Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I would observe, after just walking in, that we are talking about the actions that have not been taken formally but that several Members of the House have talked about--we are going to bail out of here. My feeling is this--and I am asking a question through the Chair if the Senator from Illinois would agree with my observation. One of the reasons I think those statements have been made in the House is because they never believed we were going to be able pass a 6-year highway reauthorization bill in the Senate. Now, once that realization is there--and I am going to make an appeal to whoever is trying to string out this debate to shorten the time so we can have the vote that is pending right now take place and get on with the last and final vote, so we would actually have that ready while the House is still in session. They could very well take it up at that time. Now, if the individuals have placed themselves in a corner so that is not going to happen, I don't know. But is it worth a try? That is my question.

Mr. INHOFE. I appreciate that. The only other question I have is the second part that I will ask. There is time to do this. I am going to personally make every effort--and I think Senator Boxer shares my anxiety over getting this bill into a position so we can vote. All we have to do is move this up so we are not going to be voting at the expiring time of 4 o'clock in the morning, when that could just as easily be tonight, and that would give us time to allow the House to look at it and perhaps come up with a better judgment than they have expressed so far.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, will the Senator yield for one last question?

Mr. INHOFE. Would the Senator join me in reaching out to try to see if we can get unanimous consent to go ahead and move forward? I know what we are doing is more significant than other things that are going on. If they don't like the bill for some reason, that is one thing, but bring it forward so this can be done. I am inclined to hope we could encourage any of those who are just killing time right now to join us in doing this. It is my intention to go ahead and make that request, and I will ask if the Senator from Illinois would join me in that effort.

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

Mr. INHOFE. I ask the Senator, How many people were killed in that bridge collapse?

Mr. INHOFE. Is the Senator aware that around the same time that happened, in my State of Oklahoma, we were in the process of the last long-term bill in 2005. A mother with three children was driving below a bridge in Oklahoma City. Some concrete dropped off and killed the mother. We corrected that in the 2005 bill. But the question I would ask you is, Why do we wait until people die before this happens? I have a list of bridges that are in need of attention, and later today I will read it for the third time. We can avoid things such as this from happening, but if we don't do something, if we are not going to do it, then large projects cannot be done with short-term extensions. My question is, Why do we wait until death is at our door?

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, well, I am going to have to disagree with my partner over here on one thing; that is, the insistence that the House stay. In my opinion, they are not going to stay. That is done. But this can still be done with their targeted adjournment date for them. The way that can happen is for us to right now--we are waiting out the vote. If nobody yields backs--it is on the Inhofe substitute. That is what we are doing right now. That vote can take place at 5 o'clock in the morning. If you moved that up--and right now we are asking unanimous consent to do that. If we are able to do that, that could happen this afternoon. That means we could have the next step, which would be to move to the bill. That could be done while they are still here. What I do not want to happen is to have them--you know, we are successful and done with our bill and then send it over to the House and they are gone. So I think we can still do it while the House is still here. I have to say--and I am not sure the ranking member of my committee, Senator Boxer, agrees with this, but I think they never believed we would be able to get the bill done. That being the case, they staked out early and said they--for any number of reasons, they are going to be gone. Well, we can do it. All we have to do is to move this up and to get time yielded back. We can do the same thing then on final passage. We could have the bill over there in good enough time-- Wednesday; that is tomorrow--that they could still act on the bill. That would be my goal on this because I think that is the only way.

Mr. INHOFE. I will yield.

Mr. INHOFE. Reclaiming my time, I don't know what they would do, how long they would stay. If we don't finish it until they already are gone, then we know that.

Mr. INHOFE. But I still think that can be done. There is this urgency. We have worked long and hard. People say they haven't had time to get into this thing. We passed our bill. They have had 5 or 6 weeks to absorb this. And this argument that we have a 6-year bill with only 3 years of funding--this is kind of a phony argument because we have a valve that doesn't exist anywhere else that if we go through and start a 6-year bill, that would allow us to get into the major projects which the Senator from Minnesota was talking about and which the Senator and I have been talking about that you cannot get into with short-term extensions.

