Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I would like to have the Senator add to his unanimous consent request that following his remarks we return to the bill H.R. 3, as amended, for consideration of amendments.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I wish to speak about S. Res. 135 which recognizes the outstanding accomplishments of the National Asphalt Pavement Association, NAPA, as it celebrates it 50th Anniversary on May 17, 2005. I am joined by my colleagues, Senators Bond, Jeffords and Baucus. NAPA is the only national association that exclusively represents an industry comprised of 1,500 asphalt companies nationwide, employing over 300,000 men and women. Today when we think of highways and roads, we think of the cars and trucks that use these facilities. We think of the agricultural products being shipped from farm to market, or packages being shipped from factories right to our homes. We think of mothers picking up their children after school, and families taking trips to the beach during the summer. Of course, we also think of commutes to and from work. What I have just described is our American economy in motion, and none of it would be possible without quality highway pavements of which asphalt is one. Just 50 years ago, the country faced a transportation crisis. In 1955, it was not easy to travel from city to city because the Interstate Highway System did not exist. The roads were unsafe, slow, and difficult to use. Traveling from city to city, which today could be done in hours took days. In the early 20th century, asphalt pavements helped get America out of the mud. In the latter half of that century, the new Interstate Highway System improved our mobility and helped sustain our country's economic growth. The Interstate Highway System's pavements literally were the foundation upon which the United States and her people were able to emerge as the leaders of the world. It was no accident that NAPA was formed just as the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 was winding its way through Congress. The industry was challenged by the need to construct long lasting pavements that could meet the tougher standards of the Interstate Highway System. In rising to that challenge, the first ambitious program announced by the association was the Quality Improvement Program. Ever since then, dedication to helping its members deliver the best quality asphalt pavement has been a top priority. I am very proud of the fact that the late John W. Kelly, of the firm Amis & Kelly Construction Company in Oklahoma City, was one of the founding fathers of NAPA. From 1958 to 1960, John W. Kelly served as the second president of the Association. NAPA has also enjoyed 50 years of strong partnership with the Oklahoma Asphalt Pavement Association which was formed in 1952. I congratulate NAPA and its members for 50 years of leadership and involvement in constructing a world-class road system.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. INHOFE. I thank the Senator from Illinois. I remind the Senator, as chairman of this committee I went first to Illinois before going anywhere else to have a field hearing, which we had in Chicago and went over some of the needs. They made it very clear to me that there are needs in Illinois, and the Senators from Illinois are very anxious to get this bill under consideration. Again, the only frustration I have on amendments is that for 4 days last week we talked about this, begging people to bring down amendments. The Senator from Illinois knows as well as I know what could very well happen: we could get into a cloture situation where then we would be out of time. It seems as if it is the nature of the Senate that you just do not do anything until you have to do it. Now you have to do it. So we want them to come down. It is our hope now to get to the managers' substitute. We are not in a position to quite do that yet; however, we can certainly entertain amendments and have amendments discussed and lined up. Then we can talk about the necessity of having this bill. That is essentially what we are doing right now. I can assure the Senator from Mississippi, his frustration is no greater than mine because I will have people stop and talk to me about amendments--fine, bring them down; let's discuss them--and they do not show up. That is what we want to make sure happens. I think the Senator from Illinois is right. We are on our sixth extension now. We worked on this bill for 2 years prior to the time we brought it to the floor last year. So this has been a 3-year process. My concern is if we end up just getting another extension, we are not going to get anything done that really needs to be done. If we are concerned about doing something for donor States, we are not going to do it with an extension because it is going to be the same thing as we have been having under TEA-21 as of 7 years ago. If our concern is about the Safety Corps, the Senator from Mississippi is right. It is his committee that deals with the Safety Corps programs. Certainly the State of Oklahoma is high on the list of deaths on the highways. We have to get this done. I suggest it is a matter of life and death that we get a bill because if we operate off of extensions, we are not going to do anything to improve safety on the highways. The Senator from Mississippi made that very clear. We are not going to have any real streamlining of environmental reviews. We have some good elements in this bill that are going to be able to help us build roads faster with less money than we could on an extension. If we are operating on an extension and do not have a bill, we are not going to have any increase in our ability to have innovative financing thereby giving the States more tools. What we have tried to do in this bill is to give a lot more of the power back to the States. It has been my belief, and I think shared by most members of my committee, that the closer you get to home, the more people are aware of their specific needs. There are a lot of people who have some excellent ideas on innovative financing that the States are going to be able to do. This is in the bill. The Safe Routes to School Program--the Senator from Vermont is very much interested in that. It is one that is handled in this bill. However, if we go on an extension, extension No. 7, we are not going to have the Safe Routes to School Program. The States are considered to have uncertainty. We have come back from about a 7-day recess. I talked to our people, our highway