Phil Gramm

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I will get to the point because I'm basically trying to answer questions the Senator raised. Let me go back to his made-up example. Currently, every taxpayer in America who pays gasoline taxes is basically being cheated out of 25 cents on the dollar on average of what they pay in because it says right on the pump the money is going for highways and it's not. This amendment, over a 6-year period, eliminates that problem. The Senator from Michigan is saying if Michigan taxpayers now paying 4.3 cents per gallon are currently paying $110 million in gasoline taxes in that tax, what if this amendment only gives Michigan $100 million to build roads from this 4.3 cents per gallon. It seems to me you don't have to have studied high mathematics to understand that Michigan is a lot better off getting $100 million of the $110 million than they were getting zero from the $110 million. When you look at the formula, because of the makeup of the National Highway System, there are many States that will not get every penny of it back to their State but they are going to be substantially better off than they are now and a tremendous amount of the underlying inequity will be fixed. That is the first point I wanted to make. The second point I want to make is in terms of offsets, where we are going to cut other programs to pay for this, that we are going to decide those offsets in the budget. Every Member of the Senate will have an opportunity to vote on that. Before we weep too much about the offsets, I go back to my example of the rustler who has been stealing our cattle by taking 25 cents out of every $1 in gasoline tax and spending it on something else. It may be that in the process someone discovers that this rustler actually gave money to the First Baptist Church, but are we going to argue that we don't want to stop rustling because a rustler contributed money when the plate was passed at the First Baptist Church? The point is, we have to take the money away. That money should never have been there in the first place. This money should have been spent on roads from the beginning. Finally, before I yield to the Senator, and I will be happy to do it or yield the floor and let him have the floor, what I will try to do not just for the Senator from Michigan but for all of our colleagues, I will try to explain some of the logic of the underlying bill. I'm not on the committee but I have studied the thing and understand it so that Senator Byrd and I could write our amendment with Senator Baucus and Senator Warner, so, in fact, I find myself in possession of information that I never wanted to have to begin with but I think it is relevant to this whole debate. I don't think people really understand how the highway program works. Maybe as one who is a new possessor of this knowledge, I find it really reflects on this whole problem we are dealing with. Let me try to very briefly deviate from my background as a schoolteacher, and be brief. Let me try to run through it and then explain the games that people can play if they chose to. Since the beginning of our highway program, we have had a general rule of thumb, and that has been a division of money from the highway trust fund. That portion that goes to highways has gone into two pots. One pot is money that is available nationally under an account that is overseen by the Secretary of Transportation and the National Highway Administration, and that has normally been roughly 10 or 11 percent, total. That has focused on individual priorities and a series of concerns that have not generally been dealt with by the allocation to the States. The other 90 percent has gone to the States. This is not a new invention with this bill. It has been true in every highway bill that we have had. It is true in this bill. Now, I could personally go through this bill and take the 10 percent of items that will be funded under the national account and say there are a lot of these programs that I am not for. I don't want to create sadness by talking about what they are, but the point is, since they deal with concerns for a big country, and Texas is one piece of it--the most important piece, the largest piece--and shares more interest in common with the country because we have more diversity than anybody else, it is true that we have money for building roads on public lands. We are blessed in Texas in that we were a country first so we have virtually no public lands. We never thought it made sense when we came into the Union to have the United States own our State. So we will get virtually no money out of the account that is available for building highways on public lands. It is a little over $1 billion, if my memory serves me right. Now, I could stand up here and say, ``Look, Texas has got no public lands to speak of. We are not going to get a penny out of that $1 billion.'' The point being, like the distinguished Presiding Officer who is from a Western State, he didn't choose to have the Federal Government own a huge chunk of his State. Probably over half the land in his State is owned by the Federal Government. I feel sorry for him. I don't think it is right. I would like to see some of that land back in private hands, I say to the Presiding Officer. The point is that is part of a national system. The Presiding Officer can't help it that the Federal Government owns over half of his State. So, to adjust, in the 10 percent of the bill, we have a whooping $1 billion that his State will benefit from, and my State won't benefit. We won't get any of the money. Now, I could do a chart that says you eliminate that program for funds to be spent on public lands and I could show Texas gets more money. I can show that Virginia gets more money. We have money in here for roads on Indian reservations. We had the most bitter part of the Indian wars in my State. We had Apaches and Comanches raiding our capital in the 1870s. We have only a couple of tiny, little Indian reservations in Texas. Oklahoma has vast quantities, as does Arizona. Now, I could stand up here and say, well, look, by building roads on Indian reservations, you are not doing anything for Texas. I could take that billion dollars for roads on Indian reservations in the 10 percent national account in the bill--I could strip it out and say, look, you distribute it to all the States, and every State will gain. In fact, you would probably get 40 of the 50 States in the Union that would gain if you did that. But is that how you write a national highway bill? So the point I am making is that to single out parts of the 10 percent and say that if we eliminated them, we could have more to give the States, look, if I were writing the highway bill by myself, I would not even have the 10 percent. I would give all of it to the States. But I am not writing the highway bill by myself. What I am trying to explain to people is that when you are singling out programs like the Appalachian Regional Highway Program, you are singling out a program that has been in every highway bill since 1965. The money that is being provided is actually a smaller percentage of the overall bill than President Clinton requested. The amount of money being provided is a smaller percent than was spent under the last highway bill, when you add up all the expenditures. This is a program that became the law of the land in 1965. The program is on the verge of moving toward completion. You can single it out if you want to, but how is it less meritorious than building roads on public lands? How is it less meritorious than building roads on Indian reservations? It's part of a series of national priorities. Now, in case you don't know