Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, yesterday when we were discussing the seatbelt law, quite frankly, I was opposed to it. I am opposed to any kind of mandate. I cannot find anyone in this body who has either been a former Governor or mayor of a major city that won't oppose mandates. Of course, that would have been a great one, with three penalties. That is behind us now. During that time, the assistant minority leader had a suggestion that we might want to consider what they have done in Nevada. They had this requirement just for the babies and small children, which was interesting. I commented that I am very familiar with that, having 11 grandchildren. I know all about the seatbelts and all these little requirements they have and how expensive they are. In an attempt to outdo me, as sometimes happens on the floor of the Senate, the Senator from Nevada commented that, yes, you have 11 grandchildren, but I have 14. I got a phone call after that and found out that I in fact have 12 now. So I want to get the record straight that we are still working on it and we are going to catch the Senator from Nevada. A new Swan will be born; that happens to be my daughter's name.

Mr. INHOFE. Reclaiming my time, I observe we are both still working on that, and when they are conceived they are babies.

Mr. INHOFE. I did get that permission. I made that mistake once. I was commenting back when a little boy was born to my older son and his wife. My older son is James Mountain Inhofe II. He kept having baby girls. The years went by and they kept cranking the girls out. I always wanted to have a boy, selfishly, James Mountain Inhofe III. So we found out--and this happened a couple years ago--that in fact my daughter-in- law was unexpectedly pregnant--Jimmy's wife. I respond to the Senator that what we did is for 8 months we prayed every day it would be a boy. I figured if Abraham could do it, I could do it. Sure enough, we were up in the waiting room and the nurse came in while I was doing a 30- minute talk show with Ollie North. Right in the middle of that, she came in and said, ``Senator, how did you know? You are the only one who knew it was going to be a boy.'' I said, ``Ollie, James Mountain Inhofe III has been born.'' On the way back it occurred to me they had not yet named that child, and I announced the name on the radio. So I learned that lesson. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator yield further?

Mr. INHOFE. If they found 47 chemical rockets, rockets that would hold 140 liters of chemicals, why would they have them if they didn't intend on using them against somebody? Would you inform the Senator?