Mr. INHOFE. We all understand that. So we can start those projects. Given 3 years, I can assure you that we would have the opportunity to find offsets that would be acceptable. We were operating under the gun before. This would take that away. We can go ahead and accept the fact that we have 3 years funded. For those individuals--and I am speaking now of my colleagues on this side of the aisle--who are conservative who have had the argument that we will then have to borrow money in order to finish the 6 years. We can really have it both ways. We start the projects, and then there will be enough pressure on and we will be able to do-- incidentally, I have to keep reminding my friends that there is a conservative position, and that is to pass this bill. You know, I get so tired of people--there are a lot of people out there who actually voted for the $800 billion--way back at the beginning of the Obama administration--the $800 billion stimulus bill that didn't stimulate. We tried to put an amendment on there. I know the Senator from California and I cosponsored amendments. They were all rejected. Then along came the $700 billion bailout, and a lot of my Republican friends voted for that. Now they complain that the money isn't there. Well, the money can be there. And if it hadn't been for those two things, we wouldn't be having this conversation today. But the money can be there. We need time to let that happen. Certainly, as we pass this bill, start the major projects that are going on, then we will be in a position to do that. The key to making that happen, to allowing that to happen--I am not going to give up because the House hasn't left yet. They say they are going to leave tomorrow afternoon. Well, if we go ahead and yield back enough time to get this vote this afternoon, we could do the same thing on the final vote. By the way, those individuals who want to have amendments, you can still have germane amendments that would not be treated as an amendment, but we would consider putting those into the managers' amendment. If that happens, that would become part of the vote we would be voting on tomorrow. To allow that to happen, we have to go ahead and yield back time so that we can have this vote take place and start working on those amendments that are germane to see which of those we are going to be in a position to consider. Anyway, that is what I am hoping will happen. I think there is an opportunity. Again, people who make statements--and I have a lot of friends in the House. I spent 8 years in the House. These individuals who are speaking now--one of them made kind of an off-the-cuff statement about, you know, we are just not going to consider it. Well, I really believe most of them over there felt we weren't going to be successful in passing a bill. So it is still possible we can do that. We do have the time left, and we know what we have to do to do that. Let me talk a little bit about the sense of urgency. First, I appreciate the fact that this conversation took place. The Senator from Minnesota had some pretty graphic pictures of what happened that took the lives of 13 people, a bridge falling down. The DRIVE Act contains some other key provisions outside of prioritizing bridge safety and stability. Today, the National Highway System carries more than 55 percent of the Nation's highway traffic and 97 percent of the truck freight traffic. We have never had a freight provision. This is my sixth bill that I have worked on--actually going all the way back to the House days--and we have never had a freight provision to take care of this problem. Of the 4 million miles of public road, the National Highway System represents 5.5 percent of the Nation's most heavily traveled miles of road. Americans depend upon a well-maintained National Highway System that provides critical connections between urban and rural communities. American businesses pay an estimated $27 billion a year in extra freight transportation costs due to the poor condition of public roads. Look at it. Look at that. How many lanes are there on this one? There are six lanes, all of them stopped. What happens when they stop? The engines keep going. The air is polluted. Gasoline costs a lot of money, and the freight cannot go through. Well, that is why we have this. Recognizing that it is the foundation of the Nation's economy and the key to the Nation's ability to compete in the global economy, it is essential that we focus efforts to improve freight movement on the National Highway System. Incidentally, if we don't pass this bill and if we go back to extensions, that ain't going to happen. It can't happen. I always have to pause to remind my conservative friends--and I can say this because I have had the ranking of the most conservative Member probably more than anybody else has--the Constitution tells us what we are supposed to be doing. We are doing a lot of things the Constitution never contemplated. It says in article I, section 8 that we in the House and the Senate are supposed to be defending America and roads and bridges. That is what we are supposed to be doing. So I would just say I have to remind people that the conservative position in the Constitution is to go ahead and do what we are trying to do with the DRIVE Act today. The DRIVE Act includes two new programs to help the States deliver projects that promote the safe movement of consumer goods and products. The first new program is the National Freight Program. That is what we are talking about right now. That is what is bogged down in traffic right here. It is distributed by a formula that will provide funds to all States to enhance the movement of goods, reduce costs, and improve the performances of businesses. The program would expand flexibility for both rural and urban areas. A lot of the reason this hasn't been handled before is that States send in their priorities. You know, one of the few things in government that do work is what we are going through right now. When we set up a formula, we take into consideration what the people at home want, what the people in my State of Oklahoma think is the most important thing in terms of roads, bridges, highways, and maintenance. There are some liberals here in Washington who think there has never been a good decision unless it came out of Washington. But we always emphasize what they consider to be the greatest concern within their States. The reason that freight doesn't often get the high priority it should is because a lot of the freight moves in and out of a State and the States don't evaluate