much about geography, Texas is not part of Appalachia. My State doesn't benefit one bit from that provision. But the point is, it has been part of every program since 1965, and it is part of this 10 percent overhead to deal with specific programs. So if we could go back and reinvent the world, change the whole highway system, this logic would make sense. But I think singling out a couple of programs when there are many others that are more vulnerable--and we can all play this game--in the end you don't have a highway bill. Let me say, in terms of density, that I don't have to read very well to see that Texas, which has 3 of the 10 largest cities in the country, does not benefit a nickel--not a penny--from this density thing. Where did this density thing come from? First of all, I am not accepting any responsibility. I am not on the committee. I would love to take it out. But what is it trying to do? Well, the old highway bill was written under the 1980 census, which was outrageous. It happened because the House has been, until the last reapportionment, dominated by the East and Midwest. All of our formulas are rigged to take money away from the South and the West and give it to the East and the Midwest. We all know it. We are beginning to fix it with this highway bill. But as a result of getting rid of the 1980 census, which is only 18 years old, by doing that we are going to have some States that are substantial losers, and our colleagues are going to have to go back to their States and say that in the highway bill we really got a dramatic change relative to the old bill, basically because people voted with their feet to move off to California, Texas, Virginia and Georgia. What this whole density provision is about is trying to cushion the blow to those States. So I could offer an amendment--as apparently is being contemplated by others--to say, strike this density provision. Let me look here before I say that. Virginia gets nothing out of the density provision. I will mention one more. Rhode Island gets nothing from the density provision. So we could offer an amendment to strike the density provision and give that money to other States, and we could show that 40 States of the Union benefit and only 10 or 15 lose. But the purpose was to write a bill that every State in the Union can live with, and where people, in good conscience, can go home and say that given where we are, given the growth pattern of the country, we did as well as we could expect to have done, given what has happened to the population in the country and the movement of population. So I want to urge my colleagues to understand that we have always had a division of roughly 90-10 in the funds for national priorities and to the States. I wish we had no 10 percent, but we do, and we always have. Singling out specific programs is simply not fair when we look at the other programs, whether it's building roads on Indian lands or public lands, simply because we have no Indian lands in our State, or we have no public lands to speak of in our State. We need to understand what a national highway bill is about is dealing with those things. I want to conclude by going back to ARC. I know more about ARC than I ever started out wanting to know, given that I am not from there. But I have had the privilege, in the last year, of working with a man who is very much committed to Appalachia. When Senator Byrd was born in Appalachia, it was a big red letter banner day for Appalachia and for West Virginia. He cares about this program intensely. So people look at this and say that is a good and ready target. There are only 13 States in Appalachia, and that means there are 26 Senators. Again, when you take 100 and subtract 26, you get more than a majority. I want to be sure that everybody understands the following points: No. 1. Appalachia has been part of the national section of this bill, in one form or another, since 1965. I guess Senator Byrd was the only person who was here in 1965 and who voted for it, but it passed and it's the law of the land. No. 2. We have a smaller percentage of the amount of money we are spending in this bill going to Appalachia than the President asked for. We have a smaller percentage of this bill going to Appalachia than was actually funded over the last 6 years as a result of the appropriations process and the old bill, and so anybody who thinks that this is some new program that has been put into this bill, that is providing money that was not there over the last 30 years, or that somehow it is providing more money as a percentage of the bill than we had in the past, is simply wrong. I urge my colleagues, if you are going to single out one little program, remember that everybody can play this game, whether it's Indian land roadbuilding or public land roadbuilding, or 25 other categories; we can each pick some part of the bill that does not benefit our State and we can try to take that part away to add money to the formula. But the truth is that this roughly 90-10 formula has been in place throughout the whole history of the highway bill, and, in fact, if you knocked out this program and didn't change the makeup of the highway bill, the Secretary of Transportation would decide where the money is spent and would probably spend it on exactly the same thing. So I wanted our colleagues to understand how the bill is made up, and I think that, other than the handful of people on the committee, people don't know. So it looks like some giant conspiracy against them when, in fact, if you look at the totality of it, it makes sense. Since we all resent deals we are not part of--I certainly do--these deals they put together in committee look mysterious. But I think if you understand how the bill has evolved over the last 30 years and how it is made up, it is pretty reasonable, again, for the kind of work we are doing. I wasn't trying to get into a debate with the Senator from Michigan. I am from a big-time donor State. My State, under the old highway bill, got back 77 cents out of every dollar. We are going to get back 91 cents out of every dollar in this bill, and I rejoice. It is progress. In the future, when we build a vast North-South interstate system to go with our East-West system, maybe in the next highway bill, people will be standing here saying that Texas is getting back $2.12 for every dollar, because now you are building these interstates from Lubbock to Texarkana. The point is, that is what a National Highway System is about. When it works in our favor, we are all quiet about it, hoping nobody notices. When it works against us, we scream to the heavens. That is how the system works. I would be happy to yield the floor and let the Senator from Michigan speak, or answer a question. I didn't want to stop in the middle of my analogy, knowing how clever the Senator from Michigan was, knowing he would destroy it outright.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the distinguished Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Listening to the Senator talk about eliminating the tremendous inequity in the 1991 bill, I think it would behoove every Member of the Senate, when they are looking at how well off they are under your bill with our amendment, to look at how they did in 1991 and see that each of the inequities that we chafe under are far diminished under your bill and, of course, knowing you represent Virginia, and listening to the fact that on the old highway bill you were sitting in the back room in obscurity and silence, and now you speak with such great clarity, it reminds me of the old saying in the part of the country we are from, which is, ``Save your Confederate money, boys, the South will rise again.''

