Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I have completed my remarks and there is no objection.

Mr. INHOFE. Anyone who wants to speak so long as it is on the highway bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, that is not set aside by unanimous consent. There may be others in the Chamber who want to be heard concerning the highway bill. If that is not the case, I will go ahead and continue discussing this. It is our hope to go through it section by section. We are quite a ways along in doing that. First, I will restate some of the comments I made in the past about this bill. We have spent in the committee an entire year working on this legislation. We have had numerous hearings on various environmental concerns, procedural concerns. We had State representation at hearings about many of the parts of the bill that will end up giving the States more responsibility to take care of some of their needs. We had a chance to talk about some of the problems voiced in the Senate. As far as the position of the administration, I do not know what more we can do. We have gone through the objections they had, or the three statements they made, in terms of finding it not to be acceptable. These have been met. We have serious infrastructure needs now. The State system is 50 years old; 32 percent of our major roads are in poor or remedial condition; 29 percent of the bridges are structurally deficient. I am more emotional regarding the 29 percent bridge figure because Oklahoma ranks No. 1. Missouri is No. 2 in percentage of bridges that are structurally deficient. We have 36 percent of the Nation's urban rail vehicles and maintenance facilities in substandard or poor condition. And 29 percent of the Nation's bus fleet and maintenance facilities are in substandard condition. The list goes on. I am particularly sensitive to this, having served for 8 years in the other body on the Environment and Public Works Committee, where we talked about this and watched this as the reauthorizations took place. I participated in both ISTEA and in TEA-21, in both cases, serving at that time in the other body. I know the way things were done were a little distasteful for me, but we came up with three authorization bills. It is our hope to be deliberate and spend, as we have, a year in looking at all the problems, seeing what would be better than the system used before. In the past, we had section 1104, minimum guarantees. That has been replaced by the Equity Bonus Program. The minimum guarantees were arbitrary, politically driven percentages each State had. It was the thought that when you get to the point where you have enough votes to pass it, you did not care. We did not want to do that. So we took into consideration the donor status of States, we took into consideration the rapid growing States, States such as Texas, California, Nevada, and Florida, and we actually have ceilings as well as floors to try to satisfy as many people as possible. Yesterday, we had a number of people come to the floor saying the formula was unfair. We took each State, State by State, which I am happy to do. We have the capability of doing it, again, to show that it is not unfair. We have a formula now and everyone benefits. There is no State that gets less than 10 percent more than they had before and it takes care of the problems. The donor States have always been a problem. My State has been a donor State since the program began. So the fact that we will all end up with a 95-percent status is very significant. We have never adequately handled the safety problems. We know about the deaths on the highway: 43,000 people each year dying on the highway. While the percentage has not gone up, the numbers have. We are addressing that. The intermodal connections and freight movement were never adequately addressed by the previous bills. These are addressed. Streamlining, so that many of the problems we have--some environmental, some other types of problems--can be dealt with more rapidly and in advance so we can keep the construction going. We have the IPAM program that will take these programs that are ready to go and get them moving right away. If we are going to do it, do it now and get the people employed. A lot of people are concerned about jobs. Certainly there is no bigger job anywhere. It has been a long process. I know some Members just do not want a bill, but we will get through the process. We will get a bill and get people back to work and rebuild the infrastructure. We left off on section 1612. I will handle a couple of sections. The Senator from Missouri will arrive in about 5 minutes with some subjects to address. Section 1613 is the improved interagency consultation.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I appreciate that very much. It is probably a good idea to set it aside at this time. We will have ample time later to discuss it.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I yield to the Senator from Nevada.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, 12:30 has arrived and we are planning to break.

Mr. INHOFE. As chairman of the EPW Committee and with the concurrence of the majority of the committee, I ask unanimous consent that the committee amendment be modified with the changes at the desk.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, with the agreement of both sides, we will recognize the Senator from Florida, Mr. Nelson, for 10 minutes on a subject other than the highway bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we have been yielding to Members on other subjects. I was glad to do so, but we were supposed to be on the highway bill for discussion about an hour ago. It is my wish not to recognize anyone, so long as we have speakers on the highway bill. I understand I get primary recognition, and I can't do this as managed time, but it is my desire to recognize the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee for whatever time he should take, and immediately following that, the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Voinovich. Before Senator Jeffords talks, let me say, again, as I did several times yesterday, how much I appreciate his cooperation in working together on this very difficult bill and coming to the point where we are today.