that as an economic benefit. That is shortsighted because States on either side provide that kind of traffic, and it does add to the economy of the State, it is just not direct the way the rest of the projects are. So we have this type of congestion taking place. Secondly, it will improve efforts to identify projects with a high return on investment through State freight plans and State advisory committees. The second new program is the Assistance for Major Projects Program, which creates a competitive grant program to provide funds for major projects of high importance to a community, a region, or to the Nation. The program includes a set-aside for rural areas and it ensures an equitable geographic distribution of the funds. The State of Oklahoma is a rural State, so that is very important. One thing you cannot do with the short-term extensions--keep in mind, the last time we had a long-term bill, the reauthorization bill, was 2005. By the time 2009 got here, we were working on just the short-term extensions--33 short-term extensions. So you can't do those major projects that have to be done sooner or later in our country. In Chicago, IL, the I-290 and the I-90/I-94 intersection is the intersection we have been looking at with the congestion. It is the No. 1 worst freight bottleneck in the United States. The average speed slows down to 29 miles an hour. Morning and evening rush hour speeds have been known to drop below 20 miles an hour. It carries about 300,000 vehicles a day. That is the Chicago I-29. Houston, TX, the I-45 at U.S. 59--and certainly the occupier of the chair is fully aware of this and I am sure has been bogged down in traffic many times on the Texas I-45 at U.S. 59 exchange. Houston, TX, is the home of 5 of the top 20 freight bottlenecks in the Nation. Texas is home to 9 of the top 25 freight bottlenecks. Freight bottlenecks cost the freight industry in Texas $671 million annually and 8.8 million hours of delay. This is what we are looking at, looking at Houston. It happens that I was stopped there going there one time. That is why I always fly down to South Texas rather than drive--to avoid that. So I-45 at the intersection is ranked third in the Nation by the congestion index. It is the same I-45 at 610 North that is ranked 15. There is an average speed slowdown to 39 miles per hour, and there they are, out there wasting valuable time. Fort Lee, NJ. The I-95 you are looking at right now connects Fort Lee, NJ, to New York City. It is the second worst freight bottleneck by congestion index in the Nation. The average speed slows to 29 miles an hour. Rush hour speeds in the morning and evening slow down to about 15 miles an hour. The nearby I-95 Cross-Bronx Expressway is the most congested corridor in the country. By the way, anyone from here in Washington who is going up to anyplace along the coast, Connecticut on up North, has to go through that, and I have had to do that. I had an occasion just the other day to give a commencement talk up at the Coast Guard Academy. To get up there, I had to go all the way across that bridge, and it almost made me late. So that is one that is well known. The George Washington Bridge is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge, carrying over 106 million cars a year. Anyway, that is what we have right now. We have a freight program to alleviate this type of congestion and increase America's ability to conduct commerce on our highways. We have another talk that we have given several times where we go over all of the bridges. The Senator from Minnesota was talking about the tragedy of the bridges. But if you look and you see, it is not just confined to the east coast. If you look and you see, in my State of Oklahoma, in the northeastern section, we have more deficient bridges-- probably ranked No. 3 in the Nation, I would say--and those bridges are not going to be addressed until we have a chance to do it. Simply look at this Eisenhower quote, a republican president who understood the need for federal investment in our military and our highways. I always like this because I chair the Environment and Public Works Committee and have been ranking member of the Senate Armed Forces committee. I think it is deplorable, what President Obama has done to our military. I call it the disarming of America. Yet the guy who started this whole thing--I don't think even the Chair is aware of the fact that the reason Eisenhower started this way back in 1956 was to defend our Nation. He said: As it is right now, we don't have any type of a system where you can take goods and services and move them across either coast to be sent out in the defense of this country. So I am hoping that we all realize the need to reauthorize this long- term bill. Right now, we are in the middle of not doing anything, not getting done, but it is a 30-hour delay. If we can just move that up so that instead of voting on that at 5 o'clock in the morning, we can vote on it this afternoon--which would be just as easy to do, and I am going to ask unanimous consent that we be able to do that--then we could move on and do the same thing as we move toward the bill. Now, if that happens, for those individuals--and I would hope the staff is listening to this--who have germane amendments, we can't take up amendments after passage. This is going to pass. We know this is going to pass, but is it going to pass this afternoon or is it going to pass tomorrow morning? If so, we then would not be in a position to do anything if the House has already adjourned. If this happens, if Members will bring amendments down, we will consider germane amendments. We still have the managers' amendment we will be able to put these in, and so we will consider these. So there is an opportunity for that to take place, and I wouldn't want anyone voting to deny this opportunity to finish this bill and let the House at least look at it, thinking they will not be able to get their amendments in. We haven't had an opportunity to get amendments in for a long time. I always hasten to say this because how long has it been now. It has been 6 weeks since we passed this out of our committee and it passed unanimously--every Democrat and every Republican. I have to say the Republicans on the committee I chair are among the most conservative Republicans and the Democrats are among the most liberal Democrats. That is a holdover from when the Democrats had control of the Senate, and the Environment and Public Works Committee was chaired by my colleague, who refers to herself as a very proud progressive, which