Mr. INHOFE. First of all, there is no one I have a higher regard for than the man who was elected with me to the other body in 1986, Senator Kyl, the junior Senator from Arizona, and they elected him then to come over to this body in 1984. We are both conservatives. He has heard me say many times when I was first elected to the other body, I got on the Transportation Committee and the reason I did it was because I always felt the conservatives were pretty big spenders in two areas. One is national defense and the other is infrastructure. That is what we are sent here for. Apparently, the most recent poll I saw shows the vast majority of the people, 69 percent, are willing to spend more money if it will be spent on highways, roads, and bridges. I see that as what we are here for. I have to address the fact that there are a lot of amendments that have come up. I have stood here for 2 weeks trying to get people to propose amendments, to discuss their amendments. We sit down here and we talk about everything there is to talk about until now at last there is hysteria that we do not have time to bring up our amendments. There has been plenty of time. I have to say, too, to my good friend, the junior Senator from Arizona, it is because of the senior Senator from Arizona that we have not been able to bring up the amendments because they are objecting to any motions to bring them down to vote. That means the only thing we can vote on that does not require that particular permission is a tabling motion which we have done only once because no one else has had anything else to table. So that is the reason. I regret that we wasted a lot of time when we were inviting people to come down. Those who were opposed to this for any number of reasons-- some legitimate reasons, some not so legitimate--were the ones who were stopping us from moving forward with the bill. First, I think as far as the cloture motion, the Senator from Arizona is exactly right. In fact, I appreciate the letter he was citing from the administration that came down today. It says: ``The Administration supports enactment of a six-year highway [bill],'' and so forth, and they are in support of the cloture motion. So this is the administration that is in support of the cloture motion. I think if you look at the letter--and I will give you a different slant than my friend from Arizona--they have three criteria. There is nothing new about this. I saw this 2 months ago. I saw it on the 4th of this month when they sent a letter from the administration. It says these three criteria are: [T]ransportation infrastructure spending should not rely on an increase in the gas tax or other Federal taxes. . . . I believe this meets that guideline. (2) transportation infrastructure spending should not be funded through bonding or other mechanisms that conceal the true cost to Federal taxpayers. . . . I agree with that. In fact, I have been the one who has rejected the suggestion of any type of a bonding that might just be deficit spending in disguise, something we are going to pay back in the future, some increased debt. This is the big one. This is the one the Senator, with his vast knowledge, has gone through and who is in a better position to do that than I; and that is the criterion that says: [H]ighway spending should be financed from the Highway Trust Fund, not the General Fund of the Treasury. Now, perhaps it is hard. There could be an honest disagreement here. If some money is going to the general fund and is being paid at the pumps by people who are paying for the gas tax, that should be going into the highway trust fund. It is user paid. We all agree with that concept. For those of us who feel strongly about this, I can remember I was outraged back in the middle 1990s when the previous administration came through and they wanted $8 billion so they could do something other than roads, and it came out of the trust fund and went into the general fund. Frankly, this takes it back. This rectifies a problem that should not have existed in the first place and keeps us honest with the American people. Look at the moral issue part of this. The people drive up to the pump. There is not a Senator who does not have constituents who drive up to the pump. They don't mind paying that tax--some say they would go ahead and pay more taxes--and they assume that money is going to go for the repair and construction of roads and infrastructure. In fact, that is not the case. There have been raids on that for a long period of time. I am not going to go over the list of the Finance Committee. I talked to the chairman and the ranking member of the Finance Committee back when we were working on this bill well over a year ago. It said when we come up with what we believe is necessary to just stay even--there is one report out that says even with this spending level that does not even keep us repairing what we have today, but if this comes up, you guys in the Finance Committee are going to be the ones who have to come up with this. I have never been on the Finance Committee. I have never attended one of their meetings. I don't know how it works. But I do know the chairman and ranking member said: We have come up with a way to come up with this money. Sure, a lot of it, as the Senator mentioned, is spending down the trust fund. Yes, we can do that probably to $6.5 billion without hurting ourselves. That is an assumption we make here. The interest? Yes, it should go to the trust fund. There are some fixes in there in terms of ethanol that are all part of it. This going after people who avoided paying taxes is something we would all agree is something that should happen. The one area the Senator mentions, frankly, I can't address is having to do with the WTO. I am just going to trust the Finance Committee that they have come up with this and have done what I asked them to do a long period of time ago. Oh, yes, in response to that, I was underlining something. This came out in the Finance Committee, I say to my friend from Arizona. It said: In the view of the Finance Committee, these tax policy benefits--we are talking about benefits deductions, whether they are ethanol or maybe a car that is fuel efficient--nonetheless, to