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me ask Senator Chafee a question. Did Senator Chafee want to outline the agreement we have reached? Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. GRAMM. Twenty-six.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further proceedings under the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I wanted to come to the floor this afternoon to talk about an agreement that has been reached with regard to the highway bill, to talk about where we are and what the highway bill is going to look like, and, obviously as each of us will do, I want to talk about the impact on my own State of this very important agreement. Let me give people a little history to sort of define how we came to the moment of reaching this agreement. First of all, last year in the tax bill I offered an amendment to take the 4.3-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline that had, under the 1991 budget agreement, gone into general revenue and been spent. It was the first tax on gasoline since we had the Highway Trust Fund that went to general Government. What my amendment in the tax bill last year did was it took that 4.3-cent-per- gallon tax on gasoline and took the money away from general revenue and put it back into the trust fund where it belonged. All over America, when Americans go to the gas pump and put that nozzle into their tank and pump gas, right on the gasoline pump it says there is bad news and there is good news. The bad news is that roughly a third of the price of a gallon of gasoline is taxes; the good news is that the money goes to build roads. The only problem is, prior to today the good news was not true. Between 25 cents and 30 cents out of every dollar of gasoline taxes was being siphoned off to spend on things other than roads. We have reached an agreement today that will, over the next 6 years, end that process. We have reached an agreement today that will guarantee that over the next 6 years every penny collected in the 4.3-cent-per-gallon tax on gasoline will go to build roads and only to build roads. What that will mean is that we will raise the total level of spending in the bill that is before the Senate, in terms of committed obligations, by $26 billion. For people who are trying to figure out what that means to them and their State, let me give you a couple of numbers. That will mean that over this 6-year highway bill, we will spend on roads roughly 45 percent more than we spent in ISTEA, our previous highway bill. For my State, because of the leadership of the chairman of this committee, Senator Chafee, in trying to eliminate the unfairness to donor States, when you combine the new funds that are available with the fact that under the Chafee bill donor States will receive a minimum of 91 cents out of every dollar they send to Washington in gasoline tax back to their States, what it will mean is that my State will, under the new bill, receive 54 percent more funding than it received under the last bill. That, in Texas, will mean an opportunity to rebuild our crumbling highway system. We have 31,000 miles of substandard highways. We have tens of thousands of substandard bridges. That 54 percent increase in funding for Texas will mean our ability to improve our highways. It will mean that thousands of people who are dying because of poor roads won't die. It will mean an improved infrastructure that will mean more jobs, more growth, more opportunity all over the country. It will mean that people will spend less time in traffic and, obviously, have the opportunity to spend more time at work or more time with their families or more time doing what they choose to do. So, I believe that this is a major step forward. It is a step forward in terms of building roads. It is a step forward in people seeing the Government do what they believed it has committed to do. Now that we have all the gasoline taxes going into the highway trust fund, we will, under this bill, for the first time, be in a position to say to people that every penny we are collecting in gasoline taxes under this bill will be spent on highways; that money will not be siphoned off to pay for other programs; that we will not use the trust fund as a slush fund for other forms of Government spending; and that when Americans pay gasoline taxes, the bad news is, a third of the cost of a gallon of gasoline in America is taxes, but the good news will be that, for the first time in a long time, every penny of those taxes will end up being spent on roads. I believe that is a very good piece of news. Finally, let me say there is one additional piece of good news that I think every Member should understand, and that is this agreement does not bust the budget. We have agreed to use the gasoline tax to fund highways and only to fund highways for that portion that goes to roads. And we have agreed that in writing a budget, we will offset this dollar for dollar, so that we will not bust the spending cap. I hope that the House will decide to do it this way as well and that we will have an opportunity to use gasoline taxes, that portion that goes to highway construction in the highway trust fund, for roads and only for roads. So I thank the majority leader. I thank Senator Chafee, Senator Baucus and Senator Warner. I thank Senator Byrd for his leadership. I believe that this amendment, which is now scheduled to come up tomorrow, will be adopted by an overwhelming vote. I believe, based on that vote, that 85 or 90 percent of the pending amendments will go away. I believe it will put us on the road to passing a