Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, if the Senator from California will yield, let me make one statement, and then I will be coming back later to talk about some of these amendments that will be coming up. One issue we need to clarify with our people on our side is that the conservative position is to support this. Our good friend, our mutual friend Gary Ridley, said that the extensions cost about 30 percent off the top--30 percent. In fact, I will say this, after our 27-month bill, we went over it in the House, and I had requested an audience with the entire--all 33 Republicans on the appropriate committees, and all 33 agreed that it was a conservative position. All 33 voted for the bill. I think we have the opportunity to make that happen again.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 23, 2015, at 9:30 a.m.

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 23, 2015, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Measuring the Systemic Importance of U.S. Bank Holding Companies.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 23, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 23, 2015, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Iran Nuclear Agreement Review.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 23, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Achieving the Promise of Health Information Technology: Information Blocking and Potential Solutions.''

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 23, 2015, at 10 a.m.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 23, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 23, 2015, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on the Constitution, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 23, 2015, at 2 p.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Administrative State v. The Constitution: Dodd-Frank at Five Years.''

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. I have been listening. I say to my good friend that I am concerned about that. As the Senator from Michigan knows, there are several titles in this bill. I chair the Environment and Public Works Committee, which is about 90 percent of the bill. But what the Senator is referring to here is in the banking title of the bill. I understand--and I can't say this for certain--that there are a couple of amendments that address this. One amendment may be that of the Senator from Michigan.

Mr. INHOFE. OK, it was my understanding that was the case. I have checked with the leaders of the banking committee, and I think they are anticipating that could happen. So I appreciate it, and I just wanted that clarification as to where that problem that you point out does exist in the bill.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, it is my understanding that the Senator from Indiana, Mr. Coats, is going to want some time to speak, and I am very flexible today. I just want to visit about the bill. We have so many parts of this, and I think that people have not really had a chance, and a lot of Members have not really gotten into the bill to see how far it goes and what it does. This is the sixth one of these that I have had since I have been here in the House and the Senate. We had one in the House first. This bill, I think, is really good. People forget that the last big bill we had was in 2005. It was a 5- year bill and it is very similar to the bill before us today. There were projects that took place that were in that bill that are now complete. In my State of Oklahoma, we had a bridge in terrible condition in Oklahoma City. In fact, we had a terrible accident. A lady with her three small children was driving under the bridge and concrete dropped and killed her. This has happened. I spoke yesterday about all the bridges and the problems that exist around this country with all of our deficient bridges. So it is serious. Since 2009 we have not had a long-term bill. This is it. We have been operating on short-term extensions. There have been a total of 33 short-term extensions. On short-term extensions you can't get anything done. You cannot have any major reforms. In this bill we have reforms in the NEPA system, the environmental system. We are giving latitude for road construction in terms of endangered species. There might be some little critter 6 feet down that some people don't want to disturb. Anyway, we are making exceptions. So we are really going to be able to get these projects going, and this is the first time since 2009 that we are doing it the right way. Yesterday there were some provisions about which what we have tried to do is take them one at a time to show how much daylight is in this bill so that people know how their money is being spent. Every project that is out there can now be monitored. What I would like to do is talk about the background of this. People don't realize that this was started in 1956 by the great General Dwight D. Eisenhower, who became the President of the United States. This Senator can say, as one of the most conservative Members of the Senate, I believe the Federal Government has grown larger and more invasive than our Founding Fathers ever envisioned, and our country could benefit from a smaller and more efficient government. I have observed that in government, if there is a problem out there, the government comes along and starts some kind of agency to deal with the problem and then the problem goes away, but the agency continues. In fact, they become part of the problem. Right now I am having a problem with one of the big bureaucracies, the FAA, on legislation that I proposed and that we passed 2 years ago, and now we have an extension of that. When looking at the budgets of the various bureaucracies--and in that case I don't have the exact figures--it has almost doubled what it was in 1986, yet the workload is less. We have to keep in mind this is going on. This is what people are complaining about. What they are not complaining about is what the Constitution says we are supposed to be doing. The Constitution is very clear. It says in article I, section 8 what we are supposed to be doing as Members of the Senate and the House--No. 1, defending America, and No. 2, building and maintaining roads and bridges. Sometimes we need to get out that old worn out document and reread it and find out that this is what this bill is all about. No one else is doing it for us. There are a lot of ideas that people have, and there are a lot of conservative groups, for example, that are saying we need devolution. I will tell the Presiding Officer something that in all his infinite wisdom he doesn't know, and that is that 20 years ago I was the father of devolution. It is more fun to stand on the steps and say all we have to do is do away with all the Federal gas taxes and move them to the States and let the States take care of these. I would suggest that some people are in States such as South Dakota where there is a lot of land and not a whole lot of people, and that just wouldn't work. Here is the problem with that issue. In order to make devolution work--and, again, this Senator was the guy that as beautiful as it was on the stump, it was fun to talk about until I found out it was wrong. First of all, it is easy to repeal all the Federal taxes, but then you have to assume that all 48 States will agree to pass a tax increase, and that isn't going to happen. I think we all know that. I want to mention something that is important, and that is to give the history of this. There are two areas where I believe the Federal Government has to be involved, as I mentioned, and that are consistent with the Constitution. This is both a conservative and constitutional understanding of the role of the Federal Government. President Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 authorized construction of a 41,000-mile national system of interstate and defense highways. This chart I have in the Chamber shows the blue lines as the original highways, and the red came along later, which is the National Highway System. So you have the Interstate Highway System and the National Highway System. The blue is the Interstate Highway System, consisting of 41,000 miles of highways. This is actually a map of Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System back in 1956. In order to finance this massive undertaking and to fund the remainder of the Federal-Aid Highway Program, the Highway Revenue Act of 1956 created the highway trust fund. That is what we have been talking about for a long period of time now. It provided that revenues from certain highway user groups be credited to the highway trust fund. Interestingly, I can remember when the biggest problem with the highway trust fund was that it had too big a surplus. It was huge. I remember the Clinton administration tried to take $12 billion out of the highway trust fund for another program, and they were successful. It took me 3 years to get it back. That is because it was a target that had a lot of money in it. Well, the dedicated funding mechanism provided certainty for the Federal highway program. The 13-year authorization of the Highway Revenue Act gave the States the necessary certainty to plan and construct highway projects. Since 1956, Congress has regularly reauthorized the Federal-Aid Highway Program. Eisenhower's highway act of 1956 was implemented to solve