encourage them to do that, they are exempt from certain taxes. But those cars and those trucks still drive on our roads, still cause damage to the roads, and because they want to have a tax policy that has nothing to do with infrastructure, has nothing to do with roads and highways, fine, if we all agree on that, it should come out of the general fund, it should not come out of the highway trust fund. We are rectifying that and getting it back to the highway trust fund. Now, on formulas, this is the most complicated part of the bill. I say to the Senator, your senior Senator came down and said he would like to trade formulas with Oklahoma. I have to say, as I have said several times down here in the last 2 weeks, everyone has the same formula. You have the same formula. North Carolina has the same formula. Maine has the same formula; Oklahoma does. Now, the results come out differently because in that formula we are taking care of problems that are real problems. Arizona is a fast- growing State, the State of Texas, the State of California, the State of Florida. So in order to make all of this happen, there are caps, there are ceilings. If you bump the ceiling, we are not going to go above that. You may not like it because you are a fast-growing State. But if you don't, then that is going to be paid for in the formula with a change, maybe a change that is going to be coming in the form of an amendment tomorrow, by getting into some of the States such as Pennsylvania and New York. So here is what we have in the formula: No. 1, total lane miles on the interstate, on principal arterial routes; No. 2, VMT--that is, vehicle miles traveled--on the Interstate System, on principal arterial routes, excluding the interstate, and on the Federal aid system; No. 3, annual contributions to the highway trust fund attributed to commercial vehicles; No. 4, diesel fuel used on highways; No. 5, relative share of total cost to repair or replace deficient highway bridges--I am very sensitive to that; my State of Oklahoma is dead last in terms of the condition of bridges--next, weighted nonattainment and maintenance areas and, lastly, rate of return of donor States. We all know that the Senator from Arizona and I both know all about being a donor State. If we accelerated the point within those 6 years to raise that amount, then, obviously, there would not be enough money to ultimately get to the 95 percent we want to ultimately get to. So if you change one thing in the formula, it changes everything. You cannot do it in a vacuum. There will be amendments, I am sure, tomorrow that are going to be addressing this and wanting to change the formula. But if you do it, it is going to change other States. Now, if you will remember, the reason I am proud of this formula is that we have tried to do it. We tried to do it in 1991 with ISTEA. We tried to do it in TEA-21 in 1998. We failed during that time because right about at this point in the process they said: Well, we can't do it. There are too many people who don't like the way the formula has come out. So instead of that, we need 60 votes. How do we get 60 votes? So they had a minimum guarantee. They said: All right. We are going to offer 60 of these votes what they want in terms of a percentage of the overall, and then, once we get to 60 votes, who cares? We have our 60 votes and we are going to pass it. Well, I refused to do that back when the temptation was great to do it about 3 months ago. So the formula is going to be the first pure formula that we have had. But are there frailties in it? Yes, there are. There are corrections to be made because if you look in previous years at States where they have had an undue political influence, they have gotten more than their share. Let's look at Pennsylvania. They had a good friend of the Senator from Arizona and myself who served in the other body, Bud Shuster, a Congressman from Pennsylvania. He, for a number of years, was the chairman of the committee, and Pennsylvania did disproportionately well. I would say the same thing of our beloved Daniel Patrick Moynihan of the State of New York; certainly John Chafee, one we all loved, from Rhode Island. So the Northeast got kind of a benefit to which they were not entitled. In fact, to be specific, under TEA-21--let's keep in mind I was a senior member of the Environment and Public Works Committee in 1998 when we put this together. And so at that time, in terms of a percentage of taxes paid in, New York got $1.25 back; Pennsylvania, $1.20 back; Rhode Island, $2.16 back; Montana--Senator Baucus, who is a very hard worker for his State--$2.18 back; Oklahoma, 90.5 cents, the minimum, the bare minimum. I am the guy who should be out here complaining. When your senior Senator said, we ought to swap, if we swapped, I would end up with $40 million more. I will stand here right now and swap with you, and it will not affect any of the rest of the formula. The formulas are not an easy thing to deal with. Insofar as the State of Arizona is concerned, if you take an average of the 6 years of TEA-21, $463 million, and then you watch as it goes up here to finally reach $800 million, the total amount of increase is $1.11 billion in the State of Arizona. For my State of Oklahoma, the chart looks almost the same, but the difference is we end up at $1.07 billion. So there is $40 million more going to the State of Arizona. I don't like that. If I were to try to do something as chairman, I probably could have. I could probably have looked at the first run and said, no, Oklahoma needs to have more. But I didn't do it because we wanted the formulas to work. So the formulas are something that you can't mess with because if you do, you get right back to the minimum guarantee policy we have had in the past. I don't think that is good for anyone. Since we have committed some time to two other Members, including the Senator from North Carolina, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. The State of Oklahoma does not. It goes up to 95 cents. The first year, it is 90.5; next year, 91.75; and it gradually goes up. Yours does not because for the State of Arizona, it hits the ceiling. So you have 90.5 each of the first 4 years, then 90.84, then 95.

Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, first, before the Senator from North Carolina leaves, I want to say we are very fortunate to have her expertise having served as Secretary of Transportation and in other capacities where she provided leadership. She has an understanding of transportation needs probably greater than any other single person in this Chamber. I thank her for her contributions here. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session on Tuesday, February 10, 2004, at 10 a.m., to consider the nomination of Samuel W. Bodman, to be Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Department of Treasury.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February 10, 2004, for a hearing on the Administration's proposed Fiscal Year 2005 Department of Veterans Affairs budget. The hearing will take place in room 418 of the Russell Senate Office Building at 3 p.m.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet Tuesday, February 10, 2004 from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. in Dirksen 628 for the purpose of conducting a hearing.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is appropriate that the occupant of the Chair at the present time is the Senator from Rhode Island because the amendment being offered by the Senator from Virginia is one that was a favorite of one of my favorite people, his father. I can remember many times he would be talking about this amendment. In fact, I can recall some disagreements. I would say: John, your son is a mayor of a significant city. I am sure if you call him up he will tell you, if there is one thing they don't want, it is unfunded mandates. I was the mayor of a city for four terms. The biggest, greatest plague we had was unfunded mandates. I will reluctantly oppose the Warner-Clinton-DeWine-Murray seatbelt sanction amendment at the appropriate time. This amendment makes a significant and damaging change to the core safety program established in the highway reauthorization bill. The amendment imposes a new sanction on States that fail to achieve a 90-percent seatbelt rate or enact a primary seatbelt law. Currently, only 20 of the 50 States meet the requirements of this proposed new Federal mandate. As a result, if this amendment were to pass, 30 States would be immediately thrust into a status of noncompliance with this mandate and the clock would start ticking against them, threatening a significant penalty through the loss of funding. My State of Oklahoma is already in compliance. Actually it wouldn't affect us. We are in compliance with the requirements proposed by this new sanction. But I fundamentally oppose imposition of new sanctions on the States. While most agree that seatbelts represent the single greatest factor in saving lives on our Nation's highways, the decision to pass a primary seatbelt law is best made at the State level. The penalties proposed by Senator Warner's seatbelt sanction are twofold. The first penalty takes effect in calculating apportionments for fiscal year 2005. This is especially disconcerting because that gives States who do not already have primary seatbelt laws on the books only 8 months from now to enact a primary law. It doesn't affect me. Our State of Oklahoma already has them. This first penalty would require States in noncompliance to spend 10 percent of the funds apportioned to them under the new core safety programs on safety behavioral projects. Under section 405 of title 23, any funds subject to this transfer cannot be recovered in future years by a State's subsequent compliance with the seatbelt sanction. A second penalty would be imposed if States had still not enacted a primary seatbelt law or brought their seatbelt rate up to 90 percent by the beginning of fiscal year 2007. States still in noncompliance by this time would lose up to 4 percent of their apportionments under each of the National Highway System programs: The Surface Transportation Program, Interstate Maintenance Program, and the Highway Bridge Replacement and Rehabilitation Program. That one is significant to me. These funds would be completely lost to the States in noncompliance and redistributed among other States. You could argue that my position in Oklahoma could be enhanced by the passage of this amendment because we know there will be some States that are not in compliance. Certainly our bridges in Oklahoma need as much help as they can get. The amendment proposes instituting a huge penalty for States without a primary seatbelt law. Although I support the increased use of seatbelts across the United States and would encourage States to enact primary seatbelt laws to reach this objective, I believe threatening States with the loss of needed Federal dollars for surface transportation is not the right approach. I admire so much the Senator from Virginia and his dedication. I never appreciated what he had to go through 6 years ago as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee during the last reauthorization until I became the chairman and am going through it. I am sure he did a far better job than I. But I disagree with this particular amendment.