means liberal, and I am a very proud conservative. So we all have this in common. Just to have this opportunity to have this up so we can consider it, we would have to move this up and get this vote today instead of tonight. So I am hoping that will still be the case. We are making our case on that. Again, that would allow us to get this done in a way--or at least to let the House look at this and see whether it is an option they may want to pursue. I know several have painted themselves into a corner, but nonetheless we could do this if we can hurry this up. I know there are other speakers on the floor, so I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, first, I appreciate the comments made by the Senator from South Dakota, emphasizing what can't be done on short terms. I think we have been talking about that all morning. Last week, 100 mayors from across the Nation wrote to the Senate leaders urging for a long-term transportation bill. They said, ``If the status quo continues, deficient transportation infrastructure will cost American businesses $430 billion by 2020.'' Then there are the 31 construction and transportation groups that sent a harsh reminder to Congress that ``past extensions have not led to a lasting solution to the Highway Trust Fund's repeated revenue shortfalls.'' I remember because I have been around here for a while, and I have been through six of these transportation reauthorization bills. In the interim, we always end up with short-term extensions. People don't realize we can't do major projects with short-term extensions. Now, I hear the argument sometimes that in this one we have a 6-year bill, but we are paying for only 3 years. That is fine. Make the argument. But there is something unique in the transportation system, which is that in the event we get through halfway--even though it is a 6-year bill--and the funds are not available to the existing shortages of what we have added, then all projects stop. Not a penny can be spent. This isn't true anyplace else in our government, and I think people have to realize that if we are going to do it. When the Senator from Minnesota was talking and showing these very graphic pictures of the bridge that collapsed killing 13 people, that really sends something home. We can't wait until that happens before we do the responsible thing. I have to remind my conservative friends it is our constitutional duty. When we were sworn into office, we swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States. The Constitution in article I, section 8 tells us what we are supposed to be doing: We are supposed to be defending America, including our bridges and roads. That is what we are supposed to be doing. There is a way. I hope the people who--unless they just don't want to take care of these big, serious problems and want to continue with the short-term extensions, there is a way we can do this. We will be asking for unanimous consent to go ahead and make a vote on what we are voting on right now and considering. If all time has to expire, it would be 5 a.m. tomorrow on the Inhofe substitute for the bill. That means we then wouldn't get around to having this bill passed until Thursday, and Thursday would be after the House is gone. So it is over. That is it. This would be a very easy thing to do. Again, I am going to remind people that while we don't have the chance for amendments after this vote takes place, we can still have the manager's amendment, where I personally will consider every one of the amendments that comes forth. I am hoping that will happen. That is what we are faced with right now. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, while I would normally be coming down at this time to talk about the Transportation reauthorization bill, which is one of the most significant bills we will be considering--there are problems right now in getting it done before the House leaves, but we are going to make every effort to have it done by the end of this week. I think that is very important because, for all of the reasons we talked about, we can't continue to do part-time extensions that don't allow us to get to any of the real problems we have. However, that is not why I came to the floor this afternoon. I am here this afternoon to speak on a different topic. (The remarks of Mr. Inhofe pertaining to the introduction of S. 1877 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that Senators McCain and Rounds be added as cosponsors to the S. 1877.

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, right now we are in kind of a waiting period. We have made a request. It seems that request is being denied because it takes unanimous consent to come up with language that will allow us to waive time. The time that is pending right now on the Inhofe amendment will not expire for 30 hours. Precloture will not expire until 5 a.m. tomorrow, so it looks like that will make it too late to get our bill passed prior to the time the House goes home. This could always change. I think a lot of people are taking this position because they didn't think we would be able to pass the bill. I think we are going to pass it. I think we can pass it very likely on Thursday, and so even if the House is gone, we will be preparing to go in and handle that bill when we all come back after the recess. I just want to mention this because I think it is very important for people to understand that we are going to be using this. We have gone through a lot of work on the bill. The highway reauthorization bill was passed unanimously out of the committee I chaired, the Environment and Public Works Committee. Every Republican and Democrat voted for it. So it is one of the few bipartisan efforts to take place in a body that is often criticized for not getting anything done. This will be a major bill. It will become a reality. With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we have all been disturbed--just really outraged--about the things that have come from Planned Parenthood recently. We have seen the videos exposing their casual disregard of human life. It is unconscionable. It is very sad. We have known this for a long time. The junior Senator, Mr. Lankford, back when he was in the House of Representatives was introducing bills to defund Planned Parenthood, and that was before the most recent events that have happened. The Center For Medical Progress spent 3 years investigating Planned Parenthood and produced at least three videos revealing what appears to be an intentional and illegal harvesting of body parts from