many problems we are experiencing now as our infrastructure deteriorates. Keep in mind that it was all built on a 50-year basis and that it would last 50 years. Well, that was about 70 years ago. It is beyond its maintenance period now, and that is why it is so critical today. The act originally in 1956 was implemented to solve the problems that we are experiencing now as our infrastructure deteriorates. Most notably, billions of dollars have been wasted on detours, traffic jams, and inefficiency in the transport of goods. Not only did Eisenhower understand the constitutional order as intended by the Framers, but he demonstrated the terms and conditions of the Constitution in the implemented Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956. The original principles of the Constitution and the Federal-State relationship exist to ensure liberty while maintaining security. Eisenhower was the President, but he was also a general. He was a star. He knew about the military. His original concern was not with the economy as much as it was with the military. This was following World War II, and he was anticipating that something else could happen. He wanted to make sure that we could move our goods and services around for military defense purposes. The principles were made operational via the interstate highway act of 1956, and this chart has the stated purpose of the act by the President. He said: ``The obsolescence of the Nation's highways presents an appalling problem of waste, danger and death.'' This is a statement he made at that time. Unfortunately, Congress has forgotten that passing fully funded, long-term transportation legislation is one of the unique responsibilities and has instead fallen into a pattern of passing short-term extensions. Now, I have already talked about how many extensions have been passed since 2009-- 33 of them. In those extensions, you don't get any of the reforms, you don't have any of the opportunities to build roads cheaper and repair the bridges much cheaper. Now we can do that. So he said: ``Adequate financing there must be, but contention over the method should not be permitted to deny our people these critically needed roads.'' The need for a Federal investment is dire. Just look at the current condition of our roads and bridges. What was once the best transportation system in the world is now rapidly deteriorating as we struggle to maintain the existing condition of our infrastructure. Our global competitors are outpacing us in their infrastructure investment. I think we have another chart on that. The interstate system is just as much about defense as it is interstate commerce: ``The obsolescence of the nation's highways presents an appalling problem of waste, danger and death.'' This was what the President said at that time. He is right. The condition of our roads currently has impacted the quality of life for all Americans. Fifty-four percent of America's major roads are rated poor or mediocre, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. This has become a matter of life and death: 32,700 Americans died in traffic crashes in 2013, with 1 of 3 fatalities related to poor road conditions, according to the Federal Highway Administration. We all remember back in 2007, up in Minnesota--it got a lot of attention up there at that time when they had the bridge collapse, the people who died, the people who were injured. It is something that could have been avoided if we had kept up-to-date on all of our bridges. As I said yesterday, I talked about all of the bridges we have--not all of them, just some of the ones that are used more than any others. This shows the structurally deficient bridges. The darker the color the worse the bridges. There is my State of Oklahoma. You can see the entire northeast quarter of the State has a lot of the deficient bridges. I was talking to the Senator from Missouri, Mr. Blunt, yesterday. He talked about in Missouri--the problems we have in Missouri and Oklahoma. There are a lot of structurally deficient bridges in both states. The DRIVE Act is addressing that but also the very large bridges that are causing unnecessary deaths. Our national interstate system needs to be completely reconstructed. Right now, the 47,000-- this is critical here. The 47,000-mile interstate system is about 60 years old. Many of the first segments, including segments in Oklahoma and Missouri and Kentucky, are now well beyond their 50-year design life. When Eisenhower successfully passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, both the House and the Senate were controlled by Democrats, while he was a Republican. The measure was met with widespread bipartisan support. There is no such thing as a Republican bridge or a Democratic road. This is something that should be blind to partisan politics, but nonetheless he was very active and he considered that one of his top priorities. In fact, during the debates in Congress in 1955 and 1956, there had been no opposition to the interstate system. The DRIVE Act,that is what we are going to be voting on--we have already voted on a motion to proceed to it, so we have crossed that bridge. We are now going to be considering amendments. The DRIVE Act is a long-term investment vision with new reforms that will provide States with certainty and flexibility needed to revamp our National Highway System. We are going to--this is the only opportunity we are going to have to get this done. We are going to try to finish this bill by the end of next week. So that will be quite an undertaking. I would invite and hope that all of our Members will bring their amendments down. We will be considering amendments. We can't consider them unless they come down. What I don't want to happen is to be standing here begging for amendments to come down, and then 2 weeks from now, right before it comes time, find that we have to pass a procedure not to allow amendments. We don't want that to happen. So we are saying get your amendments down here early. We know there are some of them--there has been a lot of publicity on this--that are not germane. Yet we are going to go ahead and consider them. We are going to open the amendment process. That is one thing I think the Republicans do better than Democrats because during the years the Democrats controlled this Chamber, we just had a handful of amendments at that time. We passed that 8-year record in the first month by encouraging people to bring down amendments. So I am asking the Democratic and Republican Senators to do that. This is going to be the most significant bill--now that we have passed the Defense authorization bill. That is not all behind us yet. We are still meeting on that. In fact, we had a meeting this morning, but nonetheless it was passed from the committee and from the floor. Now the most important legislation that is left for the rest of the year is this bill we are talking about now. There is going to be a lot of legislation that is going to be introduced. In my committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, a lot of people think of that, and I know the Presiding Officer is an active member of that committee. It is not just public works. It is not just roads and highways and bridges. The other part of it, the environment and public works, includes all of the overregulation. Right now, if you go back to your States--I don't care what State it is--and you talk to people on the streets who are in business, they will tell you the greatest problem we are having right now is overregulation by the EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency is passing regulations right now. I mean, look at the cap-and-trade legislation. That would constitute the greatest tax increase in history. Yet they tried to pass it as legislation. Now they are trying to do it as regulations. The waters of the United States. That is an issue that if you talk to your farmers--I don't care if it is in South Dakota, Oklahoma, Missouri or any of the rest of the country--and you ask what is the biggest problem you are facing right now, it is nothing that is found in the farm bill. It is the overregulation by the EPA. They will single out the waters of the United States bill or rule that they are trying to put through. I recall so vividly, just a few years ago, when two Members authored bills to take the word ``navigable'' out. I am sure there are some who have forgotten the fact that the regulation of water in the United States has always been left to the States, except for navigable waters. I understand that. Even being a conservative, I understand the Federal Government needs to be regulating those. What the liberals tried to do is take the word ``navigable'' out so the States would have no say in the regulation that is out there. So not only did we defeat the legislation, but both Senator Feingold and Congressman Oberstar, who were the sponsors of the bill, were defeated in the next election too. We have all these things. We have endangered species. These are all part of this committee. So it is overregulation that is consuming most of our time. Repairing our roads and bridges is an area where everyone agrees. You have to keep in mind, this bill passed--our bipartisan bill-- unanimously out of committee, not one vote against. I am prepared to yield the floor because I understand the Senator from Indiana is here. I yield the floor.