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for up to 7 minutes as if in morning business and then we return immediately to the bill, S. 1072.

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

Mr. INHOFE. Since this process started, we have been encouraging people to come to discuss their amendments. We are now in a position where they can actually offer their amendments. We had quite a few Members who worked over the weekend, who also had their staff working. They brought amendments down, and I thank all of those Members. We visited with them. As the managers, we accepted some. I think now we are at the point where we do encourage our Members to bring their amendments. While we are in this stage right now, let me share a couple of points that I think are very significant. There has been a lot of discussion that the formulas are unfair to some States. I suggest that in almost every case where there is a donee State that becomes a donor State, it is by a very small amount. On the average, the disparity between donee and donor is far less. In approaching this, we actually took the average donor and put 4 cents on it and then from the donee took 4 cents off. I think it is a very fair way of doing it. But when people talk about the formulas, let's keep in mind the formulas are real. They have not been real in the past. They were not real in TEA-21. They tried to do it but they ended up with a minimum guarantee, which is a political document. The formulas include such things as total lane miles on the interstate, on principal arterial routes; vehicle miles traveled; annual contributions to the highway trust fund attributed to commercial vehicles; diesel fuel used on highways; relative share of total cost to repair or replace deficient highway bridges. That is one I am particularly interested in since, as I have said many times, my State of Oklahoma is dead last in terms of the conditions of bridges; weighted nonattainment and maintenance areas; rate of return of donor States. All of those are in the formula. This is the first time, since we started this process--at least since I have been here in 1991 when ISTEA came out--that we actually are using the formula and staying with it. It has not been easy, because people who do not like the way their State was treated come down and say all kinds of detrimental things about the formula, about our motives, about the bill in general. The bottom line is, we have been honest with the Senate and honest with all of the States. I do not think it will shock anyone to hear that there were political considerations in the past. We know that from the other body. The House Member from Pennsylvania was always very aggressive in getting the most he could for his State. I think a lot of them are like that, and we have corrected a lot of those. I would say this: Of all of the ones who are the big players in TEA- 21, and that was 1998, there was Senator Moynihan, whom we loved so much. His State was 1.25. We had Pennsylvania, which was Congressman Shuster, 1.21; Rhode Island, of course, Chairman Chafee, 2.17; the Senator from Montana was not only the ranking on the committee but also on the subcommittee, 2.18. At the same time all of that happened, my State was .9050, so we are way down there. With SAFETEA, our percentages really do not change that much. We do ultimately bring everybody up to 95 percent and that is what this will do. Some are dissatisfied because they do not get up to 95 percent until the sixth year. It is unfortunate we could not come up with any other way, but it would cost so much money that if we did that, the ones who would be paying for it would be the donee States, and that would not be fair to them. So I feel very good about where we are today. I think we have a fair bill. Very few people in this Chamber know the hours, the months, and the years that have been involved in this bill. Certainly the managers of the bill do because we have been working on this bill for such a long period of time. Now that we have cloture filed, after it expires, it is our intention to go ahead and have a vote on cloture and get the bill completed. I believe it can be done this week. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. We haven't quit.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from New York, Mrs. Clinton, be recognized for up to 5 minutes as in morning business and then for me to reclaim the floor at the conclusion of her remarks.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I propound that as a unanimous consent request, that we have debate only until after the conclusion of our conferences.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we had a number of presentations made yesterday. There is a great deal of confusion as to what this bill is all about. I would like to go over a couple points. First, I invite all Members with amendments to bring them to the floor and discuss them. We are rapidly approaching the point where we are going to be considering amendments. I am very proud of the staff, Democrats and Republicans, who staffed an office over the weekend to get information from Members who had amendments to offer. For those who have not had a chance to become familiar with what we are doing, an injustice has been done to some of the members of the Finance Committee, particularly the chairman and the ranking member. They have worked long and hard. They have come up with something that meets the criteria originally put forward by the administration, such as not including a gas tax. It does not include going into the general fund. I do believe there are some areas where we have rectified problems with treatments that had been taken previously to the highway trust fund. Of course, I consider that something that should have been done anyway. We are now in position to consider the bill. It is going to be a huge jobs bill. It is going to accomplish great work for the country. A lot of people do not understand the formula aspect. One Member came down yesterday and talked about how one State is doing better under the formula. There are a lot of considerations to the formula, considerations such as the total lane miles of interstate, the vehicle miles traveled, the annual contributions to the highway trust fund attributed to commercial vehicles, the diesel fuel used on highways, relative share of total cost of repair and replacement of deficient highway bridges--I can identify with that, as in Oklahoma we have the worst bridges in the country--weighted nonattainment in maintenance areas, rate of return of donor States. That is one of the problems people have failed to understand, that we are getting all donor States up to 95 percent. To do this, there have to be some who have been actually in a better position than they should have been by any formula because let's keep in mind that in TEA-21, 6 years ago, we had the minimum guarantee. The minimum guarantee was a political document. Let's look at who was in charge at that time. We had quite a disproportionate number of leaders from the Northeast. We had Senator Moynihan, Congressman Shuster over in the House who was driving the boat, Senator Chafee, Senator Baucus from Montana. As a result, there are some States that got up to a larger share than they would have achieved under any type of formula. What they did was start with the same formula, using the factors I just outlined, and then, halfway through the process, went to the minimum guarantee. The minimum guarantee is the easy way out. All you have to do is count up 60 people, give them what they want, and you have 60 votes. That is not the right way to do it. We are doing it the right way. I haven't seen anyone who really understands the formula, and everything that went into the last year we spent working on it, who is not supportive. They may not like how their State fared. Their State may have been in a position where they were getting more than they were entitled to for a period of time. That might be rectified by this. But we have the best intentions of going ahead. I am quite sure, in the final analysis, we will have a bill that is far greater and better and more equitable than ISTEA was--I was here during the ISTEA debate--and TEA-21 in 1998. I believe we have done a good job. I refer again to the cooperation we have had on both sides of the aisle. We have had an opportunity to work with the leadership, and Senators Jeffords and Reid have been great to work with. They have set partisanship aside. Historically, this has been a nonpartisan bill. It should be that way. A lot of the actions of the Environment and Public Works Committee are nonpartisan. Certainly at the top of that list is this bill. I don't think anyone would accuse us of being at all partisan in this legislation. There are winners and losers--no question about that--when compared to TEA-21. But let's go back to see what happened in TEA-21 before we are critical of where we are today. I yield the floor.

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

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