highway bill that will benefit everybody in America, and we are doing it the way families make decisions about priorities. We are doing it by deciding that this is a high priority. We collected the tax for the purpose of building roads, and we are going to build roads with those taxes, and we are going to pay for it by not spending as much on other things. It seems to me that this is a rare example of Government really working the way people believe it should. I congratulate everyone involved. I yield the floor. Mr. CHAFEE addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, over one year ago the distinguished Senator from West Virginia and I got together to talk about a real problem in America related to highway funding. It is a problem of priorities and it is a problem of basic honesty in Government. The problem of priorities is that we have a crumbling transportation infrastructure in America. My State has 31,000 miles of highways that are substandard. We built our farm-to-market system in the 1930s, and those roads had a life of about 30 years. That life basically ended in 1960, yet we are still using those roads today. Our newest highways in Texas, our Interstate System, were built in the 1950s and 1960s, and it is approaching the end of its life. This is not just a problem in Texas; it is a problem all over America. That is the priority problem that Senator Byrd and I are concerned about. The fairness problem, the honesty problem, is that when Americans all over the country go to the filling station and stick that nozzle in the tank of their car or truck, and pump gas, they read right on the sign on the gas pump, that about a third of the cost of a gallon of gasoline is taxes, but the tax goes to build highways. The problem that Senator Byrd and I started working on a year ago, was that that statement is not true. In fact, since the late 1980s, we have been collecting money in gasoline taxes and spending the money on other things. Then starting in 1993, the diversion got as big as about 30 cents on the dollar. Senator Byrd and I worked together last year on the tax bill where I offered an amendment in committee to guarantee that every penny of the gasoline tax went into the highway trust fund. We offered a sense-of- the-Senate resolution last year on the budget saying that it is the sense of the Senate that the money ought to go into the trust fund and it should be spent on highways. Eighty-three Members of the Senate voted for that amendment, and it is now the law of the land that all gasoline taxes go into the trust fund. What Senator Byrd and I have been working to do is guarantee that the money is spent on highways. We are in the process now of looking at the highway bill coming up perhaps as soon as tomorrow. Senator Byrd and I have been pushing to deal with the highway bill since this session started, so we rejoice at that, and we want to thank the majority leader for moving ahead on this issue before current highway funds expire on May 1. Our position in principle is simple, straightforward, and is not going to change. And that is, we are not asking that the money that has been diverted out of the trust fund in the past be given back to us. While we have every right to ask for that, we are not asking for it. We are not even asking that interest on the trust fund be spent, though it should be. We are asking for something much less demanding. If the American people had a vote on this, our amendment would receive an overwhelming majority. All we are saying is, from this day forward, the amount of new money coming into the trust fund ought to be spent on highways. Not that it be promised to be spent, not that there be obligations that it be spent in the sweet by-and-by, some time between now and the second coming, but that it actually be spent where the dollars actually go to the States and where the States actually pour the concrete and lay the asphalt. That is our position, and we are in the process now of trying to work out an agreement. That is how the democratic process works. But today we want to thank the 53 cosponsors we have. We would like to have more. If Members have not signed on, we could be on this bill tomorrow and you have one more opportunity to have your name on this list. When you get to the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter will look down at this bill and see your name on it as a cosponsor if you sign on today. As of tomorrow, it will be too late. I think if the Lord struck Ananias dead, in the Book of Acts, for claiming he was selling his worldly goods and giving them to the church--not only struck him dead but also struck Sapphira, his wife, dead, too--then maybe there are Members who will want their names on this list. We are going to tell the American people the truth, that if they pay gasoline taxes, that those gasoline taxes are going to be used for the purpose of building highways, and only to build highways. So we are grateful for the 53 cosponsors we have, but we would like to have more. We have one more day. We hope there will be an agreement. But if there is not an agreement, we are going to be fighting for this principle. I believe we are going to be fighting successfully. The principle is, when you tell people the money is going into the trust fund to be spent on highways, do not spend it on anything else; spend it on highways. It is a simple principle and one we think people understand. The most important principles are simple principles. So I thank Senator Byrd for his leadership. I thank him for giving me this opportunity to speak before he did. Thank you.