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, we have so many elements of the bill that is under consideration now, the DRIVE Act. It is enjoyable to talk about it. Yesterday we talked about the transparency, the fact that we have a way that the public can know every dime. I was watching as the Presiding Officer was giving a presentation on waste in government. That is not the case here. If all government agencies had the transparency we are going to have with the DRIVE Act, where everyone is going to know on a day-to-day basis the progress of every bridge, every highway that is being done, the renovations, then we wouldn't be having that problem. We are doing it right. You know, I look at these different parts of the bill. It is so big, you can talk about it for a long period of time. Yesterday we went over not all of the deficient bridges in the country but quite a few of them, and when people stop and realize that people die unnecessarily because of deficiencies in our bridges--it is a serious thing. But one of the parts of this bill that people are not aware of as much as they should be is the freight section of the bill, transporting freight around. We talked about the history. We talked about the fact that the first bill that came along for a transportation reauthorization bill back in 1956 was primarily for military purposes. Now we realize the deficiency--we are compared to China, compared to other countries in not keeping up our highway system. Today the National Highway System carries more than 55 percent of the Nation's highway traffic and 97 percent of the truck freight traffic. Of the 4 million miles of public roads, the National Highway System represents 5.5 percent of the Nation's most heavily traveled miles of road. That 5.5 percent carries 97 percent of the freight. Americans depend on 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, which increases shipping delays and raises prices on everyday products. 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. You know, in all the bills--and I have been involved in six of these over the years--we have never really singled out freight to be addressed. Yet there is no one in here who hasn't gone down our roads and highways and seen the congestion and the traffic and trucks idling here and there and everyone being late, and there is a tremendous cost to that. The DRIVE Act includes two new programs to help States deliver projects that promote the safe, efficient, and reliable transportation of consumer goods and products. The first new program is the National Freight Program. The National Freight Program is distributed by a formula that will provide funds to all States to enhance the movement of goods, reduce costs, and improve the performance for businesses. It is kind of interesting because one of the good features about a transportation system and the way we have been doing it with our Transportation reauthorization bill is that we rely on the States to decide what their priorities are. This infinite wisdom in Washington where they think they know more than we know in the States is not true at all. So this is one of the rare areas where we go to States and say: Look, you guys, you decide what you think your priorities are in Indiana or in Oklahoma. So we have a formula to address that. The problem with that is when you get to moving freight, they do not have that as a high priority because most freight moves through a State and they do not consider that to be a local problem. They are more concerned about passenger cars. So it doesn't appear in their priorities. Well, it does appear now. So we have the first new program, the National Freight Program, which is a different type of formula, and it addresses the movement of freight through States. The program will expand flexibility for both rural and urban areas to designate key freight corridors that match the regional movement of goods on roads. It will improve the efforts to identify projects with a high return on investment through State freight plans and State advisory committees. The second program is the Assistance for Major Projects Program. It creates a competitive grant program to provide funds to major projects of high importance to the community, to the region, and to the Nation. The program includes a set-aside for rural areas and ensures an equitable geographic distribution of funds. These new freight programs will only exist if the DRIVE Act is enacted. That is what we are talking about now--the DRIVE Act. And it will be enacted by Congress, I am very confident. I can't imagine, by the way, Members not listening to the people back home. Right now, if you go back to any of the States--I don't care what State it is--and you talk to the State departments of transportation, they will be listening to not just the road builders and suppliers but the people who are driving on the roads. It is the most popular thing in America. So I can't imagine having the opportunity to have a 6-year program and getting justification for voting against it. I think it is time to be innovative and forward-thinking in how the Federal programs use tax dollars to responsibly partner with the States to improve the National Highway System, and the DRIVE Act is the answer. Let's talk about Fort Lee, NJ. Here is the George Washington Bridge, which connects Fort Lee, NJ, to New York City. It is the second worst freight bottleneck by congestion index in the Nation. Average speed slows to 29 miles an hour. Rush hour speeds in the morning and evenings slow to below 15 miles an hour. The nearby I-95 Cross Bronx Expressway is the most congested corridor in the country. The morning southbound commute is considered the worst of the worst in the country. The George Washington Bridge is the world's busiest motor vehicle bridge. That is what we are looking at. Yesterday we were talking about the Brooklyn Bridge. Some of us here are old enough to remember the old Tarzan movies. Do you guys remember that? Do you watch the reruns? Johnny Weissmuller was his name. He had a lot of muscles and was a very strong guy. One of his movies was ``Tarzan's New York Adventure.'' In that movie he was being chased around the Brooklyn Bridge. The Brooklyn Bridge was built in 1883 and here we are today and we still have the Brooklyn Bridge. Anyway, Johnny Weissmuller crawled up on the top as the cops were chasing him with guns and all that and he dived off. Every time I drive over that bridge, I think I am going to be diving off there if it collapses. Houston, TX, is home to 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 some $671 million a year--that is just in Texas, the bottlenecks--and 8.8 million hours of delay. I-45 at U.S. 59 is ranked third by the congestion index. I-45 at U.S. 610 North is ranked 15. Average speed slows to 39 miles an hour. Morning and evening rush hour speeds drop way below that. Look at this. You can see that is a problem. That is why this is a very important part of the bill that is before us now. I think we have an opportunity here. We have to sometimes remind people of what doesn't work. What doesn't work are short-term fixes or short-term extensions of previous bills that were passed. The last one we passed was in 2005. It was a 5-year bill. It expired at the end of 2009. At that time we should have started another transportation reauthorization bill, but we didn't do it. So we have had short-term extensions. There is a guy named Gary Ridley out in Oklahoma who is recognized nationally. He has been here testifying several times before us as a nationally recognized scholar. He really understands transportation. If we look at the 33 short-term extensions we have operated under here in America after 2009 and before this bill, it wastes more dollars than a long-term reauthorization. I think it is important for a lot of people to hear this because sometimes there are rating organizations that say: Well, we are going to oppose a bill because it is a big spending bill. Sure it is a big spending bill. You know, that old, worn-out document called the Constitution says what we are supposed to be doing here is defending America and building bridges and roads. So that is what this is all about, and we are going to do it. But for conservative groups to say they don't want to support this bill--they have dropped short of understanding the fact that the alternative is to have short-term extensions, which is an irresponsible use of dollars. The conservative position is to pass a funded highway reauthorization bill. I know a lot of people will be talking about devolution. I can talk about this because going back 25 years ago, at that time a guy named Connie Mack, who was a House Member and later a Senator from Florida-- he and I were the fathers of devolution. You didn't know that, did you? We are the ones who introduced the devolution bill. The idea sounded good on the stump because you could say: Well, we will just repeal all the Federal taxes and make State taxes out of them. Well, it didn't quite work that way because you can't do that. If you repeal a Federal tax, then you have to pass a State tax. And how many people here are naive enough to believe that all 48 contiguous States would be willing to pass a sizable State tax increase? It is not going to happen. So that is why the National Highway System is so important. That is why Eisenhower started this back in 1956. I have friends up in Wyoming. There are very few people in Wyoming, but there are a lot of roads that are part of our National Highway System. If devolution occurred in Wyoming, they would have to pass a 31-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax increase in Wyoming. It is not going to happen. We know it is not going to happen. So we are not going to have a uniform system unless we do it this way. The opportunity we have now is the DRIVE Act. I know the House has made some statements that they want to do a 5-month extension. See, there we go again, another short-term extension. Their reasoning, I guess, is they want to get to the year's end and then couple that-- because of the popularity of the highway bill--with some of the tax changes that are set to take place at the first of this coming year. So I know some of my friends--because I have talked to them over in the House--have said: Well, we want a short-term bill because we don't think you are going to pass a long-term bill in the Senate. Well, when they find out we are going to pass a long-term bill--we are going to pass this bill--that will change things. So I look forward to that, to the opportunity to get this passed and get it passed in a timely fashion. By the way, we have to keep in mind that we are on a deadline. The deadline is the end of this month. The highway trust fund runs out of money at that time, so that is why it is important that we get this passed. Order for Recess Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate recess from 12:30 p.m. until 2:15 p.m. and that the time during the recess count postcloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 22.