aborted babies. There are countries such as China that condone killing children, but our Nation should not be condoning the act of killing our own children or allowing these corrupt organizations to sell body parts for profit. There was a book that was written that I remember very well entitled ``Modernizing China'' by Anthony Kubek. This was 30 years ago, when there was still a separation between China and Taiwan. They talked about at that time having a limit on how many babies people could have. They would go in and find out that there was one more child than they should have had, and they would take that baby and kill it. Of course, the harvesting of body parts was taking place there. That was China. This is America. It is hard to believe this could be happening. It is not about being pro-life or pro-choice anymore; it is about our country's moral conscience. If Planned Parenthood has either profited from selling aborted babies' organs or they have modified procedures used to conduct an abortion for the purposes of obtaining body parts, then they have broken the law. In fact, the National Institutes of Health Revitalization Act of 1993 states that ``no alteration of the timing, method or procedures used to terminate the pregnancy [may be] made solely for the purposes of obtaining tissue.'' That includes arms, legs, kidneys, and body parts, but this is exactly what Planned Parenthood has admitted to doing in these videos. The Federal law also states it is unlawful to sell human fetal tissue. Title 42 of the U.S. Code, section 289g-2(a) states: ``It shall be unlawful for any person to knowingly acquire, receive, or otherwise transfer any human fetal tissue for valuable consideration if the transfer affects interstate commerce.'' Again, it is illegal. Based on the evidence in these videos, particularly with the Planned Parenthood employees haggling and negotiating over prices, joking about it, and using the income of the dead babies' body parts to buy a Lamborghini--some kind of automobile--it seems as if it is commonplace. There is a total disregard for the babies or what they were doing. My colleague Senator Ernst of Iowa and I, along with others in the Senate, wrote to the Department of Health and Human Services requesting answers to these questions. One thing that is important to note is that Planned Parenthood receives $1.4 million of taxpayers' money every day. It is unthinkable that they are being supported by the taxpayers in the United States, according to their 2013-2014 annual report. They received 528.4 million taxpayer dollars and then performed and profited from illegal and immoral actions taking the lives of innocent babies. This is so incredibly evil it is even hard to talk about. We are talking about women being manipulated into putting their health on the line for a government-funded organization to profit from harvesting their child's body. Vulnerable women are being coerced into having abortions and delaying the abortions until the baby has grown to the age within the womb that they would have fully developed body parts in order to sell. This is what is happening today. Planned Parenthood fights to keep mothers from seeing the human value of their babies with an ultrasound. They don't want the mother to hear the baby inside their womb with an ultrasound, but they will use the same technology to guide them to more valuable organs as they perform abortions for monetary gain. These actions deserve to be fully investigated. Crimes have been committed. It is our moral obligation to fully prosecute any violations of the law. Today I have introduced legislation that would require the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute these atrocities. To pay for this, the legislation would rescind all moneys that have been appropriated to Planned Parenthood and provide the special prosecutor with as much of this money to conduct the investigation as is necessary. We have to protect innocent lives. Now that this has opened the door to a reality that has been suspected for so many years, this Senator wants America and the world to know that endangering women's health and profiting from killing children is not acceptable. The video just released today shows a lab technician placing and celebrating the monetary value of a baby's arms, legs, kidneys, and spinal cord as they pulled apart its body. The bill is S. 1877. We have gotten a lot of calls about it. I didn't want to let this opportunity go by without coming to the floor and getting something started to do something to stop the barbaric acts we are seeing on behalf of Planned Parenthood.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 28, 2015, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Avoiding Duplication: An Examination of the State Department's Proposal to Construct a New Diplomatic Security Training Facility.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 28, 2015, at 9:30 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``Lifting The Crude Oil Export Ban.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 28, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-366 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I see there is kind of a lull here. We are waiting around for a vote to take place at 10 or 10:30 tonight, I think it is, and I thought I would share. There are still some uncertainties on the bill, the Transportation reauthorization bill. It is one I am very proud to be the author of. In fact, I was privileged to be the author the last long-term reauthorization in 2005. At that time, I was working very closely with someone, with a fellow Member who is the least likely to be working with me on anything. By her own admission, Senator Boxer is a very proud liberal and I am a very proud conservative, but we do agree there is that old, worn-out document that nobody reads anymore called the Constitution, and it tells us what we are supposed to be doing here. It says, defend America and build our roads and bridges. That is what we are doing. That is what this is all about. We received a disturbing message from the House about an hour ago saying they would not take up our bill. We are going to pass this bill, but they say they are not going to take it up. That means there is a dilemma because at the end of this month, there is no longer any money in the highway trust fund, and things will stop. I don't know whether their intention is to give a short-term extension and go home or--of course, I am still thinking brighter minds will prevail and they will realize we have a