Mr. GRAMM. I thank the Senator.

Mr. GRAMM. That is the difference it makes if you don't divert the gasoline tax to other uses; but you, instead, spend it for the purpose that it is collected.

Mr. GRAMM. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. Not only does our amendment provide that every State would have an increase, but the amount is roughly 25 percent. By requiring the Government to live up to the commitment it makes when it collects the tax, to spend the appropriate share on highways, what our amendment would do in essence is guarantee that every State in the Union relative to the bill as it now is written would get approximately 25 percent more.

Mr. GRAMM. Yes.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I think 5 minutes would be sufficient.

Mr. GRAMM. Would the distinguished Senator amend his unanimous consent request to include that I might have 5 minutes at the conclusion of his remarks?

Mr. GRAMM. Would the distinguished Senator yield?

Mr. GRAMM. I will listen to the distinguished Senator from West Virginia. At the conclusion of his speech--would he like me to go ahead and speak?

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I believe I reserved a block of time.

Mr. GRAMM. Let me say to my dear colleague I will not take all of that time.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. I thank my dear colleague from Colorado for adding to my comments.

Mr. GRAMM. I am happy to yield.

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to speak on on two topics. The first is that our dear friend and colleague, Congressman Sam Johnson, one of America's great warriors and one of America's great individuals, came home from Hanoi 25 years ago today, having been held as a prisoner of war for almost 7 years. Sam grew up in Dallas. He graduated from Southern Methodist University. He went into the Air Force. He became one of the great pilots in the postwar period. He commanded the Top Gun school. He was a Thunderbird. In fact, Senator McCain loves to tell the story about the time when he and Sam were campaigning together in Texas--as all of you know, Senator McCain was a great aviator in his own right and a great warrior and a real American hero--and he loves to tell the story when he and Sam were on a plane riding in the back and they came in pretty fast, and Sam calmly turned to Senator McCain and said, ``We're going to run off the runway.'' Senator McCain said, ``What makes you think so?'' just as they hit the railing and went off the runway. The point being that Sam Johnson was a great aviator. He was flying a mission over North Vietnam. He was shot down. He was taken to prison in Hanoi. The North Vietnamese correctly concluded that he was a diehard and a recalcitrant, so they put him in solitary confinement year after year, basically a dugout, a little dungeon. After 7 years in prison, enduring almost unbelievable hardship, he came home 25 years ago. Now, the remarkable thing about all this is not all the medals that Sam Johnson won. We honor those and we should. It is not really the hardship that he endured, though I doubt many of us would be capable of doing it. But what is remarkable to me is that after 7 years in a dungeon in Hanoi, Sam Johnson came home and started his life again. He never complained about the 7 years he lost. You never see him that he doesn't have a smile on his face. He is a sweet, gentle, loving man. It is remarkable to me that somebody could go through 7 years of that kind of hardship--hunger, exhaustion, fear, physical and mental abuse--and yet come back home and be all the things that Sam Johnson is. I wanted, on this 25th anniversary of the day that he came home to America, to stand on the floor of the Senate today and say to our colleague, Congressman Sam Johnson, that we are proud of him and that we are proud to associate with him. For most of us, the highest credential we are ever going to have other than being members of our family and being associated with our kinfolks is that we served in Congress. Many of us get whatever stature we might have from the position we hold, a position that was given to us in trust by the voter. But Sam Johnson is one of those rare people who brought stature to Congress with him when he came. He is a wonderful man. I love Sam Johnson. I think in an era where there are a lot of people who kind of think politicians don't represent the best that America has to offer, that somehow politicians aren't exactly the kind of people you want your children to grow up to be, I ask them to look at Congressman Sam Johnson. He is the kind of person I want my sons to grow up to be. On this very special day for him, 25 years ago coming home to America, being set free in Hanoi, I wanted to congratulate Sam and thank him not just for the service he provided during 29 years in the Air Force, not just for 7 years in a dungeon in North Vietnam, but I want to thank him for the service he is providing for America today. We appreciate that. I am very proud to have him as one of my Congressman representing me and my State. I am also proud to have him as a friend.