Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I know there are similar steps. If you say they are identical, I am sure they are.

Mr. INHOFE. That is correct.

Mr. INHOFE. I am happy to yield.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I will be glad to yield.

Mr. INHOFE. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. I can assure the Senator he always does.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first let me thank the ranking member of the committee for all the hard work and effort he has been put into this bill. I remind Members that we spent the weekend working on amendments. We actually had an office in the Hart Building that was open and staffed by both the majority and the minority. They waded through a lot of amendments. To move this bill along, I again encourage Members to bring their amendments down. I will not mention the names of the Senators because it may not be appropriate. I encourage Members to come down to speak on the amendments which are going to require some discussion. We have an amendment to clarify the travel reimbursement for troops retroactive to September 25. We have an amendment on seatbelts which imposes sanctions on States that don't have primary seatbelt laws. We have amendments such as one on sanctions relating to drunk drivers, an amendment on changes to the Indian roads program, an amendment to clarify the new highway safety core program dollars which can be used for additional lanes or two-lane roads, and one to grant exemptions for 90,000 pounds on Federal aid highways--to a higher level to allow for lumber trucks and garbage trucks going to landfills. We have a lot of amendments. I think there are about 35 amendments because staff came down and worked over the weekend on those amendments. I think it would be appropriate for them to come down right now, and not to offer their amendment but to discuss their amendment. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. First of all, I thank the Senator from North Dakota for yielding. He will have ample time to come back and do that. I appreciate him allowing us to get back to the bill. The Senator from Ohio has an amendment to talk about, but I encourage all Members to come down to the floor. We have time now. Later on, time is going to become very precious. As I said last Friday, come to the floor. We stayed open all weekend to work with Members on their amendments. We are doing that as we speak. We would encourage Members to come down and talk about their amendments--now that we have worked out amendments--so when the appropriate time comes, if they wish to file those amendments and to debate them and get votes on them, they will be light-years ahead if they come down now. I want to issue that as a very strong suggestion to those members who have amendments. I thank some 30 Members who brought their amendments down over Saturday. A lot of those have been accepted in the managers' amendment.