Mr. INHOFE. With that, I yield the floor. 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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, in a moment I am going to be going over and concentrating on some of the things that are in this bill, just concentrating on bridges, something people are not as aware of as they should be. Now what I am talking about is that sometime today we are going to be repeating the vote that we had yesterday, except this time we should be able to get it adopted. I don't criticize any of the Democrats who voted against the motion to proceed to the highway bill yesterday because they did not get information in a timely fashion. It was our fault that they did not get the information until about 30 minutes before the vote. I understand that. Now they have had 24 hours to look it over. I think they will be pleased to support the long-term highway bill. So I was not one who complained about that. That vote will take place today. That is to get us to the bill, so we can start on amendments. I am going to ask as many of our Members to bring down amendments, if they have amendments, so we can get them in the queue to discuss. There are three committees involved. The very largest piece of the bill is the Environment and Public Works Committee, which is the committee that I chair. When I say the vast majority of that, what I am talking about is 80 percent of the bill. So that has been available for inspection by the public, by the Democrats, the Republicans, by all of the Members ever since June 24. June 24 is when we passed this bill out of the committee by a unanimous vote. Every Democrat, every Republican on the committee voted for it. Now, there are some people, I suppose, who are going to be playing politics with this bill on this vote. They have to realize this is an issue that needs to be addressed. I would say this, there are two things that were voiced as objections. Some voted no because they did not get everything they wanted in the bill. Some of them thought they would be able to get a better deal. Let me just address that. The bill is too important to play politics with. If we wait until we have more time, then we are going to be in trouble and miss the construction season. The problem with this is, particularly those Northern States will miss an entire construction season if we do the alternative. What is the alternative? The alternative is to go back; instead of a 6-year-funded reauthorization bill, go back to short-term extensions. Short-term extensions are an ineffective use of highway dollars. Short-term extensions are not the conservative position but they also would miss an entire construction season. I understand that the House is talking about trying to do an extension to the end of the year. If they do that, then States like Pennsylvania--that is where Congressman Shuster is from--will miss an entire construction season. So I think that is critical. If you talk to any Governor, any mayor, and any State department of transportation about the urgency of the timing of this bill, they will tell you that if we miss this opportunity to authorize a 6-year bill, with 3 years of identified funding this summer, we will miss the 2016 construction season. So the strongest supporters of this bill are the officials closer to the people at home--the mayors, the Governors, the State departments of transportation. So that is what we are going to be faced with. To address the second point and objection, I have been approached by many Members on both sides of the aisle who have said they are planning to vote no today because their program did not get enough funding for Amtrak or bike trails or sidewalks or something else in this bill. We did not go far enough toward their project. Well, look, I am in the same situation. This will be my sixth highway bill that I have actually authorized. Three of those I was the primary sponsor. I can tell you these bills are about compromise. Not everybody gets exactly what they want. I assure you I did not get everything I wanted in our unanimous EPW markup with Senator Boxer. Now, keep in mind, Senator Boxer is a very proud liberal, I am a very proud conservative. Yet we agreed wholeheartedly on this. We led the fight to come out with a unanimous bill. The House is watching us very closely. They are even discussing taking our good work, doing it, taking it up in the House. I think that is what would happen. There are a lot of them over there saying, no, they don't want to do that. They want to have a part-time, short-term extension to the end of the year because I think they can get that into some kind of tax reform. Again, you miss a construction season, and you are wasting valuable time and money. So we do not want to do that, but I want to get into some of these tales, talking about our bridges. There are over 60,000 structurally deficient bridges in this country. The first chart shows-- the diagram there--the darker color, that is where the heaviest, the more serious problems are right now. Look at my State of Oklahoma. For a Western State, we have greater problems than many of the States have. In fact, one out of every four bridges is structurally deficient. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our bridges a grade of C+. Now, how did we get here? President Eisenhower's legacy system was built with a 50-year lifespan. In many parts of this country we have exceeded that lifespan. We are out of warranty, I say to the Chair. That is why we need to get it done. MAP-21 was the right step for bringing us into the 21st century, but a long-term solution has been needed to fix the $112 billion in backlog of rehabilitation for our Nation's bridges. So 430 of the 435 congressional districts have structurally deficient bridges. This means that all but five Members of the House of Representatives have bridges back home in need of major repair in their districts. This is everybody's problem. In my State of Oklahoma we have two of the top 10 worst districts by number of deficient bridges. One of our districts is ranked second in the Nation. Congressman Frank Lucas's district is a rural district that covers about half of the State, but there aren't many people in there. He said there are over 2,000 deficient bridges just in one congressional district. In Congressman Markwayne Mullin's district, there are 1,205 deficient bridges. I know firsthand that the Oklahoma Department of Transportation has worked tirelessly to address the needs for bridge safety, but they need longer term certainty in a Federal partnership to make this happen. This is what this bill is all about. In light of the Nation's bridges, we have to do more to prioritize safety and stability. We can't wait around for another collapse to fix the crumbling bridges. A bridge collapse or closure brings significant and sudden economic impacts to the impacted region. The economic cost of the I-35 West bridge collapse in Minnesota--and we all remember that; that was all over the news in 2007--averaged $400,000 a day of economic loss. The Minnesota Department of Transportation found that the State's economy lost $60 million as a direct result of the collapse. This is that bridge, as shown in this picture I have in the Chamber. You remember that it had a lot of publicity at the time. Then all of a sudden it is kind of a wake-up call. People realize this is for real. We need to do something about it. In 2013, the Skagit River Bridge collapse on Interstate 5 in Washington State had similar effects on the local economy, with an estimated impact of $8.3 million during the 26-day closure and repair of this bridge. The Brent Spence Bridge is a bridge in need of repair. It connects Cincinnati, OH, to Kentucky. This is an old bridge, which you can see just by looking at it. That is one that would have to be replaced. It would be impossible to do that in anything except a long-term bill. You cannot do that with short-term fixes. Nobody argues that point. That is a fact. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are very much concerned about this bridge. They are on one side of this bridge, and in Kentucky we have Senator Mitch McConnell and Senator Rand Paul. This bridge is functionally obsolete. It was built in 1963. The bridge is more than 50 years old and is designed to carry more than 85,000 cars a day, but by 2025 it is expected to carry 200,000 cars a day. According to the American Transportation Research Institute, the Brent Spence Bridge is the fourth most congested truck point in the U.S. infrastructure grid. The cost in congestion is staggering when you consider that $420 billion in freight crosses the bridge every year. Freight haulers bear the brunt in congestion costs and delays associated with just traveling across the bridge, which cost the trucker almost $40 during rush hour. What we are talking about there is that when cars and trucks are going over this bridge, they are stopped. It is a choke point. So they are sitting there, their engines are idling, and there is a tremendous cost. So in the aggregate, the delays on the bridge cost travelers over $750 million each year in wasted time and fuel. Each year, 1.6 million gallons of fuel are wasted due to congestion on this bridge. Senators Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby are very concerned about the I-10 Mobile River Bridge in Alabama. Currently, traffic is carried through the George C. Wallace Tunnel, the I-10 crossing under the Mobile River in Alabama. Constructed in the 1970s, the tunnel was designed with an anticipated daily traffic count--this is the tunnel--of 36,000 vehicles. Currently, the tunnel averages approximately 80,000 vehicles a day and can reach as many as 100,000 vehicles in peak season. The traffic volume causes heavy congestion. This is as it is today. There is a proposed project to relieve the congestion and increase mobility, but it is not going to happen unless we have this bill pass. Arlington Memorial Bridge connects Virginia to DC. Probably, most people who are here today have been across this bridge. They see what condition it is in. It was built in 1932. The Arlington Memorial Bridge is well beyond its design life. It is structurally deficient. We know what the traffic is like on that bridge. The bridge serves as a significant part of the National Highway System, a major evacuation route, and carries more than 68,000 vehicles each day, including commuters, residents, dignitaries, and official ceremonies. My staff tells me this bridge is on the news on a regular basis due to progressive deterioration. The government has had to conduct emergency-lane closures and enforce a load limit. Repair work will take 6 months to 9 months. The I-264 bridge over Lynnhaven Parkway carries traffic to Virginia Beach. It is a popular vacation spot. A lot of people here go there with regularity, and they know what this bridge is about. I have crossed this bridge many times. It is one of the 10 most heavily traveled deficient bridges in the State of Virginia. It carries just under 135,000 cars a day. The Magnolia Bridge is in Seattle, WA. I always wondered why they called that the Magnolia Bridge. There aren't any magnolia trees in that part of the north that I know of. But nonetheless that is what it is. But it was built in 1929. Just imagine that. It is from 1929, and everyone recognizes the dangers that are involved. The bridge carries 18,000 cars a day and is structurally deficient. While the bridge is in a residential area and on the community's radar, it hasn't received necessary funding to reconstruct the 86-year-old bridge. Greenfield Bridge in Pittsburgh is in the area of the chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of the House of Representatives. Pennsylvania has the most structurally deficient bridges in the country, and this is just one of them. It was built in 1921 and now carries 7,782 cars a day. A 10-inch chunk of concrete went through a car windshield in 2003, injuring the driver. Later that year, the city spent some $652,000 to build a temporary bridge to catch whatever came through the nets. In other words, there is a bridge under this bridge. This same thing happened in my State of Oklahoma with a bridge in Oklahoma City. It wasn't long ago. By the way, that bridge was taken care of in the 2005 bill. It was the last long-term bill that we have had. I recall vividly a mother with three children driving under it. A chunk of concrete fell off and killed the mother instantly. Of course, that got everyone's attention, and then we passed the last reauthorization bill, which was 2005. Greenfield Bridge deals with the similar hazardous issue. They have to build a bridge under the bridge to catch falling debris. This is the Pittsburgh Greenfield Bridge. Repairing bridges like these cannot be done with short-term fixes. There is the Court Avenue Bridge in Des Moines, IA. That happens to be where I was born. It is represented now by Senator Chuck Grassley and Senator Joni Ernst. Iowa has the second most number of structurally deficient bridges in the country. It was built in 1918, and it now carries 3,920 cars per day. While the State recently increased the State gas tax, it will still require Federal partnership to ensure progress on fixing this bridge. It is not going to be done without long-term certainty. There is the Brandywine Bridge on I-95 in Wilmington, DE, which is not far from here. Senator Coons and Senator Carper should be very much concerned about that. That is a 50-year-old bridge. The bridge deck is deteriorating. The viaduct, which carries travelers on I-95, is a major road. If you go from here to New York City, you are talking about I-95, one of the most traveled interstates. It goes through Wilmington and has experienced serious concrete corrosion. In this structure, the substructure has cracks and spalls and is in need of repair. This is another dangerous site. It is not going to be done in the absence of the passage of this bill. As to the Chef Menteur Pass in New Orleans, I am sure Senator Bill Cassidy and Senator Vitter are concerned. It was built in 1930. It carries 1,800 cars a day across Highway 90. Then there is Cesar Chavez Boulevard in San Francisco. That was built in 1951 and carries 234,000 cars per day. It is one of the older bridges on the west coast that needs to be repaired. In Little Rock, AR, getting very close to my area, Senator Tom Cotton and Senator John Boozman are very much concerned about this. They should be. I am sure they are. It is structurally deficient. It was built in 1961 and carries traffic over railroad tracks--116,000 cars a day. Arkansas is delaying projects because of uncertainty at the Federal level. That is what this bill is all about. The Storrow Drive Bridge is in Boston, MA, and Senator Warner and Senator Markey will be concerned. It was built in 1951. This structurally deficient bridge carries 57,770 cars per day. The Storrow Drive Bridge earned its structurally deficient rating because of the corroding support beams that support one of the many highly trafficked bridges in the Nation. I have crossed that one several times. We have the U.S. 1-9 over the Passaic River in Newark, NJ. Senator Booker and Senator Menendez are concerned about that. Herbert Hoover was President when the bridge was built in 1932 with an estimated design volume of 5,500 vehicles a day. It is now up to 62,700 vehicles per day. The Calcasieu River Bridge in Lake Charles, LA, was built in 1952 and is a structurally deficient bridge that now carries 70,100 cars per day. Its steep grades have been cited as a traffic concern, especially given the high volume of trucks that bridge carries along the major east-west corridor. The Brooklyn Bridge--everyone knows about the Brooklyn Bridge. The pages are too young to remember this, but that was back when Johnny Weissmuller was Tarzan. Did you see any of the old movies? He dove off the Brooklyn Bridge. I remember that from when I was your age. Do you know when that was built? That was built in 1883. This structurally deficient bridge now carries 135,000 cars a day. That is one of the oldest ones around. I remember so well when Johnny Weissmuller was chased by the police and dove down. I always wondered what happened to him. The San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge--San Francisco to Oakland, CA-- was built in 1936. This bridge is now functionally obsolete, yet it carries 204,900 cars per day, and there are many fears that the bridge might collapse. That is what happened in Minnesota. You cannot wait until that happens to avoid the disasters. You can almost imagine if this bridge collapsed. People are concerned about it because that is right in the middle of earthquake country. And if you take something that is already structurally deficient and you give it a little bit of tremor, it could go. In Missouri, Senator Blunt and Senator McCaskill ought to be concerned. It is one State that would significantly benefit from the DRIVE Act and the long-term certainty it provides. Missouri has the fourth most structurally deficient bridges in the country, with 3,310 of them. Furthermore, Missouri has three districts ranked in the top 20 for worst bridges. The district of House Representative Graves has 1,345 deficient bridges, Representative Smith has 615 deficient bridges, and Representative Hartzler has 600 deficient bridges. Dennis Heckman, Missouri's DOT State bridge engineer, agrees that the State needs to seriously address its aging bridges. It is clear when he says that ``they're in bad condition, they're worn out.'' Broadway Bridge in Kansas City is a prime example of a structurally deficient bridge desperately in