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, let me turn to my final subject today. As all Members of the Senate know, Senator Byrd and I have embarked on what for us is a crusade. It is a crusade to try to force the Federal Government to live up to the commitment that it makes to Americans when they go to the gas pump and fill up their car or truck and pay about a third of the cost of a gallon of gasoline in taxes, and they are told the taxes are being used to build roads, that this is a user fee tax where the money is dedicated to road construction. As those of us who serve in Congress, as those who follow these matters very closely know, that commitment is not being fulfilled. Between 25 and 30 cents out of every dollar of gasoline tax that is paid by American motorists goes not for transportation needs, not to new roads, but instead is spent on everything but highway construction. This is a diversion of funds that violates the commitment that we have made to American taxpayers. At a time when many Americans this morning got up and drove to work and waited in what seemed to be endless lines of congestion, when people drove over potholes that were dangerous and, in some cases, caused damage to their car, and when people endured unsafe conditions. There are 31,000 miles of road in my State that are substandard. We have thousands of bridges that are structurally unsound. I think people are rightly outraged when they discover that over 25 cents out of every dollar they paid in gasoline taxes, which they thought was going to highway construction, is in fact being spent on other things in Government. Senator Byrd and I now have 54 cosponsors on our bill, with the objective of trying to force the Government to live up to the commitment it makes to the American people and require that when money is collected in gasoline taxes for the purpose of building roads, that that money actually be spent for that purpose. Now, many of the things that we work on here have an effect, but after a long period of time, from the time that the actual work is done, and often especially when you are working on big issues that affect economic growth and inflation, it's hard to sort of pinpoint the positive impact on it. But if we can bring up the new highway bill and pass the Byrd-Gramm amendment, on May 2 States across America will get roughly a 25 percent increase in the amount of money that is available to fill up these potholes, to build new roads, to modernize the existing system, to reduce the delays and traffic jams and hazards that we all face on the road every day, and do it by taking the money away from all the programs that never should have gotten the highway money to begin with and spending the money for the purpose that it is being collected. Senator Byrd and I, all week, have reminded our colleagues that we are running out of time. The highway bill expires on May 1. And all over America today, States are beginning to cancel contracts. Michigan canceled a major contract yesterday. We are having employees notified by highway builders that they are going to be laid off as of the 1st of May when this highway bill expires. Senator Byrd and I want to move on with this issue, bring it up. If people want to vote no, if they want to continue to take highway trust fund money collected in gasoline taxes, where we tell people the money is being spent for roads but where we spend it on something else, if people want to vote to continue that diversion, they have the right to vote for that. But 54 Members of the Senate have already said that they want to change it. So I urge our leadership to bring up this bill and give us an opportunity to let the Senate work its will. It is very important that we not let the highway bill expire. It is very important that we get on with highway construction, which the country desperately needs. I also believe it is important, especially in this era of cynicism about Government that when we tell people that money is being collected in gasoline taxes, to go into a highway trust fund to be spent on roads, that that money be spent on roads, that it not be spent on other things. Fundamentally, that is what this issue is about. So I am hopeful that in the week when we come back--we are going on recess, perhaps tonight, and we will be back a week from this coming Monday--that we are going to be able to bring up the highway bill and let people decide where they stand on this issue. And let me, as a final point, say that the Byrd-Gramm amendment does not bust the budget. The Byrd-Gramm amendment does not raise the spending caps. But what it does do is say that all these other programs that have been beneficiaries from the piracy that has occurred in the highway trust fund are going to have to give up that money so that it can be spent on roads. Now, I know some of our colleagues have said: Great, if you spend this money on roads, we were planning to spend it otherwise. I have likened their attitude to a cattle rustler who steals your cattle and you come out and you arrest him and you catch him red-handed stealing your cattle, and his only response is, ``OK, so you make me stop stealing your cattle, but where am I going to get my beef?'' Well, that's not my problem. What we are talking about is doing what we tell people we are doing. So I'm not saying the programs that have pirated the trust fund aren't, in some cases, worthy. In some cases they are not worthy, but in other cases they are very worthy. The point is that we collected the money to build roads, not to pay dues to the U.N.; we didn't collect money to pay for Legal Services Corporation; we didn't collect the money to use in welfare; we collected the money for the purpose of building roads. That's the purpose to which the money should be put and only that purpose. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. ALLARD addressed the Chair.