Mr. INHOFE. I object.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me thank all the Members who had their staff come down, and some Members came down over the weekend, brought their amendments, and met with my staff and met with Senator Jeffords' staff and I believe with Senator Reid's staff. We got into a good discussion on the various amendments. We discussed with them our amendments. I am pleased with the response of those Members who understand how important it is to pass this legislation and have come to us in the week that this bill has been on the floor. To date, I believe we have met with about 30 Member offices. We are all looking forward to working hard to accommodate the needs of these offices with as many amendments as possible. I encourage anyone out there who has amendments to bring them down, talk about them, and let's get some of this debate started. The chairman, ranking member of the full committee of the Transportation Subcommittee--we are all ready to work with those Members. I wish to take a moment to congratulate Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus for their work on the finance portion of this legislation. They have done a tremendous job in meeting the financial needs of this bill without increasing taxes or deficit spending. They have also brought integrity back to the highway trust fund and to the commitment we made to the American people. The trust fund is, in essence, a user-fee-based program. You pay a gas tax and that money is then used for transportation purposes. Unfortunately, the trust fund has been used for many years for other purposes, including shifting the burden of tax policies from the general revenue to the trust fund. These tax policy benefits have nothing to do with highway use and should not burden the trust fund. I look at this, and I have said it many time before, as a moral issue. We tell people when they pay--and they don't mind paying new taxes, even higher taxes. They are willing to pay the taxes because they want to have better roads and they assume that money is going to go into building roads. But it is not. They have been raiding the highway trust fund now for as long as I can remember. So the Finance Committee sought to fix this unfairness to the taxpayer and has come up with a proposal to right this wrong. Included in these proposals is a repeal of the partial exemption for ethanol-blended fuels. The tax benefit for ethanol, like nearly all energy production incentives, is transferred to the general fund through a tax credit. The same effect is applied to refunds for special categories of users such as State and local governments. These are changes that never should have been necessary. We should no more raid the highway trust fund than we should raid the Social Security trust fund. These are commitments made to the American people. However, by bringing integrity back to the trust fund, the general fund lost a source of revenue, albeit a source that never should have been used in the first place. So in order to avoid deficit spending, Chairman Grassley closed a number of loopholes in the Tax Code and kept the general fund whole--in other words, no deficit spending. There are those who have questioned the manner in which this was done, but I trust the chairman and the ranking member of the Finance Committee and take them at their word. They should be congratulated. I am here to thank both of them. Because of the work of the Finance Committee, we have a bill before us that will provide over 2 million new jobs to repair our Nation's infrastructure and do so without deficit spending. I think it is very important to keep talking about this. There is not a Member in here who cannot remember at one time or another raiding the trust fund, to take some of this money to put it in toward reducing the deficit. That was done in the 1990s. This is an opportunity we have, not just to pass a very aggressive highway bill and provide the jobs that go with that but also correct this wrong that has been out there for a long period of time. Let me emphasize, we invite Members to come down and bring their amendments. While we cannot be introducing them and voting on them right now, we can still get a lot of the discussion out of the way. I think it is very important we do so, now. Let me defend the formula. There have been a lot of people coming down and objecting to the way it was put together. I remind my colleagues what happened in TEA-21. I was here for TEA-21, here in the Senate, here in the committee working with my good friend, Senator Jeffords. We watched the way that formula worked. In that, they had a minimum guarantee program. A minimum guarantee program is nothing but a chart; it is called section 1104. It took all the States and put a percentage down. As soon as they got 60 people happy, they figured: there is our 60 votes--and this is no way to do it. Instead of that, we looked at donor status. We have several States such as my State of Oklahoma that have been in a donor status for many years. We looked at States that are fast growing States. We put a ceiling in there, so they could not get so much of the money there would not be anything remaining for other States. We have a floor in there. I think we have done something that is very good. I guess you could say there are four goals that interest a lot of people, one being the donor States, those of us who have been donor States for so long we can remember when we were 70, 75 percent donors. ISTEA came along and brought the floor up to 80. Then TEA-21 brought it to 90.5. This is going to bring every State, all 50 States, at the end of this 6-year period, or by the end of that period, up to 95 percent. That is very reasonable. It is a very ambitious goal but one with which I think most of us, I am absolutely convinced, agree. We have introduced streamlining measures in this bill that will allow us to use the dollars we have and use them to build more roads, to