need of reconstruction. Built in 1955, this bridge is beyond its design life and has to support over 45,000 cars a day. The Interstate 70 bridge over Havana Street and the Union Pacific Railroad is in Denver. Cory Gardner is very familiar with this, as is Senator Bennet. This is the most traveled structurally deficient bridge in the State of Colorado. Built in 1964, it has 183,000 daily crossings. Every day 3.7 million Coloradans cross this structurally deficient bridge. The DRIVE Act will work to make these bridges safer for all travelers. Getting toward the end here--and there are a lot more--the Russell Street Bridge is in Missoula, MT. I was actually on that when I was up there during Steve Daines' election recently. Transportation For America graded the deck of the Russell Street Bridge a 4 in a soundness scale of 1 through 10. The Russell Street Bridge was built in 1957 and carries 22,650 cars per day. In light of these decaying bridges, the DRIVE Act will provide adequate infrastructure investment for our Nation's bridges. Senator Barbara Boxer and I made that a top priority in the DRIVE Act, and I think it is something we need to keep in mind. We have an opportunity to move to this bill this afternoon. The vote hasn't been scheduled yet. It needs to happen today. It will be a motion to proceed to the highway reauthorization bill, and it is one that will get us so that we can start working on amendments. We have a lot of amendments. A lot of people are using this. They know the bill has to pass. This falls into the category of a must-pass bill. Everybody knows, for the reasons I have been talking about for several days, it is going to have to pass. So there are a lot of people who have amendments that have nothing to do with bridges and nothing to do with the roads. That is OK. This is a vehicle they can use to try to get other programs through. In fact, I myself may be guilty of that. But nonetheless we can't do any of that until we get to the bill, so the motion to proceed has to be agreed to. As soon as the motion to proceed is adopted, I would encourage all Members to come forth with their amendments so they can be heard before any deadlines pass. With that, I yield the floor. 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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I think at any time--hopefully soon--it appears that we are going to be bringing up the vote to proceed as we did yesterday. Let me just repeat what I did just a couple of hours ago on the floor. I am not critical at all of the Democrats who voted against the motion to proceed yesterday based on the fact that we dropped the ball over here. We were supposed to give them the necessary information on some of the funding mechanisms and things on the offsets. We didn't give them enough time before the vote took place. You can't go over several hundred pages in a few minutes. Now it has been 24 hours. Well, even my counterpart on the Democratic side, Senator Boxer, voted against it for the same reason. And they have a right. So, anyway, I feel optimistic that when we have this vote we can proceed to the bill. Let's keep in mind that this is a bill I perceive as a must-pass bill. The alternative to this would be very, very expensive. It would go back to what we had to suffer through between 2009 and this moment that we are in right now; that is, a list of 33 short-term extensions. Short-term extensions, as we all know, are waste and irresponsible use of highway dollars. Consequently, we need to be spending that money on roads and bridges, not short-term extensions. So I will look forward to getting that motion to proceed adopted. As soon as that happens, that is when we are going to pull the trigger to get as many people down on the floor with amendments. I keep hearing about all of the amendments that are out there that different Members want to come forth with. The criticism we had with the Democrats when they were in charge was that we were not able to get amendments. Well, we changed that. Since we have been in control, we have allowed amendments. I know we have a lot of them--some germane and some not germane--but it is going to be an open-amendment process. We need to get this thing moved forward and pass the next vote or we are not going to be in a position to really go over the amendments, to see which amendments we can agree to--and there will be a lot of them that we can. This is a 6-year bill. We are authorizing for 6 years with 3 years of identified funding. Our bill authorizes for 6 years something that we call contract authority, which is a mechanism unique to the highway bill in which the Federal Government makes funding commitments of future funding over multiple years. The use of contract authority was created way back in Eisenhower's 1956 Highway Act for a reason, and it exists still today. It has been the cornerstone of highway bills ever since then, giving States and cities long-term certainty to plan their investments over multiple years. The reason that is important--I used to be in that business many years ago as a contractor for several years--is that you can't have short-term ideas without going back and making years of planning so that you can organize your labor supply, you can organize all of your rentals and everything that would go into a project. As States begin to break the ground on projects, they match this contract authority with actual cash and are reimbursed from the highway trust fund. So it comes from the highway trust fund, converts to cash, and it goes into contract authority. Unfortunately, up until 2009, the end of SAFETEA-LU--that is when it went in, 2005, and it was a 5-year bill; so it is the end of 2009--this contract authority was always guaranteed by the receipts in the highway trust fund, but we now find ourselves in a situation where the highway trust fund can no longer support current levels of spending as a result of more efficient and electric vehicles. I have included a mechanism in this bill that will allow Congress to authorize a 6-year transportation bill consistent with how States and locals plan and deliver the projects and then find the necessary offsets to pay the bill. Currently, Senator Hatch has identified at least 3 years of cuts to the general fund to redirect to the highway trust fund and shore up the differences between what the highway trust fund can support and the DRIVE Act levels of investment. So in the first 3 years, the States would have a guarantee of at least 3 years of funding so that they could be confident they would be reimbursed on their contract authority. In the fourth fiscal year of the act, the Secretary will conduct a solvency test to determine the ability to make payments out of the highway trust fund for the remaining 3 years. Keep in mind that this is a 6-year bill. So the remaining 3 years of contract authority would be given to the States. If the Secretary determines that the balance of either account will dip below $4 billion in a fiscal year for highway account or $1 billion for the mass transit account, then no new projects can be funded from the highway trust fund during that year. Now, if Congress finds funds to supplement the trust fund during that fiscal year--the fourth year--new projects may begin and be funded, as in the DRIVE Act. However, it is important to point out that even if the Secretary finds that the trust fund is not able to fund new projects in a fiscal year, during that year the Department can continue to reimburse States for projects that were already under way prior to the end of year 3. This will ensure that there is not a huge cliff at the end of 3 years, which the DOT, Governors, mayors, and the rest of them tell us will prevent a chilling effect on their willingness to use the first 3 years of funding to engage in large, multiyear bridge and interstate reconstruction projects. That is another reason, by the way, we want to do a 6-year bill. It allows us to get into all of these bridges and these very large. This chart behind me shows the deficient bridges in America. I talked about 25 or so of these this morning and gave a lot of details, which I will do again because we need to get the attention of the Members of the Senate. They will be very familiar with the problems they have. As the Presiding Officer would be familiar with the problems in South Carolina, each Member is familiar with the bridges and geography in his or her own district. So it means Congress has 3 years to identify about $50 billion to $60 billion worth of additional receipts into the trust fund to honor years 4, 5, and 6 of contract authority. Under this mechanism, the trust fund will continue to receive user fee revenues for all 6 years of the act, plus 2 years after the act, which has been historically done in these big highway bills. The mechanism is nothing