people, our department of transportation in Oklahoma, and they cannot have any kind of planning for any kind of certainty as to knowing what is going to happen in the next year and the year after that and for the next five years unless we pass this bill. They are begging, pleading: Why can't you get this done because it has to be done in order for us to plan for the future. I am particularly concerned about this because as to bridges, for example, in my State of Oklahoma, we are dead last in the Nation in terms of the condition of our bridges. And we cannot get anything done and plan for the future unless we get a bill. There are a lot of people in a lot of States who are concerned about the borders program. It is critical to the border States that are dealing with the NAFTA traffic. This bill deals with that. With an extension, it is not going to happen. If we do not do this bill, we will have a delay in the establishment of this national commission to explain new ways to fund transportation. I can tell you we have not done it any differently than when Dwight D. Eisenhower was President of the United States. He came along and recognized a problem in our transportation system as a result of the problem he had during World War II in moving troops and equipment around. Looking at our transportation system, the first thing he did when he became President of United States was to set up a National Highway Program and get it started. We have been funding our roads and our highways and our improvements and our bridges and infrastructure the same as we did during the Eisenhower administration. The bill sets up a national commission to go over some creative types of changes in funding where we can do a better job. Right now, we are looking at the consideration, shortly, of the managers' amendment. If we do, it has been reported that even that amount, which is higher than the amount that was reported out of my committee, is going to do nothing more than just maintain what we have today. It is not really going to provide anything new. So we need to recognize that. I have to say this, too. There are a lot of different philosophies that are represented in this Chamber. I am one of the most conservative Members. Yet there are some areas where conservatives do spend more money, and one is in infrastructure, which is what we are supposed to be doing here. We do not want to delay this national commission we set up in this legislation. I believe it is time to make a change for the better. With the bill, we have increased the opportunity to address the chokepoints for intermodal transportation. This is kind of interesting. People do not realize this is not just a roads bill. This is an intermodal bill that considers chokepoints between channels and railroads and roads. We deal with that. It is an intermodal bill. A lot of people are not aware of the fact that in my State of Oklahoma, we are actually navigable. We have a navigation channel. This bill deals with the chokepoints between rail, road, water, and other air transportation. And there is the firewall. If there is one thing that has bothered me over the years I have been on this committee--I have been on this committee for 11 years; and before that, in the other body, I was on the Transportation Committee for 8 years, so that is 19 years. During that time, when I have gone back to my State, the thing people are offended by is that there are always raids on the highway trust fund. People have their own programs, they may be good programs, but they try to go in and get money out of the highway trust fund to support those programs. We have seen this happen over and over again in establishing policies in the Senate, that they highway fund it. How should we fund it? Let's fund it with transportation funds. I believe that is a moral issue. When the American people go to the pump, they do not mind paying a tax, but when they find out that tax is not going to highway construction and highway improvements and highway maintenance and intermodal transportation, they are understandably very nervous and very offended. We have the firewall protection of the highway trust fund to make sure that these trust funds are not going to be vulnerable to raids in order to pay for other programs. I know there are a lot of people who feel they are not as excited about the way the formula was put together. I would like to say something about that. This is significant. There are two ways to do a highway bill. I know one of the ways that was a little more prevalent in the other body was to come up with projects. You have 435 Members who have projects of significance. Instead, we believe that decisions on the priority of expenditure of transportation dollars should be made at the local level. In other words, it is easy to come up here and pass something and go home and say: Look what I got for you; I am bringing this home. What we prefer is to have an equitable distribution of moneys that come into the highway trust fund to go back to the States and then let the States make these decisions. If there are States that don't want to do this, that is fine. But in the State of Oklahoma, I can assure you the closer to the people at home, the better the decisions. The people in the eight transportation districts in my State of Oklahoma are far better informed on the needs and priorities of where money should be spent on transportation than they are here in Washington. There are a lot of people who think that no decision is a good decision that is made in Washington. I don't agree with that. We have a different way of doing it than the other body. We have a formula. Our formula takes everything into consideration. We are talking about interstate lane miles; vehicle miles traveled on the interstate; the contributions to the highway trust fund; the lane miles and principal arteries, excluding the interstate VMT on principal arteries; surface transportation programs; total lane miles--all these things are considered--the Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program; we have rankings to see what is really nationwide that should be attributed to this. Certainly, I am a little bit prejudiced, being from Oklahoma where our bridges are in the worst shape of any of the 50 States. We are going to correct that, and we can correct that with this bill. We have congestion mitigation, air quality improvement programs, and these are very significant. These are the things that come in under the formula that goes out to the States. We have the Recreational