do more in a shorter period of time. We are concentrating on safety. We have not concentrated on safety as much as we should have in the past. I know the senior Senator from Virginia is one who has been concerned about safety for a long period of time and is very pleased with a lot of the provisions that we have in this bill. We haven't really focused on freight movement until this bill came along. So we are getting into all of these areas. I just hope our colleagues understand that Senator Jeffords, Senator Reid, Senator Bond, and I have been working on this bill for over a year. That is a long time. Obviously, you will never have a formula that makes everybody happy but you can certainly have one that is fair. And we have achieved for the first time in the history of this process what I consider to be a very fair formula. I would like to ask if Senator Jeffords has any comments he would like to make at this time.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I believe it is always very difficult when we get a complicated formula. We have been talking about how complicated the formula is when you take into consideration the growth of States. We are dealing with low-population States. We have a floor. We have donor States and donee States. But the Senator from Arizona is right when he said we actually have more donor States than we had under TEA-21. The disparity amount is far less between the donor and donee States. We are calculating that now. I think the point needs to be answered, and I think we are going to be prepared to do it. A State such as New York, for example, has gone from $1.25--in other words, $1.25 for every dollar that has been put in--down to 99.75. That is down to getting back everything they have put in, but it is dropping down substantially from the amount in the previous bill. I have looked at States to try to defend myself in being fair on this. If you look at TEA-21--that was Senator Moynihan, Representative Schuster, and Senator Chafee--Moynihan's State went up to $1.25; Schuster, $1.20; Chafee, $2.16, and mine--and I am chairman of the committee--is only going to go up to $.95. And we are still going to be a donor State. I think that should demonstrate we are being fair on this. To suggest that Colorado is getting a raw deal, they have the highest rate of return of any State. But formulas are complicated. I am not critical of the Senator from Arizona. There will be others down here who do not want this bill to pass, and it might not have anything to do with the formula. No one can argue that this formula is the only fair formula we have. How many times on the floor of the Senate in previous years have Members waited until they got 60 votes and took care of 60 Members and then turned around and not cared what happens to the rest? We don't do that. It would be easy if we did that. We talk about countervotes, and go back and get it passed. As far as the Finance Committee, I think they have done a good job. They don't have their final product out. But I know the criteria on which they are working, and I am very proud of Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus for the work they have done. It might be that there is some money being taken out of the general fund which is being put back into the highway trust fund. But that is replacing money that came out of the highway trust fund which went into the general trust fund. In one fell swoop, $8 billion went out of the general fund. These are raids on the highway trust fund. I believe this is a moral issue. If a State pays the money, they anticipate that money being paid because they use their roads. It is going to go into road maintenance and road construction and bridge construction. Our State of Oklahoma is still number 50 in condition of bridges. There is a lot to be done all around the country. There will be some people who do not like this bill for reasons having nothing to do with formula. But you can always take a formula and pick it apart and make it sound unfair. This is not unfair. This is a fair way to approach it. I believe it is real equity. As I say, we are now calculating this. The States that went from a donee status to a donor status are a very small amount. But it is closing that disparity between the donee and donor States. This is precisely what we have been trying to do. If the Senator from Nevada and the Senator from Vermont were talking about job values in this bill--look at any State and you can see the job opportunities. There is not one piece of legislation we are going to be dealing with during this entire year which is going to have the effect on jobs this is going to have. Pick out any State. You can see the total amount of new jobs. It is close to 3 million jobs--and job opportunities. We have a jobs chart, and then we have a jobs opportunity chart. We know there will be construction jobs. We know that is going to happen. But keep in mind every time you hire someone to do more construction, that person is also going to go out and buy more goods and services. They will have to manufacture more, and that is going to employ more people. We have calculated that. That is a very accurate figure. I know there are a lot of Members who are going to be opposing this because they may not like some of the freight provisions. Perhaps their States are not treated in a way that other States are treated because they do not happen to be a poor city or they do not happen to be a terminal city. Nonetheless, I think Senator Reid made a good statement when he said this is not just one State but it is the United States of America. Again, on the particular State of Arizona, that is a 40-percent increase, which I think is very fair. In fact, that is a greater increase than the average increase States have. Let me say to the Senator from North Dakota that he has been very kind in working into our schedule at times when we were not working on the highway bill. I do appreciate it very much.