new, as it is similar to the Army Corps of Engineers Chief's reports on WRDA bills. WRDA is the Water Resources Development Act, where they authorize 5 to 10 years of project authorizations and then Congress finds the money on an annual basis to match the authority, the same as the highway bill. So if they can't find the money, construction doesn't start. Allowing for multiyear planning is a conservative position because it allows States to engage in long-term contracts and negotiate bigger projects at significantly lower cost. Buying materials in bulk, contractors charge less and finish earlier. Now, what I would like to do at some point is talk about the transparency and also the Tribal Transportation Program. This is a big bill. There is a lot to talk about. In fact, I think I will go to the transparency first because we hear a lot about transparency. We hear a lot about the need to be aware, about the need for people to be aware. You have to keep in mind this and the Defense authorization bill are the two largest and most significant bills that are out there. In fact, if you read that old contract that nobody reads anymore--called the Constitution--it says what we are supposed to be doing. It tickles me sometimes when I see liberals standing here wanting to get government into more and more programs, when the Constitution says we are only supposed to be doing two things here: defending America and funding our roads and bridges. That is in article I, section 8 of the Constitution. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that increasing the accountability and improving transparency of the Federal-Aid Highway Program is a key component to the DRIVE Act. I am talking about the act we will be moving to proceed on very shortly, hopefully. The DRIVE Act includes several provisions to include the transparency of how and where transportation projects are selected and funded, to ensure that stakeholders and the public have faith in the integrity of highway programs and the use of Federal tax dollars. So they are going to know, if they care--and a lot don't, but the ones who do care, the ones who are watching from a fiscal perspective are going to have that information they can share. The media can have it. You will see articles. I often criticize this administration for their lack of transparency, but you are not going to find any lack of transparency in the DRIVE Act. The DRIVE Act requires the Transportation Secretary to establish an online platform to report project-level status of the reviews, the approvals, the permits required for compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act--that is NEPA--and other Federal laws. This will allow the public to see the status of an ongoing project or to see what is holding up the project. That is very significant. By the way, it is important to note that on the NEPA requirements there are some waivers. I applaud some of the more liberal members of the committee I chair, including Senator Barbara Boxer, who didn't want to go along with a lot of the provisions that streamline this bill but was willing to do it. So I applaud her for doing that. But this will let the public also have access to that to make sure we are doing what we should be doing. In the NEPA requirements, we can see if we are deviating from that or from any of the other requirement that makes the DRIVE Act something that is going to be one of the most valuable pieces of legislation passed this year. The DRIVE Act also increases transparency regarding the way in which the Federal Highway Administration utilizes Federal-aid highway funding for administrative expenses. This is accomplished by requiring the Federal Highway Administration to report elemental project-level data each fiscal year. So each year they can have access to that. The DRIVE Act requires that the Transportation Secretary publish all reports submitted to Congress by the Department in order to increase transparency and oversight by Congress and by the public. Now, these improved transparency provisions will provide to the public better accountability of how the Federal Highway Administration is utilizing its funds. It will also demonstrate how the agency is making progress toward achieving national goals and improving Federal reviews of the highway projects. So we have the transparency built in, but that was one of the requirements we on the conservative side demanded when we put this bill together. Since we have these charts--and I apologize to those who had to sit through this a couple hours ago, but we have a whole different crowd out there now, and we have our Members, many of them are paying attention to what we are doing since they are going to be called upon to vote in just a matter of a few minutes. On this chart, it shows the dark colors being the ones that have the majority of the structurally deficient bridges. It is on there by county. I would call attention to my State of Oklahoma because one-quarter of our State is in that high category of deficiencies. If you look at other States--I was talking a few minutes ago to Senator Blunt from Missouri and he was talking about their deficient bridges. I commented that we actually have more deficient bridges but only by a few. So we are kind of in a comparable situation, but this gives an idea of how widespread this is. Let's go over some of these bridges. In my home State of Oklahoma, we have 2 of the top 10 worst districts by number of deficient bridges. Frank Lucas is a Congressman from Oklahoma. He just came out from being the chairman of the Agriculture Committee over in the House of Representatives. In his district alone, there are over 2,000 deficient bridges. He has a lot of small bridges because he has the rural areas of Oklahoma, where there aren't many people, but there is a lot of land. So certainly we have a problem. In Congressman Markwayne Mullin's district there are over 1,000 deficient bridges. Our Oklahoma Department of Transportation is working tirelessly to address bridge safety, but they need the long-term provisions in here to take care of that particular problem. A bridge collapse or closure brings significant and sudden economic impact. I think we all remember in Minnesota in 2007 the bridge that came down. It was very graphic. It was on all the TV channels, with the ambulances, the people, the injuries, and the deaths. People were rightly concerned about that tragic collapse. That was in Minnesota. It is called the I-35W bridge collapse from 2007. Look at that. You can see that is a death trap, and that is exactly what happened. The Skagit River Bridge collapse. That is I-5 in Washington State. It had similar effects on the local economy, with an estimated impact of $8.3 million during the 26-day closure. The Brent Spence Bridge. This is a big one. This is the one that goes between Ohio and Kentucky. It is one that carries a huge amount of traffic. You can see just by looking at how old this bridge is how structurally deficient the bridge is. You can visibly see that. Our Members in Ohio, Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, and in Kentucky, Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell, are very familiar with this. I think this really brings it home, to show these bridges to the public, because they have to live with them on a daily basis. This bridge is functionally obsolete. Built in 1963, the bridge is more than 50 years old and was designed to carry 85,000 cars a day, but by 2025 it is expected to carry 200,000 cars a day. According to the American Transportation Research Institute, the Brent Spence Bridge is the fourth most congested truck point on the U.S. infrastructure grid. The cost in congestion is staggering when you consider the $420 billion of freight to cross the bridge every year. Freight haulers bear the brunt of the congestion costs. Delays associated with just traveling across the bridge costs a trucker almost $40 during a rush hour. In the aggregate, the delays on the bridge cost travelers over $750 million a year in wasted time and fuel. Keep in mind, if you have congestion on bridges, cars stop, trucks stop, and they pollute the air. Their exhaust continues to go, their engines are still running, the efficiency of their vehicles goes down, and it is very expensive. Each year, 1.6 million gallons of fuel are wasted due to congestion on this one bridge. There are 3.6 million hours spent in traffic on the bridge each year. This is just one bridge we are talking about. In 2011, chunks of concrete fell from the upper deck down to the lower deck of the bridge. What is most alarming is that motorists who use this bridge are five times more likely to get into an accident on this segment of the interstate than any other part of the interstate in Kentucky. You will see some bridges where they have actually built another