Mr. INHOFE. They are even talking to each other now.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the minority leader for the excellent statement. We have a new chart on job opportunities which talks about the cumulative effect when a job is offered--say a construction job on a bridge or highway--and what that does to the rest of the economy. It is about 2.8 million jobs as opposed to some of the figures we have been using, one-fourth of that number. It is very significant. The Senator from Ohio gave an excellent statement also. The State of Ohio, in terms of new job opportunities, is No. 5 in the Nation under this bill. The Senator has done an excellent job. I am sure the people of Ohio are very appreciative of the job opportunities that will be there as a result of the legislation we hope to pass in the next few days. The Senator from Ohio, who has vast experience in clean air, was a breath of fresh air when he came in, someone who really has the answers. He was the chairman of the Clean Air Committee of the National Association of Governors. His expertise is very much appreciated. Senator Jeffords and others have already mentioned the difficulties in putting together a formula, considering the fast-growing States, with a ceiling there. We have some of the small States, such as that of the Presiding Officer, in terms of population, which have to be considered because even though it is a small population there are a lot of roads that have to be cared for. Taking into consideration all of these considerations was not easy. However, when we compare what we have done with what has been done in the past, I am very proud of it. The equity bonus program replaces the minimum guarantees. Now, I have been criticized for the way I simplify my explanation of minimum guarantees, but it is pretty accurate; that is, we took a percentage of the total amount of money and gave it to each State until we got 60 votes, not caring too much what happened after that. We took into consideration all the issues we have been talking about. The bill does four things, essentially. It takes care of the donor States. I have been part of a donor State for as long as I can remember, certainly as long as I have been in the Senate. We were down below 80 percent, and as mentioned by the Senator from Ohio, ISTEA, then TEA-21, and now with this bill, we are up to 95 percent. Streamlining provisions is very important. It is important we have money to spend on road construction, but also we can get the maximum out of the dollars we do spend. We go a long way to making this a reality. The third major area is that of safety. We have talked about the number of deaths on the highways. It has to be addressed. That is why we named this SAFETEA, with many safety provisions, at the same time allowing the States to come, recognizing they know more about their States than we do in Washington. And lastly, the area of freight movement. With that, it is my desire throughout the day today when there are not speakers to be heard on the highway bill to go through this, section by section, and see specifically how these things are handled. If any Members who come to the floor want to be heard on the highway bill, I will suspend. Of course, we will break in 20 minutes for our policy luncheon. I start with section 1101, the authorization of appropriations. We are talking about $255 billion in contract authority over the next 6 years. This was difficult to come up with. At the same time, we have $56.5 billion contract authority in transit, for a total of $311 billion, considerably more than the Budget Committee originally came up with, considerably more than in the President's budget. And we have received, only yesterday, the President's budget message. I think, however--and I did talk to the President yesterday--when he realizes fully the great work the Finance Committee did--the fact that we now have the offsets necessary to do this without increasing the deficit--the President is going to be more supportive than he has been in the past. So this represents an overall increase of 31 percent over TEA-21. The link between a robust economy and a strong transportation infrastructure is undeniable. The movement of people and goods is one of the foremost indicators of a growing economy and job creation. The President recommended a funding level of $200 billion for reauthorization. Given the critical infrastructure and safety needs of the program, we thought it imperative to authorize a higher level of funding for the coming 6 years. I recall a study that was made--and I do not have the exact figures, but the amount of money even that we are suggesting right now merely maintains where we are today. It was discussed by the minority leader that we have a bridge crisis, and I was wanting to interrupt him to say that my State has the distinction of having the largest percentage of functionally obsolete bridges. We are hoping to correct that with this bill. On the other end of the spectrum, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee has introduced a bill funding highways and transit at $375 billion, which is considerably over our $311 billion. However, achieving this astronomical figure would require raising gas taxes by 13.5 cents per gallon during the