long-term, 6-year highway authorization bill because the things you can't do in this country, you can't do with the short-term extensions. Yesterday, I listed many of the bridges that were in terrible shape and the fact that we could not address those problems unless we pass a long-term highway reauthorization bill. I mentioned also that someone I knew--it was right around the 2005 bill--a mother and three children were driving under a bridge in Oklahoma City. It was far out of its extended life, its warranty period, if you will, and a chunk of concrete fell off and killed her. This is happening all over America. We saw what happened in Minnesota when that disaster occurred, all the pictures of the people who died and were injured. We are going to be looking at a lot of amendments. I heard there is one amendment that Senator Manchin along with Senator Boozman are putting together to adopt the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2, which is appropriate. It may not be as germane as we would like it to be, but it is still transportation. The Pilot's Bill of Rights 1 was passed 2 years ago. In fact, they would not even take it up in committee, but I had 67 cosponsors to the bill. I was very thankful at that time. Of course, the Democrats were in the majority. I went to Harry Reid's office and said: It doesn't seem fair to me that we have 67 cosponsors, and they will not even take it up in the committee. He said: Well, that isn't right. We came down to the floor, we rule XIV'd it, and passed it. It does show that sometimes when things get really outrageous, people tend to work together. That was on an issue that just a handful of people are aware of, but anyone who is a licensed pilot knows, in their minds, that was the most significant thing that was going on. I have been flying for a lot more years than most people in this Chamber have been alive. Because I have been an active pilot--I have been in aviation for many years--the people who have problems with the FAA would come to me to help them with their problems. I found this to be true back when I was mayor of Tulsa. We had a police force, a very good police force. There are a few bad guys who get in there. The same thing is true with the FAA. You have a few people who take advantage of the power they have and take licenses away from people. I remember 10 years ago, Bob Hoover--I bet none of you ever heard of Bob Hoover. Bob Hoover was arguably the best pilot in the history of aviation. He had a Shrike. A Shrike is a twin-engine Aero Commander. He would put a glass of water on the dash, and he would start doing barrel rolls and would not spill his glass of water. I would do barrel rolls, but I would spill my glass of water. This guy was really good. There was an inspection in the field, and Bob Hoover lost his pilot's license. There was no reason for it. In order to get it back, I actually had to go to the floor, and it took a year to pass legislation that would stop that abuse from going on. That has continued. I have always helped people until it happened to me, and then that had a whole new feeling because people who are involved in aviation--the one thing they don't want to lose is their pilot's license. For many years, I was a builder and developer in South Padre Island, TX. We are on the east coast now. Nobody knows where Texas is here. They think there is no such thing as a nice coast with beaches and all of that unless it is on the east coast, but there is the Padre Island area of Texas. It has beautiful beaches. I was in the building business. We built condos and townhouses, and I always enjoyed that. Keep in mind this is the southern tip of Texas. It is just as far south as Key West, FL, is, but it is in the middle of the country. We would go down there. I would fly my plane probably once a week for quite a number of years. I went down, and I was making a normal landing. It is not a controlled field. You have your approach controls that control it. The approach control from valley approach--I am getting a little technical here, but I have a reason for telling this story. He said: All right, you are clear to land on runway 1-3 in Cameron County. I went up to land. Just before I touched down, with six passengers--so it was too late for a go-around--I saw that there were a bunch of people working on the runway. There wasn't a big X on the runway, which is required. They claimed there was. They quickly painted one on right after that. Everyone started criticizing me. I remember there was a front-page cartoon in the New York Times. Everyone was having a good time with that. The bottom line is, I didn't do anything. They claimed there was a NOTAM. That is short for Notice to Airmen. The Notice to Airmen says that if you check your notice before you land on the field, you will find out if there is construction on the runway, if lights are out or something else. Of course, we did that. There was no NOTAM. They claimed there was a NOTAM--the FAA did. They never could find it. Anyway, to bring us up-to-date, I introduced and we passed the Pilot's Bill of Rights. In our system, our legal holdout was where you are guilty until you are proven innocent if you are a pilot. That is the last--because one man's accusation can turn into the revocation of a license, so we introduced the Pilot's Bill of Rights. We gave an opportunity, if they disagree with the FAA, if an accusation is made-- or the NTSB--they can go to the Federal district court. That seemed to work out. The bill forced the FAA to put NOTAMs in one secure place where everybody would have access to it, and all of these complaints that were made were dealt with, but a lot of the things we wanted to happen wouldn't happen. In case you are wondering--I will take it off now since there is no reason to keep it on. Do you know what that is? That is the pass to get into Oshkosh. The Chair knows this because the Chair's husband has an FBO operation in Western Iowa. Anyway, I have gone to the largest aviation event worldwide in Oshkosh. It is the last weekend of July of every year. I have been to every one of those, along with my sons, for 36 years. I never missed one. I didn't miss one last week either. Some things are really important. I went there with the idea that we have the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 in order to correct the areas where the FAA is either not complying with the intent of the law or even the Federal district courts are not accepting cases. We are going to correct that. First of all, if it happens that Senator Manchin and