bridge under the bridge to catch the falling debris, the falling concrete. This is the Mobile River Bridge in Alabama. Certainly, Senator Sessions and Senator Shelby are very sensitive to this. It is a bridge that has been a problem for quite some time. It was constructed in the 1970s. The tunnel was to offer some relief from the bridge. Traffic currently is carried through the George C. Wallace Tunnel, the I-10 crossing under this bridge we are looking at in Alabama. That tunnel was designed with an anticipated daily traffic count of 36,000. Currently, the tunnel averages approximately 80,000 vehicles a day. It can reach as much as 100,000 vehicles in peak season. The traffic volume causes heavy congestion and longer travel times for commercial and noncommercial drivers throughout the region and the rest of the Nation. This right here, incidentally, is what it will look like after the improvements are made. This is what it is today. (Mr. Toomey assumed the Chair.) I was hoping we had the Pennsylvania chart because the new occupier of the chair would certainly be interested in that, I would think. The Arlington Memorial Bridge. We are all familiar with that. That connects Washington, DC, and Virginia. Senator Warner and Senator Kaine travel this bridge on probably a daily basis. This was built in 1932. The Arlington Memorial Bridge is well beyond its design life and is structurally deficient. The bridge serves as a significant part of the National Highway System, a major evacuation route, and carries more than 68,000 vehicles each day. It is crowded and congested almost all the time--at least it is every day I go across. My staff tells me this bridge is on the local news on a regular basis due to the progressive deterioration that has taken place. The government has had to conduct emergency lane closures and enforce a load limit. Repair work would take 6 to 9 months. Then we have the I-264 bridge over Lynnhaven Parkway that carries traffic to Virginia Beach, which is down south of where we are right now. It is structurally deficient. We see the chart--it is one of the 10 most heavily traveled deficient bridges in the State of Virginia, and it carries just under 134,000 cars a day. The next one is in the State of Washington. I always comment when I see this. It is called the Magnolia Bridge; it is too far north for magnolia trees. Anyway, it was built in about 1929. The bridge carries over 18,000 cars a day and is structurally deficient. While the bridge is in a residential area and on the community's radar, it hasn't received the necessary funding to reconstruct the 86-year-old bridge. Greenfield Bridge, Pittsburgh, PA--I imagine the Chair is familiar with this. Pennsylvania has the most structurally deficient bridges in the country, and this is one of them. Let me repeat that. The State of Pennsylvania has the most structurally deficient bridges in the entire Nation. This was built in 1921. It now carries 7,700 cars a day. A 10-inch chunk of concrete went through a car windshield in 2003, injuring the driver. Later that year, the city spent $652,000 to build a temporary bridge to catch whatever came through the nets. So they have a bridge under a bridge. They had to build another bridge to catch whatever falls off of this bridge. This structurally deficient bridge has been crumbling for decades. In order to protect drivers on the busy highway below, nets and platforms were constructed to catch falling debris. On a similar note, we had a tragic incident in Oklahoma involving falling debris from a bridge. A lady and her children in a car were driving below it, and a chunk of concrete fell off and killed the mother. Again, I will repeat what I said: Pennsylvania has the most structurally deficient bridges in the entire Nation, and that is just one of them. The Court Avenue Bridge in Des Moines, where I was born--talk about an old bridge. This was actually built before I was born, in 1918. It now carries 3,900 cars a day. Iowa has the second most structurally deficient bridges in the country, second only to Pennsylvania. While the State recently increased the gas tax, it will still require Federal partnership to do something about this famous bridge. I-95. Going from Washington to New York or anyplace up north, you go on I-95. It is a very heavily traveled highway. This is the Brandywine Bridge in Wilmington. You go right over this bridge on I-95. It is 50 years old. The bridge deck is deteriorating. The viaduct, which carries travelers from I-95 through Wilmington, has experienced serious concrete corrosion. The problem is this bridge was designed for a fraction of the travel that it now has because this is the main artery going up the east coast of the United States. It has cracks and swells. I have actually personally seen this bridge. The Chef Menteur Pass Bridge in New Orleans, LA, was built in 1930 and carries 1,800 cars a day across Highway 90. The Cesar Chavez Boulevard Bridge in San Francisco was built in 1951. It carries 234,000 cars a day. It is one of the oldest bridges on the west coast. The I-30 in Little Rock--getting close to my State of Oklahoma. Tom Cotton and John Boozman are most interested in this bridge. It is structurally deficient. It was built in 1961 to carry traffic over railroad tracks, 116,000 cars a day. And Arkansas is delaying projects because of uncertainty at the Federal level, so they are currently discussing gap financing for the I-30 project. The Storrow Drive Bridge in Boston--I know Senators Warner and Markey are very concerned about this. Built in 1951, this structurally deficient bridge carries 57,770 cars per day. The Storrow Drive Bridge earned its structurally deficient rating because of the corroding support beams that support one of many highly trafficked bridges in the Nation. Numerous costly interim repairs over the years have kept the artery open, but they are merely stopgaps until a longer term solution can be reached. New Jersey, U.S. Highway 1 over the Passaic River. Herbert Hoover was President when this bridge was built in 1932, with an estimated design volume of 5,500 vehicles a day. I am going to skip down to the Brooklyn Bridge. This bridge was actually built in 1883. It is structurally deficient. Of course we know the number of cars that go over that. That was built in 1883. That is one that I dare say arguably everyone here has driven over, and every time you do, you wonder if you are going to get to the other side. The other comparable bridge is the San Francisco Bay Bridge, which was built in 1936. The bridge is now functionally obsolete. Here is the concern about the bridge. A lot of smart people are saying this bridge, because of all the earthquakes out there, could collapse. Anyone who drives over is thinking: Is this going to be the time it takes place? I talked to Roy Blunt a few minutes ago. He was talking about the bridges in Missouri. The next chart I will show is from there. For some reason, Missouri and Oklahoma are two of the worst States in terms of the conditions of bridges, and we are both concerned about that. That is something people have to keep in mind. I know others want to come down and get some time, but we are going to be talking about these, about the major projects. What is unique about the bridges is we can't ensure the stability and safety of our bridges on short-term extensions. That is why we have gone since 2009 with 33 short-term extensions and many of these bridges have had no attention. The only way we are going to correct that problem is to do it with this DRIVE Act. Hopefully we will have the vote to advance that bill, and hopefully we will be able to get it through. I want to repeat what I started off with. I don't criticize the Democrats who voted against the motion to proceed yesterday because they requested information and didn't get the information until 30 minutes before the vote took place. Even my counterpart on the left, Barbara Boxer, voted against it at that time. I think most of those individuals should be supportive of this, certainly after seeing the bridges and construction that is necessary in their States. I am confident they will. Mr. President, I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 22, 2015, in room SH-216 of the Hart Senate Office Building, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Safeguarding the Integrity of Indian Gaming.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 22, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 22, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SR-428A of the Russell Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Targeted Tax Reform: Solutions to Relieve the Tax Compliance Burden(s) for America's Small Businesses.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 22, 2015, at 2:30 p.m. in room SR-418 of the Russell Senate Office Building.