next 6 years, in addition to utilizing a number of other costly new financing measures. The vote before you today recognizes the realities of available revenues without the need for increasing gas taxes, and, I might add, or increasing the deficit. It is designed to make the most of every available dollar to produce better and safer roads by creating thousands of new jobs every year and stimulating the national economy. In that regard, the Department of Transportation estimates that every $1 billion of Federal transportation funds translates into 47,500 jobs. By the way, that is not a fictitious number. We have had several studies that were done. We realize it is accurate. However, when you say new job opportunities, it is about four times that. If someone takes a construction job, that person is buying more goods and services, and that means manufacturing is going to go up and there are going to be many other jobs. So this figure is a very conservative figure. We estimate that the SAFETEA will increase the size of the job market by 700,000 but create over 2 million new employment opportunities. I think that is what we need to be talking about. Section 1102 is an obligation ceiling. The principle that was used to develop obligation limitations was to minimize the gap between the OBLIM or obligation limitations in contract authority levels. This empowers the States to utilize as much available contract authority as possible while still providing them maximum flexibility. We were able to achieve a total obligation limitation of $238 billion. This is what was recommended in the Reid-Bond amendment that carried this Chamber with 79 votes. This is consistent with that amendment to the budget resolution. So there was a lot of hard work from the Finance Committee and the leadership of Chairman Grassley and Ranking Member Baucus, and I thank them for the great work they did. Section 1103 is the apportionment section. In addition to the overall increases experienced by all programs, the bill makes important changes to the apportionment of a few specific programs. Under TEA-21, the administrative expenses of the Federal Highway Administration were funded as a takedown from the various core programs. This bill recognizes the separate importance of costs associated with the administration of the overall highway program. Therefore, the bill funds Federal highway administrative expenses as its own separate apportionment protecting the authority of the individual core programs or the autonomy of the individual core programs and the administrative fund itself. Of the amount designated for program administration, the Secretary of Transportation is also given the authority to transfer an appropriate amount for the administrative expenses of the Appalachian Highway Development System. As a result of the 2000 census, 46 new metropolitan planning organizations or MPOs have been established throughout the country and are now eligible for Federal transportation planning funding. We have devoted a lot of time and a lot of attention in this bill to planning as well as to assisting States in doing what they do best, also, which we will get to in a later section. To respond to this expanded need, we have increased the program set-aside for MPOs from 1 percent under ISTEA to 1.5 percent, along with the overall increase in program funds which will help to address the growing transportation planning needs. TEA-21 used a minimum guarantee. I have been talking about this, and that really constituted a percentage. And it is just not the way this should be done. We wanted it in our formulas, and we wanted it in an attempt to get our donor States up to 90.5 percent. We used a minimum guarantee calculation to guarantee that States received back at least 90.5 percent--that is what they did in TEA-21--90.5 percent of their percentage contribution to the highway trust fund. The Minimum Guarantee Program was driven by the political distribution known as the 1104 table. I will not go into that because this is somewhat redundant. We have talked about this in the past. It was purely politically driven. To contrast that, the new Equity Bonus Program does away with the table in TEA-21 which determined each State's percentage share of the total highway fund, the political table to which I have been referring. Rather than have a State's return be set by a politically driven table, the Equity Bonus Program determines each State's return by first relying on the program distribution formulas. The equity bonus calculation identifies a justifiable nexus in equity between the underlying formulas and responsible balanced growth for donor and donee States alike. If a State fails to reach the minimum return in any year based on the formulas, that State would receive an equity bonus award in addition to their formula. It should bring them up to the required level. I cannot think of a better and more equitable way of doing this. While we allow the formulas to work under the new Equity Bonus Program, we also recognized that there would be some inequities if we allowed the formulas to be the sole factor in distributing dollars to the States. In order to increase the minimum rate of return for donor States, while ensuring an equitable transition for donee