Senator Boozman offer their amendments, then I will be supporting their amendments. I am going to go over why it is important, but if as a result of the announcement that was made by the House of Representatives 2 hours ago we are not going to be having amendments, it is still introduced as a freestanding bill. I have 56 cosponsors. That is a lot of cosponsors. If that happens, I want to mention a couple of things that are on here. There is a problem with the third-class medical. So 10 years ago, a decision was made, and it was a good decision. They took the light aircraft, and they said if you can drive a car, you can fly an airplane. They went ahead, and we have had 10 years' experience now without a third-class medical certificate. There has not been one accident in 10 years where it was due to the fact that they didn't have any third-class medical certificates. In this bill, we are taking that up to include a larger number of pilots, and to include airplanes as heavy as 6,000 pounds, carrying six passengers, not exceeding 250 knots, and several requirements like that in giving them the same opportunities the pilots of the light aircraft have. That is a part of this bill. I know there are a lot of people in this Chamber because I have talked with them, not a whole lot because we have 56 cosponsors, but there are a lot of them who really believe that would somehow be dangerous. For that purpose, we have made several exceptions to it. I will outline these because I know there are some Members of this body that if this comes up as an amendment, they need to know this. First of all, on a third-class medical, we have the requirement for an online medical education course every 2 years. This will make sure the pilots coming up for renewal of their certificate are up-to-date on all of the new things that have transpired since the last time in the new medical requirements. The second thing it does is anyone who is a new pilot just coming on, he has to have a thorough examination that now you have to have every couple of years. That hasn't changed. And then the third would be the self-certification that takes place every 5 years, which could actually be done with your own doctor. Those are some of the changes that have been made to make it a little bit easier for some Senators who will be voting on this legislation. The second area where the Pilot's Bill of Rights did not--they addressed it, but there are two Federal judges. You are supposed to be able to go from the FAA to the NTSB, the National Transportation Safety Board, and then to the Federal District Court. What has happened in the past is that the NTSB has rubberstamped anything the FAA does, so really the FAA is making those decisions without proper due course which other people are entitled to. What we have done with this is--there are a couple of Federal judges who said they are not going to take a case on a pilot until they have exhausted all of the administrative remedies that come from the FAA and the NTSB. We have a solution to that in this bill so this actually explicitly states the pilots will have an option to appeal the FAA enforcement action directly to the Federal courts for a guaranteed de novo trial. De novo means, instead of taking the conclusions of the investigation from the FAA and risking rubber stamping it, they have to have a trial from the beginning. That is a very significant change we are making. The other thing we neglected to do is include certificate holders other than pilots. You could be a mechanic, a flight attendant, or any number of things, and not be included in these legal opportunities, so the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 allows all certificate holders to have this. The third area is the access to the flight records. In my case, I could not get access as to what the FAA was accusing me of. We thought we had this corrected in the Pilot's Bill of Rights, but it still needs to be strengthened, so we have a section in the Pilot's Bill of Rights 2 that requires the FAA to notify a certificate holder that he is being investigated and clarify the incident being used to begin enforcement proceedings so that person will know what he has been accused of and can address it. The fourth area has to do with document requests. The FAA has retaliated against pilots because the Pilot's Bill of Rights 1 requested broad documents from them, which can be very time consuming and very costly, and it is not necessary at all. The solution to that is that we explicitly rein in the ability of the FAA to initiate the expansive document request and limit them to the pertinent issues being investigated by the FAA. That should correct that. We have several other items too. If somebody has a minor infraction in a car, then after 90 days, or so many days, it would be taken from their record. That is the way it used to be prior to 1996 when they had the Pilot Records Improvement Act of 1996, and now we will go back to where we were before that. Many of these issues that were problems before and weren't corrected with the Pilot Bill of Rights are corrected, and I feel very comfortable with it. The reason I have all of this in my mind now is that I just came back from Oshkosh. Although I was there only 2 days, I was able to give 10 presentations, and there were a little less than a half-million pilots there at the time, so I am sure I got to all half-million of those pilots collectively with all of those events that we had. It is kind of interesting because for someone who is a pilot, that is the most important thing. We are not talking about Democrats, Republicans, or things that are controversial. It is just that when you go to Oshkosh and you see what people have accomplished through experimentation and the technology that has developed--it used to be that all planes had to be made out of aluminum, and this all changed with new types of things that were discovered at Oshkosh. People are building planes behind their garages. Well, anyway, so much for that. We have a good solution for all of these problems, and I will say to the 56 members that they are certainly very popular among the pilots and the group I spent the last 2 days with. I mentioned that only because in the event that they change the rules around here, and we are allowed to have amendments that are not germane, that would be one of the amendments that I would offer, and I want to be sure that we are at least getting things into the Record so people are aware of it. While there are no Members here right now, the staff is monitoring everything