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

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, that was a great statement by the Senator from Mississippi. I appreciate it very much. It is a recognition that a lot of people will think all of a sudden we came up, last week, with a bill and a formula. They don't realize we have spent a year--a year of our lives--working on a formula, looking into the same things the Senator is talking about. I am from a donor State. We have been a donor State as long as I have been up here. The Senator talked about working on TEA-21. You also worked on ISTEA in the beginning because I was there with you. Those formulas were not as good because they were based on minimum guarantees. A minimum guarantee is you figure, how do I get 60 votes, and then we don't care what happens to the rest of you. We did not do that. We considered the donee States, donor States, the fast-growing States, because there is a ceiling in there for them, and then there is a floor for some of the States that have either a low population or are low-yield States. All these things were taken into consideration. So anything that is as complicated and long as this is, you can pick it apart. But I can tell you right now, we spent a lot of time on it. There are people who are interested in the transit part of it. There are some, such as the Senator from Ohio, who have been very much concerned about and made great contributions to safety. Some of them are concerned about freight and the obstacles that are out there. But we have it all in this one. I feel good about this bill. It has taken a year to get where we are today. Frankly, you just cannot start readjusting a formula of which you took every consideration in putting together. You have something that is fair. You cannot then start readjusting it. If you change one State, it changes all the other States, and then you have to go back and start all over. I think there are those who would prefer we would have to do that because they don't want to have a bill. But we are not going to operate on extensions, and I have every expectation we will get a bill this week. People say: What about the House? They are going to want an extension. They are not where we are. Well, you are not going to get them to do anything until we do something, in my opinion. I appreciate very much the Senator from Mississippi making his comments about this bill. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Senator DeWine is waiting to speak now on his amendment, although I think the Senator is making a very good point. We have been talking about this since Friday, and we encourage people to come down.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I might be a little more specific. In Hart-415 they are going to be open today and from noon until 5 o'clock on Saturday to work on amendments.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. We will be shutting down here shortly, so I will repeat the announcement I made earlier. We are going to try to have this highway bill completed by the end of the week. To do that, there are several things that need to happen. One is that we get these amendments in. We have announced before, and we want to make sure the offices know, if Members have amendments they would like to have considered by the managers, our staff will be available this afternoon and Saturday-- this afternoon, all afternoon and Saturday from noon to 5 o'clock--in Hart room 415. We would like to have amendments looked at. I strongly urge you to come down. We are going to stay on our timetable to try to have this completed. I appreciate the comments by the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from New Jersey. It is very important we get this done. We are beyond the point of turning back and changing things. We have spent a year working out all the elements--the environmental portion of the bill, the safety portion of the bill, the formula portion--and we have probably the best bill we have had during my time, and I go back to ISTEA when I was in the other body and TEA-21 here. We have considered more than the other formulas and we have now abandoned the idea of percentages that will get 60 votes and then walking. That is not the way we should be doing it. I think we are doing it a lot better. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it has been our intention to get as many of the obstacles out of the way and as many amendments here as possible relating to the highway bill. The leader told us he wants to have the highway bill completed by late next week. I think we can do that. If Members have amendments they would like to have considered by the managers, our staff will be available this afternoon and Saturday afternoon from noon until 5 p.m. in Hart-415. If you have any amendments you would like to work out, I strongly advise you to bring them down today or tomorrow instead of waiting until next week. Again, that will be in Hart, room 415, and anytime today or tomorrow, Saturday, between noon and 5 p.m. I also note we have been inviting people to come and speak on the bill. No one has come down yet. It is now 11:15. In the event that no one wants to speak on the bill by noon, we will probably shut down. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate the statement of my friend from Florida. I would say, in terms of who the villain is in the deficit we are facing right now, there are two big villains. One is the war, and then the economy. As we started losing economic ground, a downturn back in March of 2000, people didn't realize for every 1 percent change in economic activity it translated into $45 billion in revenue. In other words, as the economy is rebounding now, the revenue is coming back up. Even continuing in the effort, the war effort--which I am afraid is going to last for quite a while--we are going to be facing end strength problems and that will have to go on. I believe the best thing we can do is do it through the economy. At the same time there are certain things that have to happen in America. We have to do something about roads in America. I probably have as many townhall meetings as anyone. I suggest the Senator from Florida does, too. I can't remember one I have had where they haven't said something about roads. In Oklahoma what they say is, we can always tell when we are around Thanksgiving time, when we have family coming in, we have friends coming in, we can always know when we get to Oklahoma because of the roads. I add to the Presiding Officer, when they come from Texas they make that comment about Oklahoma roads. So we do have a very serious problem. It seems to be more serious in my State. Part of that is due to the donor status we have had for quite some time. Of course, we have not had the money with which to do it. I feel an obligation, and believe it is very appropriate for conservatives, to get out and vote in favor of this type of an infrastructure program. This translates directly into jobs, translates directly into the economy, translates directly into increasing economic activity and additional revenue that will come into Government. With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senator from Oregon be recognized for up to 12 minutes on a subject of his choice and that Senator Allard be recognized immediately after that.

Mr. INHOFE. Yes.

Mr. INHOFE. I will yield----