States, rates of return are subject to an annual growth ceiling to smooth out the phase-in of the increased minimum returns. This accomplishes two goals: It keeps the cost of the Equity Bonus Program affordable; secondly, it ensures that donee States are still able to grow so that there are no States with growth less than 10 percent in dollars. I repeat that. Of all 50 States, every State gets at least an increase of 10 percent. Now, I have heard from a lot of the people whose State falls into the different categories. One is the category of a fast-growing State, and, obviously, they would prefer that the ceilings not be there so they would bump into them. But if you do not do that, then you would hear equally from some of the older States, such as New York and Pennsylvania, that would have to pay the price if we did not have some type of a ceiling. For donor States, the effect of the growth ceiling is that a State with a rate of return above 90.5 percent in 2003 will reach a 95 percent return sooner than a State that received only a 90.5 percent return, or below, in 2003. The closer a State was to 95 percent in 2003, the sooner it will reach 95 percent. Conversely, those States at 90.5 percent in 2003, such as my State of Oklahoma, would likely take longer to reach 95 percent. The time it takes a State to reach 95 percent depends on how much equity bonus funding the State receives and how much faster than the national average that State is increasing its contributions to the highway trust fund. That is taken into consideration as a part of this formula. Recognizing that States with a lower tax basis due to low population, such as the State of Wyoming and others, or low income face an added challenge of maintaining the transportation infrastructure, the bill sets their TEA-21 rate of return as a minimum for future years. Section 1105 is the revenue aligned budget authority, or RABA, as we have referred to it. The huge 2003 negative adjustment in the revenue aligned budget authority made it clear that some changes were needed in the RABA calculation in order to provide greater stability and more accurate predictions and less fluctuation in coming years. This is true. The States can get so much more for their dollars if they can predict into the future how they are going to use those dollars and what those dollars are going to amount to. As I have indicated before, I believe the underlying principle of RABA is an important fiscal policy that highway expenditures should be tied to highway trust fund revenues. The bill modifies the RABA calculations so that annual funding level adjustments are less dependent on future anticipated receipts and more dependent upon actual receipts to the highway trust fund. If the RABA adjustment in any fiscal year is negative, the amount of contract authority apportioned to the State for that year will be reduced by an amount equal to the negative RABA. However, if the balance of the highway trust fund is greater than $6 billion, then there will be no negative RABA adjustments. Section 1201 is the infrastructure performance and maintenance program, or IPAM. There is a lot of interest in this program, obviously. The IPAM program is intended for ready-to-go projects that States can undertake and complete within a relatively short timeframe. As a result, States are given 6 months to obligate IPAM funds. We designed this discretionary program to promote projects that resulted in immediate benefits for the highway system's condition and performance while avoiding long-term commitments of funds. The program also provides further economic stimulus to the economy and provides a way to aid in spending down balances in the highway trust fund. That is very important right now. We are very sensitive to the somewhat job crisis. We have seen our economy on its way up again. However, there is a lag between economic recovery and the jobs. IPAM is going to give more construction sooner, provide more jobs and more jobs sooner. Then, of course, when you put the new job opportunities factor to that, that is going to be very meaningful to job recovery in America. The States may obligate funds for projects eligible under Interstate Maintenance, National Highway System, Surface Transportation System, Highway Safety Improvements Program, Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement, or CMAC, and the Highway Bridge Program. Eligible projects under IPAM include the preservation, maintenance, or improvement of existing highway infrastructure and operational improvements to address recurring highway congestion. Section 1202 is the future of the surface transportation system title. In order to be prepared for future reauthorizations of this legislation, we require the Secretary of Transportation to perform a long-term investigation into the surface transportation infrastructure needs of the Nation. Specifically, the bill directs the Secretary to look at: the current condition and performance of the interstate system; the future of the interstate system in 15 years or 30 years or 50 years; expected demographics and business uses that impact the surface transportation system; the effect of changing vehicle types, modes of transportation, traffic volumes, and fleet size and weights--we have seen such