Mr. GRAMM

Mr. GRAMM. Mr. President, I thank our dear colleague from West Virginia. It has been a great honor for me to work with him on this. I believe we are going to win on this amendment. We have 54 cosponsors. We probably have 25 other Members of the Senate who are ready to vote for the bill. We gain strength every day. There is only one thing that is stopping us from passing a new highway bill that can begin providing money to build highways all across America on May the 2nd. And that one thing is that we have been unable to bring the highway bill up so that we can offer the amendment, our amendment, by forcing the Government to live up to the commitment it has made to the American people when it puts on a gasoline pump that about a third of the cost of a gallon of gasoline is taxes. But the good news is, those taxes go to build roads. What we are trying to do is to force the Government to do what it tells people it is doing, and that is, spend the money on roads. We now know that between 25 and 30 cents out of every dollar collected in gasoline taxes has been going to fund everything except highways. And so what our amendment is trying to do is to require truth in Government by saying that gasoline taxes have to, in an orderly, fiscally responsible manner, be spent on highways. This is a big deal. This is a very big deal in every State in the Union. What it means in my State, what it means in West Virginia, what it means in every State in the Union is roughly a 25 percent increase in the amount of money that is available to build roads beginning on May the 2nd. We are not talking about doing something that is going to be felt in your State in the sweet bye and bye. This is something that on May the 2nd we can begin to see States letting contracts, putting people to work, pouring concrete, pressing asphalt, improving the quality of our roads and highways, saving lives, creating jobs, reducing the amount of time that we all spend in traffic, improving the environment in the country. You could list 100 things that are positive for America that will occur, beginning on May 2, if we can pass this amendment and pass the highway bill. Now, Senator Byrd and I have spoken virtually every day for the last 2 or 3 weeks, and we have made a series of points that no one who opposes the amendment has come down to try to argue against. Those points are basically the following: Gasoline taxes have historically been devoted to road construction; the American people are led to believe this by every sign on every gasoline pump in America. They are paying lots of taxes, but the good news is it is a user fee for roads. And yet that is not the case today nor has it been the case through the 1990s. Money has been collected in gasoline taxes and spent on other things. Second, we have established very clearly that this amendment does not bust the budget. Nothing in this amendment raises the total level of spending. What this amendment does is it requires that the money collected for road construction be spent for road construction and nothing else. In fact, one of our colleagues, in arguing against the amendment, posed the question to Senator Byrd and to me, ``If you spend this money on highways, that means we are not going to be able to spend it on the other things we want to spend the money on.'' I think it can be argued in two ways. The first argument is that we have a desperate need for highways in America--31,000 miles of roads in my State are substandard. We have thousands of bridges that have been certified as not being safe. We are basically now at a point in Texas that half of the money we have for roads goes to just maintain the roads we have. The expected life of a road is between 30 and 40 years, depending on where it is built. We built our great farm-to-market roads in Texas in the 1930s and 1940s. We have long since exceeded the life of those roads. Our busiest roads in Texas, our interstates, were built in the 1960s. They are heavily used, some beyond 100 percent capacity, and they are reaching the end of their economic life. What do we spend on in Government that is more critical than national security and roads? But as strong as that argument is, that is not the strongest argument. Our colleagues stand up and say, if the money you collect for highways is really spent on highways--we plan to spend this money on other things. I think, quite frankly, that there is an argument in terms of basic honesty in dealing with the electorate that we have on our side, and that is that we have a revenue source dedicated to the highway trust fund. So not only is there a great need for roads, but the money was collected for that purpose and for that purpose only. The idea that we are going to collect potentially $90 billion for highway construction and simply stand by and watch the Government spending it on everything except highways is, I believe, outrageous and unacceptable. Quite frankly, I believe that is going to end this year-- end this year. Some people have raised questions about the priorities of the bill. We have answered each and every one of those questions about the amount that goes to the States, the amount held by the Secretary. Questions have been raised about the Appalachian program, started in 1965, as a percentage of money spent on highways. We are actually in our amendment asking for less than the President requested, the same amount, for all practical purposes, requested by the House. Questions are raised about border infrastructure and international trade corridors. We actually have less money in our amendment than the bill that came out of committee, but there is one big difference. We make it possible that Congress might actually fund it, whereas the committee bill, in a sleight of hand, appears to provide the money but really doesn't provide the money. In short, we have answered each and every one of the criticisms that have been raised in this initiative. It is the right thing. It is what we tell people we are doing. It does not violate the Budget Act. It does not raise the total level of spending, and it doesn't create any new priorities. It simply sets out an orderly fashion of fulfilling obligations we have made in the past. Now, we are getting down to the moment of truth. The highway bill is going to expire on May 1. So roadbuilding equipment that is currently in the process of building highways and roads and interstates all over America, come May 1, they will cut those machines