Trails Program. We know all about that. We take into consideration low-income States. There are some States that are lower income States, and the people are not really able to pay for quite as much as some other States. We have low-population States, but they still have to have roads. Consequently, that has to be a part of the formula. We have low population density States. Some States have much higher fatalities than other States. That tells you they need to do something. The SAFETEA core program is in this base bill and will be continued. If we get around to the managers' amendment, then we will have something in there. Guaranteed minimum growth, you have to have some consideration in there because there are States that are growing very rapidly. Some States are on the other side. We have donor States, donee States. These are things that are considered. A lot of people realize we have many States, including my State of Oklahoma, that are donor States. In other words, we don't get back as much money as we send to Washington to go into the highway trust fund. In TEA-21, we put in a minimum figure of 90.5 percent. In the bill we had last year, it would bring all these donee States all the way up to 95. That was good, but it took $318 billion over 6 years to do that. We were not able to get it out of conference. By the way, as the Senator from Missouri said, that bill passed the Senate by 76 to 21. That gives you an idea. If we get the bill up here, all we have to do is get by all these procedures, and we will pass a bill. It will take into consideration all the things I mentioned. This is not just a political table. In fact, politics didn't enter into it. We don't have projects in this Senate bill. The House bill does. When we go to conference, we are going to iron those things out, and we are going to come out with a good bill. But you can't do that until you get all the amendments in and get a vote. I encourage Members to offer their amendments and to discuss the highway bill. I know there are some Members who were requesting time for that purpose. I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. I respond to the Senator from Illinois, I am not sure what was shared with all the Democrats. I do know that Senator Jeffords and Senator Baucus--we have been working together. They are the ranking members of the subcommittee and whole committee. We have done this jointly. This has been done all together. Whether that was shared with all the Members, I have no way of knowing.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes, I yield for a question.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, in a few minutes it is our intention to bring up the substitute amendment, to have the pending amendment withdrawn and bring up the substitute amendment. We are not quite ready for that. We are waiting for a few things to be done in a few minutes. I think it will be worked out, but the managers' amendment is going to do a lot of things to offset some of the problems people had with the bill. When that time comes, we want a chance to go over it in detail and make this a reality. The amendment is going to bring the total size of the bill up to $251 billion. This includes $199 billion for highways, $5.8 billion for highway safety, and $46.6 billion for mass transit. This amendment would add $6.8 billion in additional receipts to the highway account of the highway trust fund, all of which are offset in the amendment--also, thanks to the good work of Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus of the Finance Committee. They have made a yeoman effort and have been able to have us increase this highway funding and have it paid for. Highway funding would increase by $8.9 billion over the EPW-reported bill. That is the bill that came out of our committee. It includes a 5.1-percent increase in both apportioned and allocated programs. It also increases the minimum rate of return to donor States to 91 percent immediately. Right now, as you know, it is 90.5 percent. It would raise it to 91 percent in 2006 through 2008. This increases the growth ceilings so more States get to 92 percent more quickly. In other words, we are to go to 91 percent immediately, and in 2006, and then eventually all States will be at 92 percent in this period of time. The donee States, the ones that are actually getting back an amount that is in excess of the amount that is paid in, they would have a guaranteed minimum growth rate being increased from 10 percent to 15 percent every year. The average growth rate increases from just under 25 percent to almost 31 percent. The amendment also includes firewalls to ensure the highway trust fund dollars are spent on this Nation's transportation needs. There has been a problem over a long period of time. People have been very offended by the fact that these trust funds have been raided and somehow these moneys are diverted to other causes. Senator Bond and I, and I think the vast majority, and certainly 76 percent of this Senate, agree that we should have firewalls; we should protect that money and make sure it goes to highway spending. Finally, the mass transit funding increased by $2.3 billion to $46.6 billion. This represents a dramatic increase in the transit share of the bill from 18.18 percent under TEA-21--that is what it was when we passed it 7 years ago--to 18.48 percent. The safety programs have increased, which Senator Lott has talked about in the purview of his committee. They have increased their funding over levels in S. 1072, last year's bill, which was funded at $318 billion. Last year, during consideration of the $318 billion Transportation bill, the Senate voted 76 to 21 in favor of funding the highway bill at $255 billion, in mass transit at $56 billion. This vote should be even more of a resounding victory for adequate funding levels for transportation, especially considering this bill is funded at a lower level. I remind my colleagues of the vote on the Talent amendment to this budget resolution which received over 80 votes from Senators who voted to support it. This amendment gave flexibility to increase the funding for the bill as long as it was offset, which is exactly what Senators Grassley and Baucus have done in their portion of this amendment. This is the amendment we do want to bring up. We are not quite ready to seek unanimous consent to bring it up. I ask Senator Bond, the subcommittee chairman, if he seeks recognition now. Let me have him recognized. If he wants to yield to Senator Inouye, he can do that.