a dramatic change in the types of vehicles that we drive that we never could have anticipated back when we were putting together ISTEA or one of the previous programs--possible design changes; rural, urban, interregional, and national needs; improvements in emergency preparedness; real-time performance data collection; and future funding needs and potential approaches to collect those funds. What we are saying is, we are trying to prepare for the future. It is important what we do for the next 6 years, as we go through this reauthorization. I think we have done a good job with that. But things will happen 6 years from now that we cannot anticipate. That is what the Secretary of Transportation will be looking at and coming back with, so we will be able to anticipate some of the things we will be looking at 6 years from now. A very important section is 1203. That is the freight transportation gateways, freight intermodal connections. Freight movement in America is expected to grow dramatically in volume and value over the coming decades. Throughout the reauthorization hearings, the Environment and Public Works Committee heard concerns about inadequate freight facilities, insufficient capacity, and insufficient connections. The GAO recently released a report, dated October 2003, a little over a month ago, regarding freight transportation, recommending strategies needed to address planning and financing limitations. The report noted that the major challenges to freight mobility all shared a common theme--congestion, including overcrowded highways, freight specific check points. Additionally, the GAO reported two main limitations that stakeholders encounter in addressing these challenges. The first related to the limited visibility that freight projects receive in the planning and prioritization process. S. 1072 directly addresses this problem by creating a freight transportation coordinator at the State level to facilitate public and private collaboration in developing solutions to freight transportation and freight gateway problems. This is one more area where we will have an increased emphasis on States. The bill also ensures that intermodal freight transportation needs are integrated into project development and planning processes. The second limitation that the GAO found was inhibiting stakeholders was that Federal funding programs tend to dedicate funds to a single mode of transportation or nonfreight purpose, thus limiting freight project eligibility among some programs. S. 1072 deals with this problem as well as making intermodal projects eligible for STP and NHS funding. The Freight Gateways program found in this bill promotes intermodal improvements for freight movement through significant trade gateways, ports and hubs, and intermodal connections to the national highway system. States and localities are encouraged to adopt new financing strategies to leverage State, local, and private investments in freight transportation gateways, thus maximizing the impact of each Federal dollar. The Freight Gateways program is funded from a set-aside of 2 percent of each State's NHS apportionment. However, in the spirit of State flexibility and ensuring that funds go to the areas of greatest need, a State is not required to spend the 2 percent of their NHS apportionment if they can certify to the Secretary that their intermodal connections are adequate. I think this is a recognition that the States do know more about their needs than the Federal Government. That is one of the trends of this. I know we are ready to recess. I yield to my colleague Senator Jeffords for the remainder of the time.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I see the minority leader. I certainly defer to the minority leader.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate the comments of the Senator from Pennsylvania. I in no way want him to misinterpret the comments I made as being critical of his analysis. Formulas are very difficult. TEA-21 is something we know was totally politically driven. That was a percentage of the total amount of money, so when they got up to 60 votes they could just shut the door and say: Fine, we have our bill. We tried not to do that, take consideration of donor/donee status, fast- growing States. By the way, you heard the senior Senator from Texas yesterday talking about her dissatisfaction with what Texas was doing. When it gets down to it, under this formula or any other formula, if you do something for a fast growing State that keeps bumping up against the ceiling, you are going to be having a problem. If you try to correct that, it is going to go into the donee States, of which of course Pennsylvania is one. It is a difficult choice. We spent a whole year working on this and I hope you have a chance to really look at it closely.

Mr. INHOFE. OK, in the first year, right now, you are a donee State.

Mr. INHOFE. I was referring to 2003, where it is a very substantial donee State, recognizing it goes up and down. By the way, Oklahoma has never been a donee State. Oklahoma was bumped against the ceilings: 73 percent, 80 percent, and then 90.5 percent, and of course we are looking forward to getting up to 95 percent, as I am sure the Senator from Arizona is going to share that enthusiasm.

