatic reductions in benefits; it is just on the table. He has also said increasing the retirement age is on the table, and it is already programmed to go up to 67 by 2020. We are going to have people 70 years old logging in the Oregon forests and working other back-breaking jobs across America. But he says that is just on the table. He has not recommended that yet. He did, in an encouraging manner, leave open the door a tiny bit to a fair solution, which would be lifting the cap on wages. Only people who earn less than $90,000 a year pay Social Security taxes on all their income. He left that door open. In fact, I have introduced a plan in the last 30 Congresses which would fully ensure the future of Social Security by lifting the cap, reducing taxes for those who earn less than $94,000, and people who earn more than $94,000 pay more in taxes. But that door was promptly slammed by the Republican leaders in Congress. No, they are not going to do that. That would benefit working people too much. So we are back to the point where the Republicans do not have a plan to ensure the financial security of Social Security. They do have a plan to make it worse, to carve out resources, to redirect income from Social Security into a privatization plan. Some people get excited when they hear privatization. They think: It is my money; I can do what I want with it. No. Here are the details. They are detailed in this proposal, very detailed. Wage earners can divert 4 percent, two-thirds of their contribution. They can divert it into government-chosen conservative, as the President says, index funds that will be managed by a company chosen by the government. You could not touch your money, could not borrow against it, like people in 401(k)s, or withdraw it early. The government would control the money until retirement, and then the government would compute a bill, and the bill would be how much your taxes would have earned in the Social Security trust fund plus inflation plus management fees, and they give you that bill. If investments did not do well, the wage earners might end up writing a check to the Federal Government when they retired. No privatization account for them. Other people who did pretty well will see they have to pay that money back to the government, and then the government will say your Social Security benefits are really low. This is the President's so-called privatization plan. The government would force, force people retiring to buy an annuity, to bring their Social Security benefit for their predicted lifetime up to the predicted poverty level. It would force people to do that. What a boon for the private insurance industry. Of course, these would not be guaranteed by anybody. You buy one of those plans. That insurance company goes broke. Sorry, you just lost everything. So instead of an assured benefit under Social Security, taxpayers would be purchasing a very expensive annuity that does not have survivor's benefits, is not indexed for inflation, unlike Social Security, but then very few people maybe, according to a Wall Street Journal article a couple of weeks ago, none of the people in all probability, but maybe a few would do even better, and they could keep that extra money. So we would undermine the guaranteed benefit indexed for cost of living with survivor's and disabilities benefits for all working Americans so maybe a few could do better, but the insurance companies could do a lot better. The brokers who manage the accounts could do a lot better, but other people would be left in the cold. And what about survivor and disabilities benefits? They cannot talk about that, because it is impossible. You are 18 years old. You go into the so-called optional account. You save every penny you are allowed to invest. At 24, you are tragically hurt in an accident. You are not capable of working for the rest of your life, and you can withdraw your $8,000 in your Social Security private account and live on that. No, you cannot. We need to deal with disability benefits, survivor's benefits and financial problems of Social Security, and the President has not done that with his so-called privatization plan.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, the debate over the future of Social Security is complex and confusing. Even the President seems to be a bit confused. His staged town halls have focused on privatization, which actually makes the finances of Social Security worse. On Saturday, the President talked falsely about the looming bankruptcy of Social Security. Worst case scenario, Social Security can only pay 75 to 80 percent of benefits starting in 40 to 50 years. Until yesterday, he has been proposing cutting benefits even more to save the system. But finally yesterday, he opened the door to lifting the cap on the tax, on wages which people pay. Right now if you earn over $90,000 a year, you do not pay any more Social Security tax. If you earn $900,000 a year, you pay the Social Security tax at one-tenth the rate of someone who earns $40,000. That is not fair. Lifting the cap would assure the solvency of Social Security for at least 75 years and potentially could give a tax break to everybody who earns less than $9,000 a year under a plan I proposed in the last Congress. Hopefully, the President will continue down the path of fixing Social Security first before we have a debate about other programs.