Jim Inhofe

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Special Committee on Aging be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 22, 2015, at 2:15 p.m., in room SD-562 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Doctor Is Not In: Combating Medicare Provider Enrollment Fraud.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights, and Federal Courts, be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 22, 2015, at 1:30 p.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``With Prejudice: Supreme Court Activism and Possible Solutions.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 22, 2015, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Oversight of the Financial Stability Oversight Council Designation Process.''

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 22, 2015, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Protecting the Electric Grid from the Potential Threats of Solar Storms and Electromagnetic Pulse.''

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 22, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SR-253 of the Russell 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 22, 2015, at 2 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

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 22, 2015, at 10 a.m., in room SD-430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building to conduct a hearing entitled ``Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities within Innovation.''

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.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, we are going to be moving to the highway bill. In fact, we are going to have the motion to proceed today at 2:15 p.m., and I think it is important that people realize the significance of this. We do a lot of work around here that is not really critical. There are some issues that are. If you would like to read the Constitution sometime when you have nothing else to do, it will tell you that what we are supposed to be doing are two things: defending America and roads and bridges. That is what it says in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. So anytime you are sitting around with nothing to do, you ought to read it, and you will realize that what we are going to do at 2:15 today is very significant. Passing a long-term transportation reauthorization bill has been my top priority since I resumed the office of the chairmanship of the Environment and Public Works Committee. It is probably the second most important thing we do, second only to the Defense authorization bill. In the first hearing we had in January, we had Secretary Foxx, the Secretary of Transportation, who is an outstanding Secretary. He is just as concerned about this as we are. Senator Boxer and I brought in Secretary Foxx as well as local government leaders to share the importance of ongoing Federal and State partnerships in maintaining the modern surface infrastructure system. Since that time, my committee has put forward a bipartisan bill called the DRIVE Act. It is significant, and it is not partisan. There is no such thing as a Democratic bridge or a Republican bridge or a Democratic road or a Republican road. Historically, Republicans have been recognized as leading in this area, from way back in the days when President Lincoln spearheaded the Transcontinental Railroad; Teddy Roosevelt and the Panama Canal; and, of course, the Interstate Highway System, created by President Eisenhower. President Eisenhower recognized that weakened defense and interstate commerce made our Nation vulnerable to the world. In 1952, when he proposed the Interstate Highway System, he commented that this was every bit as much about defending America as it was about the economy and being able to transport commerce around the States. In laying out the full interstate system, he envisioned it to be the physical backbone of the economy, fueling the growth of our GDP, our cities, and the competitiveness of our exports. This vision and certainty maximized the economic and mobility benefits of the system. Businesses and individuals knew that they could locate somewhere on the future interstate system and be connected to not just the rest of the country but the rest of the world. This legacy system, which was built over 50 years ago, had a design life of 50 years, and it has actually been over 60 years--close to 70 years since it was built. We are beyond our warranty period, and we are in serious danger of eroding half a century of investments without proper maintenance, modernization, and reconstruction. We are on borrowed time with a system that is in full need of restoration. Our national interstate system currently has a maintenance backlog of $185 billion on about 47,000 miles of interstate, and that is just to bring it back to the design it was in 1956. Maintaining Eisenhower's vision of economic opportunity and strength in defense requires a continued partnership between the Federal Government and the States, which is the hallmark of the DRIVE Act. Yet, due to 33 short-term patches since 2005--I have to say this because this is significant. We should be operating on a transportation reauthorization system all the time. The last one we did was in 2005. I was the author of it, in fact. That was a 5-year bill. Since that time, we have gone through some 30 different short-term extensions. A short-term extension doesn't do any good. A transportation reauthorization bill is needed in order to accomplish all the reforms that are necessary and to have time to handle the major, large problems we have to deal with. Passing a long-term bill is crucial to many aspects of day-to-day life in America. More than 250 million vehicles and 18 billion tons-- valued at $17 trillion--in goods traverse across the country every year. Yet every day 20,000 miles of our highways slow below the posted speed limits or experience stop-and-go conditions. The National Highway System is only 5.5 percent of the Nation's total roads, but it carries 55 percent of all vehicle traffic and 97 percent of the truck-borne freight. We are talking about 97 percent of the freight on only 5 percent of the highways. Congress just passed a 2-month extension. Now we have a responsibility to pass a long-term bill. The highway trust fund currently needs $15 billion a year to maintain the current spending. When we started out with the highway trust fund, that was a percentage every year. When someone would drive up and pay a tax when buying gas, that was supposed to be for taking care of the highways--and it did. I can remember when I was serving in the House. The biggest problem we had at that time was we had too much money in the highway trust fund. We had more than we needed. I remember when President Clinton came in. He wanted to rob the highway trust fund for all of his programs. He got by with it for a while. That is not the problem anymore. The problem now is there is not enough money. The situation has changed. People are not using as much fuel. So we have fallen short by $15 billion a year of having the amount of money necessary to continue today's spending