Mr. INHOFE. On occasions, yes.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, let me say how much I always enjoy the junior Senator from Arizona. We were both elected to the other body in the same year, 1986. We both came here to the Senate in 1994. Neither of us is shy about the fact we are conservatives. He has heard me say many times that conservatives in some areas are pretty big spenders-- that is, national defense and infrastructure--believing that is really what we are supposed to be doing in Washington. I don't think you can find a State that has had more road problems than my State of Oklahoma. It is kind of a going joke there. Each holiday, so many people come for Thanksgiving, and they say: We could always tell when we got to Oklahoma because of the roads. We always knew when we left Arizona and got over to Oklahoma because the roads aren't nearly as good as they are in Arizona. I would suggest a couple of things are worthwhile talking about. I have a chart. I want to help the Senator from Arizona when he goes home. I will let him take this chart home. When you look at Arizona, keeping in mind that the average State increase under SAFETEA is 35.6 percent, that is 40.23 percent. That is a huge amount over the average. The Senator from Arizona says it is because they have been on the short end of the stick for a long period of time. I can identify with that because being from the State of Oklahoma, we were at the very bottom. We had to come up by virtue of formula to 77 percent, to 80, then to 90.5, and now hopefully to 95. So that is a very large amount of money. If you look in the far left of this chart, you have what Arizona averaged under TEA-21. That was $463 million. Then it shows each year thereafter, for the next 6 years, what happens by comparison. With all the difficulties we have in working on any kind of a formula, the Senator from Arizona and I have talked about the complexities of formulas. We have donee States, donor States, fast-growing States, low- population, low-density States. Consequently, to come up with some kind of a formula that takes care of all that, we took all of those things into consideration. Contrast that with TEA-21. In TEA-21, they had a formula as a base, but they had a percentage. Every State had a percentage. When they finally got up to 60 votes, that was it: We don't care what happens to the rest of you. We have our 60 votes. We didn't try to do that. That would have been easier, I suppose. I would probably be making the same number of people mad, but nonetheless we didn't do that. We tried to use the logical things to take into consideration in developing the formula. The Senator talks about a veto. I know this is just a difference in interpretation. The Senator from Arizona is on the Finance Committee. I am not on it. Consequently, I went to the chairman, Senator Grassley, and I said to him, some time ago: This is what I feel we need to do. It is up to the Finance Committee to figure out how we get there. The Senator from Arizona ran over it pretty exhaustively, and I bow to his superior intelligence in terms of the finance package because he is on the committee. But when I look over the fuel tax fraud compliance, that is something that came along a little bit later. I think that is real. My staff says that is a conservative figure, the 2.5 cents and the 5.2 cents on ethanol. The interest, you agree, should go back to the highway trust fund. Spending down the balance is reasonable. I can remember back when we had balances of $18 billion in the highway trust fund. I spent 8 years in the other body on the Public Works and Transportation Committee where we started chipping away on that. And we all know the reason that was there to start with. It goes back to the Lyndon Johnson days, when they were trying to make it look as if the money they were going to be spending was not going to have huge deficits. So they said, let's just go ahead and apply that when we are drawing up our budget. We have changed all that, and we are making great headway in spending that down to a reasonable level. The $6.5 billion, everybody does agree, is reasonable and I am sure the committee did also. Then on some of the clarifications on the transfer of the gas guzzler tax to the highway trust fund, it should have been there to start with. What we are trying to do is undo some of the damage that has been done to the trust fund over the years. We are doing that with this bill. As far as a veto is concerned, let me share something that goes into a little more detail than the Senator from Arizona did. We have a letter here that expresses the current feelings, dated February 2, just a couple days ago. And in this letter from Secretary Mineta, this is the administration's position. They said, yes, we recognize we need more money for infrastructure. That is something we all agree and they certainly agree is necessary. They said, if you can get to the Bond- Reid amount without doing three things, then we would support you. No. 1 would be you would not be increasing gas taxes. We are not going to increase gas taxes. Secondly, we are not going to play around. You know the games you come up with. Let's have a bonding program. You and I both know most of these bonding programs are nothing more than borrowing in some way from the future and encumbering future revenues. Or third--this is our biggest controversy with each other--that highway spending should be financed from the highway trust fund, not from the general fund of the Treasury. I grant you, the last item you talked about is coming from the general fund. I contend it should not have been. It should have been in the trust fund to start with. That is an argument you and I could have a disagreement on, but I look at it perhaps with a little bit of bias, sitting on the committee and saying: All right, Finance Committee, if you can come up with this, this is what is best for America. I felt they did. And the chairman has told me he believed they did. We had Senator Thomas on the floor, who is one of your colleagues on the committee, who I think is favorably disposed to the results of the work of the Finance Committee.