Mr. INHOFE. That is my understanding. You remained here with me all last week inviting Members to bring their amendments down. We said we would be getting close. Who knows, we may even get a cloture vote, and then at the last minute hysteria will set in. Now is the time to bring them down and consider them. Let me comment on the great work the chairman of the transportation subcommittee, Senator Bond, has done. We need to get to it now. This is probably very likely the most important single bill of this session.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we are overdue getting on the highway bill. We are preparing right now to offer a substitute amendment. We are prepared to do that, but Senator Specter had said he wanted to speak for a period of time as in morning business. He has been planning to do that, and I will yield 15 minutes to him for that purpose.

Mr. INHOFE. It is my understanding then that the Senator from Massachusetts will go for 25 minutes. Then the Senator from Pennsylvania will go for 25 minutes.

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

Mr. INHOFE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that at 5:30 this evening the Senate proceed to a vote in relation to the Talent amendment, with the time equally divided until the vote and no second-degree amendments in order to the amendment prior to the vote.

Mr. INHOFE. That is correct.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we resume the highway bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending substitute amendment be withdrawn.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I now send a substitute amendment to the desk.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the senior Senator from Missouri. He has worked tirelessly, as chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation of the Environment and Public Works Committee. You always hear that working with Senators is like herding cats. I think we have learned that on this bill. It is very difficult. Of course, by the very nature of the Senate, one person can hold things up. But I don't think there is anything this year we are going to be dealing with that is more important than our highway reauthorization bill. Last year we passed a good bill out of committee. We were unable to get it out of conference last year. This year I am sure that situation will change. As we work on it this week, I agree it is an ambitious schedule to get it done, but I am anticipating we are going to have to at some point file cloture. I would certainly tell any of the staff and Members who might be listening that we are open for business. We now have the substitute amendment on the floor so we know what we are working with. We would ask them to bring their amendments down. We can't do anything with an amendment unless we see it, unless we have it before us. I know what is going to happen if we don't do that. When we come up against some deadlines, trying to get this passed out of here at the end of the week, people are going to be saying they didn't have time. You have time now. We are waiting for you. We want you to bring them down. The substitute amendment we adopted has some changes in it. We did increase some highway funding by $8.9 billion. That would be the highway funding portion. That was over the EPW bill that we passed out of the committee that we chair. And it includes a 5.1-percent increase in both the apportioned and allocated programs. It also includes the minimum rate of return for donor States to 91 percent and working up to 92 percent. This is not as ambitious as it was last year, but last year we were dealing with a bill that was $318 billion over a 6-year period. This is going to be about 251 over the remaining 5 years of the 6-year reauthorization. Last year's bill, the donee status was improved more dramatically so that for States such as my State of Oklahoma and the State of the Presiding Officer, we would have that up to a minimum of 95 percent. That means we would get back at least 95 percent of that which is collected in our respective States. We can't quite do that with the smaller amount, but certainly it is enhanced a little bit with the amendment we just agreed to consider. So we have a lot in here, and they are going to be a part of this bill. Again, the only thing that needs to be done right now is for amendments to be brought to the floor. By the way, Senator Bond is right when he says there are a lot of Members who are not happy, and they won't have enough money in their States. I am not happy about the amount of money in Oklahoma. There was a lot of compromising over a 3- year period to get us where we are today. However, if you are not happy, offer an amendment. We will consider it and we will vote on it. That is what the process is all about. We have a lot to be done in the next 4 days. We expect that we are going to be doing it. We are encouraging people to come down with their amendments. I chair the EPW committee, but we also have some titles in here by the Banking Committee, the Commerce Committee, and the Finance Committee. We have been talking to those chairmen. I believe they are ready. So we could entertain amendments on any of these sections or any of the titles of the bill.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Could I inquire as to how long you would like to address the Senate in morning business.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we go into a period of morning business with each Senator permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield for a question?

Mr. INHOFE

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