level. That is $15 billion a year. This is a 6-year bill. That means about $90 billion is needed in excess of the amount of money, revenue, that is derived from the highway trust fund. The DRIVE Act--that is what we call this--will put America back on the map as the best place to do business. The DRIVE Act has several key components that position America's transportation system to support our growing economy. It prioritizes funding for core transportation formula programs to provide States and local governments with a strong Federal partner. It prioritizes the Interstate Highway System, that national highway system, and the bridges at risk for funding shortfalls. It creates a new multibillion-dollar-per-year freight program to help States deliver projects and promotes the safe and efficient transportation of goods. It targets funds for major projects in the community, such as shown right here. This is a picture of the Brent Spence Bridge I have in the Chamber. This goes from Kentucky to Ohio and actually takes transportation also to Indiana. This is a very old bridge. You can see it is going to have to be replaced. These are the huge things you cannot do with short-term extensions. You are going to have to have a major bill, such as the one we are having right now. Lastly, the DRIVE Act provides greater efficiency in the project delivery process, reforms that put DOT in the driver's seat during the NEPA process by requiring agencies to bring all the issues to the table, keeping them under a deadline, and eliminating duplication. One of the problems we have with the environmental requirements is they end up delaying projects. So this bill gives exceptions. Let me say that I was very proud of Senator Boxer. Senator Boxer is a very proud liberal. I am a very proud conservative. One of the few things we agree on is the highway bill. It does require some changes that allow them to go ahead and keep working in spite of some of the NEPA requirements or the environmental requirements. This gives bridge projects special consideration, with new exemptions from section 4(f), the historic property reviews for concrete and steel bridges--a new exemption from the Migratory Bird Treaty Act for bridges in serious condition. Now, this sounds kind of off the wall, but one of the problems is the swallows. The swallows go in there and they block--they nest in there. So we are supposed to be repairing bridges. The swallow is not an endangered species. It is not listed, but the Migratory Bird Treaty Act does give them protection, and this waives that in the case of bridge construction. It also enforces greater transparency for Federal funds to show the taxpayers where the money is being spent. This is just a brief overview of the bill. As the DRIVE Act progresses on the floor, I intend to address the significance of each program in more detail. The most important point I must address about the DRIVE Act is that our bill sets funding levels for the next 6 years. There is, at the very least, what the Federal Government should provide, so States, local officials, and the construction industry can gear up for the large $500 million to $2 billion major highway projects and bridge projects so we can get them off the ground. They have to get ready for it. That is what this bill does. Thousands of projects across the Nation are currently in jeopardy, and construction will come to a halt unless legislation becomes a reality. Future projects like--let's go back. You saw already the Brent Spence Bridge in Kentucky. There is also the $2.6 billion Mobile River Bridge in Alabama. This is a projection of what it will look like. This is as it is today. This would be impossible without something like a 6-year bill. In DC, the Memorial Bridge is literally crumbling into the Potomac. People do not understand what happens to these bridges. You can see--in our case in Oklahoma, we had a bridge over I-35. In the year 2005, as a part of that bill, that legislation, we were able to repair it. In 2004, right before that took place, one of the chunks came off--just like you are seeing here on the bridge--and actually killed a young lady who was driving under it with her three children. That is how serious this is. This is the Arlington Memorial Bridge. It was built in 1932. Something has to be done with that. We will be able to do projects like this. More than just a small part of the economic success enjoyed by the United States over the past 50 years has been the Interstate System. Today, we literally sit at the crossroads of its future. The solution is urgent. This is why Senator Boxer and I are bringing the DRIVE Act to the Senate floor as a solution. It will ensure that States have the tools and the certainty to make the necessary new investments to rebuild Eisenhower's vision, to fight growing congestion, to maintain the mobility of goods and services necessary to keep the economy going. By passing the DRIVE Act, Congress will be able to take pave the way for the next 50 years of American excellence in infrastructure. I have to say this. The importance of this is that the only alternative is to have short-term extensions. I am talking about 1- and 2-month extensions, of which you cannot organize your labor. The cost of that--and by the way, I say this to my conservative friends--they will be friends, and I can say this, since I have been ranked as the most conservative Member of this body many times--that the conservative position is not to oppose this massive highway bill that we are going to have but to oppose the short-term extensions. It costs about 30 percent more for a short-term extension than it does for a highway reauthorization bill. That is why this is so important. Later on, I am going to go over many of the other bridges and structures around that are going to have to be addressed. In the meantime, this is something we are supposed to do. I kind of will end up where we started off; that is, there is an old document that nobody reads anymore called the Constitution. You go back and read that, you will find out what we in this body are supposed to be doing. It is defending America and it is providing bridges and roads. So as we progress on this, there will not be time to go into any more detail now because we have Members wanting to come down and use both the Republican and Democratic time between now and the noon hour, but at 2:15 we are going to have a motion we will be voting on to move to the consideration of this bill. It doesn't say you have to be for it or against it or you want to change it. If you want to have amendments, you have to get to the bill before you can have amendments. So a motion-to-proceed vote will take place at 2:15. Now, I want to tell all of the Members who are out there that if you have amendments--we are going to try to knock this thing out in 2 weeks. We are going to be down here talking about it for 2 weeks. But if you have amendments, if you want a chance to offer your amendments, you can offer them, but bring them down, file your amendments. If you do not do that, we will pass a deadline and you will not be able to do that. So I encourage our Members to do that. I look forward to the next 2 weeks of discussing and passing the second most significant bill we will consider this year. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Right here.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I appreciate that very much. I wish to say that working in concert with Senator Boxer has been a pleasure. A lot of times philosophically in this room here we disagree with each other, but then when it gets down to what we are supposed to be doing here--I have to remind people quite often that if you read the Constitution about what we are supposed to be doing here--I am talking about Members of the U.S. Senate--we are supposed to be defending America and roads and bridges. That is it. So this is by far the most important matter before us right now, now that we have the Defense bill behind us, and I look forward to making this a reality. The idea of a 6-year bill is very significant because without that we can't do the big projects. This morning on the floor with charts I showed all the different big, large structures, such as the Spence Bridge between Kentucky and Ohio. These are bridges and projects that have to be done, and there has to be a long-term bill in order to do that. I also shared this morning an experience that I had on the I-35 bridge that we put in through--the last major bill we had was in 2005. We put those repairs in there. That was in Oklahoma City. We actually had the death of a lady who was driving her three children under a bridge with concrete falling off. So we have to repair America, and this is the first step toward that repair. It is very important that we proceed to the bill. I would suggest to people that if you don't like it and if you plan to vote against it, that is fine, but bring it out here so we can discuss the merits, the demerits, and we can also start working on amendments. I would encourage any Member who is listening right now to bring amendments to the floor because when we proceed to the bill, I am going to be down here on the floor as long as we are in session, and I will be wanting to get to these amendments. It doesn't do any good to wait until the last minute and then show up and say ``I have an amendment'' on the day of passage of the bill. We will have deadlines. In order to get germane and nongermane amendments up for consideration, we have to have them down here, and if Members miss a deadline, then Members won't have that opportunity. So it is really up to the Members now to make sure that happens, but before we can get to that, the one thing that has to happen is we have to proceed to the bill. That has to be passed at 4 o'clock today. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in recess as under the previous order.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Madam President, I have been listening carefully to what concerns people have, and I have to remind everyone that it was June 24--June 24--that we passed this bill out of committee. We had been working on this bill for months before that. All of us realize that between the last bill we had, which was a multiyear bill in 2005--that we then had a 5-year bill, and since that expired at the end of 2009, we have had nothing but extensions. Those extensions cost 30 percent off the top just because short-term extensions don't work. But we went ahead, and we passed a bill. The reason I am optimistic that if we can get this to the House they will sign it is because that wasn't a problem at all when it went to the House the last time. We showed them that the cost of the bill is far less--the conservative position. That was with 33 Members of the House on the transportation and infrastructure committee. So all of the Republicans and all of the Democrats on their committee voted for it. Those same Democrats and Republicans over there would support this. I think the reason they came out originally for a shorter term bill was to pack it in with some other things they wanted to get passed. But I have yet to talk to the first Member of the House who doesn't say: If you bring us a multiyear bill, we will sign it. So I think that is a moot statement. I think that will happen, and we are willing to stay here until it does happen. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Chaya Koffman, who is a detailee in the Environment and Public Works Committee from the U.S. Department of Transportation, have floor privileges for the duration of the consideration of H.R. 22, the underlying vehicle for the highway bill.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I wish to recognize the service of LTG John D. Johnson, the director of the Department of Defense's newest combat support agency, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Agency, JIDA, who will retire on September 1, 2015, after 38 years of active service. Lieutenant General Johnson honorably served his country for more than three decades. After graduating from the Virginia Military Institute in 1977 as an infantry officer, he commanded troops at every level and is a veteran of multiple deployments to Iraq. As a young officer, he served in Germany, Georgia, California, and the Pentagon. He attained the rank of brigadier general in 2006 and was assigned as the assistant division commander for maneuver of the 2nd Infantry Division in Korea. Upon returning, he was assigned to the U.S. Army Installation Management Command. From there, he became the deputy commanding general, operations, for I Corps and Fort Lewis, WA. He deployed to Iraq serving in that role to the Headquarters for Multi-National Corps--Iraq, where he learned first-hand the atrocities inflicted by improvised explosive devices, foreshadowing his rise to his final position. In his penultimate position, he was the commanding general, Eighth U.S. Army; and Chief of Staff for United Nations Command, Combined Forces Command, and U.S. Forces Korea, preserving readiness for coalition forces across the Korean Peninsula. As the director of JIDA, Lieutenant General Johnson set the conditions for the Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, JIEDDO, to become JIDA, a permanent defense agency that will enhance our Nation's capabilities to fight improvised weapons and those who employ them. He has fostered countless cooperative relationships with government agencies, coalition partners, academia, and industry supporters in an effort to find innovative solutions to these pervasive improvised threats. During this challenging transition period for JIEDDO, he led an extensive effort to right-size the workforce and streamline processes while still bestowing a high level of support to the warfighter. I had the pleasure of personally working with Lieutenant General Johnson during his tenure at JIEDDO. He is an inspiring leader, an admirable mentor, and a fine example for his fellow servicemembers. I am proud to share in the celebration of Lieutenant General Johnson's career, his extraordinary leadership, his distinguished military service and his unwavering dedication to this great Nation. I wish him, his wife Cheryl, and their daughter Elizabeth all the best in their future endeavors.