Mr. INHOFE. Of course.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I suggest that, as the Senator from Arizona returns home, he ignore the 40-percent increase and go home and say $1.11 billion new dollars. Perhaps they can relate to that. I know Senator Corzine wants to speak and several others want to be heard but not necessarily on the highway bill. At the appropriate time, I will ask unanimous consent that there be a period for morning business. Before I do that, I see the chairman of the subcommittee is here. I ask Senator Bond if he has anything further to say insofar as the highway bill is concerned.

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate the response. I know the Senator to be very sincere. The time that we spent--we are talking about 12 months we have been anguishing over this issue to come up with something that is fair. It is not perfect. It is better than it was under TEA-21. We went to the Finance Committee and said: Can you get us there? It is my information that we got there and, consequently, I still stand behind the bill. We have an honest disagreement on that.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Missouri. I also would like to say that it has been a very difficult task developing this legislation. While it seems as though all some colleagues want to talk about is the formula in terms of money, there are many other issues we dealt with--environmental issues, streamlining issues, safety issues, issues that are of paramount concern to everyone. A compromise was made on all of those issues--some I don't like, but we did compromise.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I listened with great interest. I think he has some excellent points, I say to the Senator from Pennsylvania. He extensively quoted Churchill. I would like to add another quote to that: Truth is incontrovertible. Ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is. I say that because there are some things--It is only natural when the Senator from Pennsylvania is not serving on the committee that he would not be quite as familiar with the development of the formula as perhaps someone who is on the committee. So I would like to respond to a couple of points because I really believe we have a very fair formula. First of all, the formula Congressman Shuster put together is the basis for this bill. I happened to serve in the other body in the committee under Congressman Shuster back during the development of TEA- 21. During that time, of course, he was pretty notorious getting a lot for his State. I understand that. I should be more that way myself. But I would only like to suggest--if staff would be good enough to hold this chart up--this is Pennsylvania. Over here, take 1384 in the red, that is the average amount for each year. If you took all 6 years in the TEA-21 and averaged them out, that would be the amount. That would be $1.3 billion. Then, if you watch each year as it goes up, you end up with a substantially higher amount. Let's compare that, if we may, with California. I saw an op-ed piece by the senior Senator from California in which she was very complimentary of the way this worked. If you look, you see they end up in almost the same place as Pennsylvania does percentage wise. But it all comes in the last year. That is because they are a donor State. In order for the large donor States to be able ultimately to reach 95 percent, it has to be done in the last year. I think we all understand that. But when you compare the two charts, I would say if she is satisfied, then the Senator from Pennsylvania should be elated. I would like to share one other thing, too. I chair the committee. If you take the total amount of road miles that we have in Oklahoma compared to Pennsylvania, it is almost the same, when you take out the toll roads. Of course, we are not dealing with toll roads here. With the same number of road miles, each year Pennsylvania gets 3.5 times as much as Oklahoma gets. If anyone should be complaining, using that as a criterion, I should be the one. I think it is very important you share with your constituents some of the things that are in this bill and how well I believe Pennsylvania is treated. The Senator from Pennsylvania talked about bridges. According to the surveys that have been taken by the Department of Transportation, Oklahoma's bridges are No. 50 in the Nation--way behind Pennsylvania. These are things that need to be corrected. Many of these things will be corrected in this bill. So I would only say formulas are very difficult. There is no magic formula that is going to make everyone happy. I remember the formulas in TEA-21 and ISTEA, and there were complaints from many States on those. No formula is going to satisfy everyone, but I honestly believe, when I look at Pennsylvania and compare it to California or Oklahoma or some of the other States, that they are very well cared for. With that, I yield to any questions the Senator might have.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that there now be a period for the transaction of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I amend that to up to 20 minutes for the first speaker and 10 minutes thereafter.