that is going on, so I want to make sure people know that is an issue we may or may not be dealing with. It would be a surprise to me if the House of Representatives said: Well, we are just going to go home, and we are not going to pass this bill after we go through all of the trouble of passing it. I think there are ample votes to pass this legislation. Long-term reauthorization is a very important thing back in the States. The coalitions which are coming together on this legislation include the Department of Transportation for every State, along with the labor unions. They are supporting this legislation because it will provide a lot of jobs. The Chambers of Commerce are all involved; the farmers are all involved. This has the most popular support of anything that we will deal with all year long, so we really need to have this bill. I am having a hard time believing that if we go through the trouble of having a reauthorization bill, the House is not going to take it up, but that statement was made 2 hours ago, and that may be the situation. I can remember in the earlier days when the highway trust fund had one big problem: They always had a surplus. They had too much money, but that has changed with the increased efficiency of cars. Electric vehicles are using highways, but they are not paying the gas tax. Consequently, we have a real problem with funding this legislation. If we take the total amount of revenues that come from the gas tax, let's say over the next 6 years because this is a 6-year bill, each year falls short by $15 billion. So we are looking at being short $90 billion over a 6-year period. I can say this because I think I may be ranked as the most conservative Member for a longer period of time than anybody else in the Senate. I can talk about this because this is a conservative position. The conservative position is to have a long-term bill because if we do short-term fixes, it costs--and this is irrefutable and no one disagrees with this--an additional 30 percent off the top if we do short-term extensions, and that is what we have been doing. We have had 33 short-term extensions since the 2005 bill that we passed expired in 2009, and that has used a very large amount of the money that was there to take care of the problems with the roads and the highways. We do have problems out there, and it is going to take a long-term bill to take care of it. I have a feeling, since the money runs out on the last day of this month, that the House, if they are not going to take up our bill, they may just pass a short-term extension and then go home. That is not the way I think it should be done, we have to get this long-term bill. This is something that doesn't happen very often, but now and then it does. We went through the same thing with the other big bill, which was the Defense authorization bill over the last 3 or 4 years, and they didn't bring it up as they should have early in the year. I remember 2 years ago we passed our Defense authorization bill in June, and the leadership didn't bring it up until December. If we hadn't brought it up, then the kids who are out there risking their lives would lose their reenlistment bonuses, their hazard pay, and a lot of things would have happened. Just before the end of December, we were able to get it done. It is not the way things are supposed to be done around here. I certainly don't want that done with the highway reauthorization bill, but that is what very likely could happen if the House does what they say they are going to do. With that, I do want to come back and go over some of the larger problems that cannot be addressed unless we pass a long-term highway reauthorization bill. I will say this: There is a very fine FBO operation in Western Iowa called Red Oak. It just so happens that my son just left Red Oak on his way back from Oshkosh. It also happens that Red Oak is owned by the husband of a very prominent Senator in this body who happens to be presiding now. With that, I will come back later, and we will be talking about these things because I understand the next thing we are going to do is a vote at 10 tonight, unless some time is yielded back. I hope they will yield back their time. They are not down here talking, so there is no reason not to yield back time. If time is not yielded back, I will talk about some of the projects that will not be done unless we have a long-term reauthorization bill. With that, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, will the Senator yield?

Mr. INHOFE. I am not attempting to get the floor. I think what the Senator from California has said is very significant. I think people realize--and I have said several times that the Senator from California and I are about as far apart philosophically as any two people can be. She is a very proud liberal. I am a very proud conservative. We disagree on a lot of issues on the committee which the Senator from California used to chair when the Democrats were in the majority and which I chair now, but during all that time and up to the present time, we have agreed on this. When I see people saying they don't want--I am very disturbed by what the House is doing right now. If we don't have a long-term bill, then we will go right back to what we have done since 2009. The Senator from California and I remember when we passed the 2005 transportation authorization. That was huge. We have had things that have happened in Oklahoma now as a result of that legislation that are saving lives. As I have mentioned before, remember the bridge when a chunk of concrete fell off and killed a mother of three. That happened right up toward the 2005 bill. I can't imagine we are going to be in a position where we go back to increase the number of short-term--we have had 33 short-term extensions since 2009. I can't imagine we will go back to that. If we do that, we don't get the reforms. A lot of the reforms, I say to my friend from California, were reforms where she had a hard sell. She had a hard time doing it. There are a lot of things--I wanted to change the 80-20 federal share. In some areas it was 60-40, and then 70-30. We couldn't do it. We compromised. I remember there was quite a bit said about that, so that was one of my losses that wasn't necessarily one of the Senator's gains. The bottom line is we have a bill that is going to be before the people who have a chance to vote on it. This is the last chance we have to get off of the part-time extensions. I would ask my good friend from California if she is observing the same circumstances that I am.