off. Come May 1, people are going to be forced to walk off the job because we have not provided money for highways. It is not that we don't have the money, Senator Byrd. We have the money. It is being collected every time any American goes to the filling station and pumps gas. But they are going to stop building roads all over America on May 1 because we are not allowed to vote on a highway bill to allow the expenditure of money that is being collected specifically to build roads, even though we are collecting more money for road construction in the gasoline tax than ever in history. Despite the fact that the surplus grows every single second, we have the terrible prospect of highway construction stopping all over America on May 1. There is only one solution to this problem--bring up the highway bill. We debated it last year. It got bogged down in other issues. I wish we could have broken the deadlock last year. It is bad public policy that it happened. But the point is this is not last year. This is this year. We have an opportunity right now to bring this bill up. I can assure you, we are not going to let any issue that has nothing to do with highways derail this bill this year. There are a lot of legitimate issues that need to be debated. We need to bring this bill up and we need to bring it up as soon as we get back from the recess next week. I feel an obligation to people in my State. I feel an obligation to the State where we pay in gasoline taxes on a per capita basis as much as any State in the Union. It is not uncommon for people in my State to drive in their cars and trucks 50 miles one way to work, to drive 30 miles to take their children to school. People in my State need highways. They pay for them by paying the gasoline tax. I want to urge our leadership to work with us to bring this bill up. This is not a budget issue. We are not talking about busting the budget. We are not talking about setting the total level of spending. We are talking about requiring money to be spent for the purpose that it was collected and not on other things. But if there are those who want to talk about this within the context of the budget, Senator Byrd and I are not so busy that we don't have time to sit down and talk. I believe that the day we come back, week after next, that the situation with highways is going to be getting so desperate that we will have to do something. I think we ought to bring up the highway bill. I think it would be bad for us to be forced to try to deal with this issue as an amendment on another bill. That is not the way I want to do it. I know the Senator from West Virginia doesn't want to do it that way. We need to act and we need to do it very quickly. We are running out of time. I want to conclude by simply urging those who would like to commingle this issue with the budget, if they want to sit down with Senator Byrd, with me, with Senator Warner, with Senator Baucus, to talk about how this might fit into a budget that would be written later, we are willing to sit down and talk about it. It is not a budget issue. Quite frankly, I believe those who oppose us want to make it a budget issue so that they can say to people, look, don't vote for these highways because if you do that, then you can't spend all this money on other things, money requested by the President, money sought by other interests, money expenditures that are supported by Members of Congress. There is one fundamental difference. Nobody is saying that child care is not important or food stamps aren't important, or funds for the IMF aren't important, or paying dues at the United Nations are not important, or that foreign aid is not important. But there is one fundamental difference. None of those expenditures has a dedicated revenue source. None of those expenditures has a tax that working Americans pay for the purpose of funding them. Americans do pay a gasoline tax to build roads. So our claim is stronger. We have committed to people we are going to do this. I believe time is running out here. I think we have been very patient. I think we have tried to work with everybody. We have been willing to sit down and talk to anyone. You don't get 54 cosponsors by accident. You do it by answering a lot of questions, by convincing a lot of people. I don't think anyone has asked Senator Byrd or asked me to sit down with them to explain this amendment, what it does, how it will affect their State, how it will affect anything they are concerned about. But we are going to reach a point here when we come back after the recess where we have to quit explaining and start acting. I urge those who would like to commingle this with the budget, while I really believe that is a ruse to beat our amendment--they are trying to convince people that our demand that we spend money for the purpose we tell people we are going to spend it when we collect it is somehow on a par with proposals made to spend money to just simply increase the level of expenditure. There is no comparison between the two. But if somebody wants to talk to us about the budget as it relates to our amendment, we are willing, any time, day or night, to sit down and talk to them. What we are not willing to do is to sit here and let May 1 come and let highway construction stop all over the country. We are not willing to do that, and we need to get on with the task of passing the highway bill and, I believe, passing this amendment. I want to thank my colleague, Senator Byrd, for his leadership. We have done a lot of work on this. I would like to believe the number of cosponsors, the progress we have made, is somewhat due to our persuasiveness. But I think, really, it is not our persuasiveness; it is the strength of the case we are making. This is the right thing to do. It is clearly the right thing to do. I think if the American people really understood what this debate was about, if they really understood that the critics of what we are doing are saying, ``Don't spend the money for the purpose you select it is because we want to spend it on other things,'' they would be outraged about it. I think that is one of the reasons that people don't come over and debate us on this subject. I am glad to be on a side of an issue where we are right. I can assure you, it is much easier to argue something if the facts are on your side. Now, often here, great cases are made when the facts don't comport, but when they are on your side, it is easy. And they are on our side on this issue.