Mr. INHOFE

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized for such time as I shall consume.

Mr. INHOFE. I ask unanimous consent that following my remarks, the junior Senator from Oklahoma, Mr. Lankford, be recognized.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, right now probably the most significant thing we will be facing as soon as we get through with the education bill that Senator Lamar Alexander has done such a great job on is the transportation reauthorization bill. I found out the House just passed a few minutes ago a 5-month extension to the highway reauthorization bill. I would suggest to the people who may think there is some type of adversarial relationship between our bill in the Senate and the House bill that there isn't. We are working together and we both want to accomplish a long-term bill, and I anticipate that we will actually have passed in the next few days a long-term--maybe a 6-year--highway reauthorization bill, at which time we will go to conference with the House and it will be business as usual. I want to make sure, in case there is a fire looming out there, that we put it out early. Passing the long-term transportation bill has been my top priority since I returned as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. Ironically, the ranking member of that committee, Senator Boxer of California, feels just as strongly that it is her top priority also. So I consider this to be the second most significant bill of the year, the first one being of course the Defense reauthorization, which we have already addressed here. But we felt strongly enough about this being a top priority that we had our first full committee hearing on the need to reauthorize what at that time was MAP-21. We had Anthony Foxx, the Secretary of Transportation, as well as a lot of government leaders so they could share the importance of an ongoing Federal and State partnership in building and maintaining a modern surface infrastructure system. Since that hearing, my committee has put forward a bold bipartisan solution called the DRIVE Act that will put our Nation on the path to having a world-class transportation system. I have often said there is no such thing as a Republican or a Democratic road or bridge. This is something that is bipartisan. By the way, I have to say when the DRIVE Act passed through my committee, it passed unanimously--every Democrat and every Republican voted for the bill. The Transcontinental Railroad, I am proud to say, the Republicans have historically been leading the way in transportation going all the way back to the Lincoln days. We passed the Transcontinental Railroad. The Panama Canal was done by Teddy Roosevelt. Of course, the Interstate Highway System was done by Eisenhower. Eisenhower said the transportation system is a dynamic element in the very name we bear, United States. Without it, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts. What he also said--let's remember that Eisenhower was a President. He was a star. He was concerned, and he started the first highway bill by addressing the problems of defense. The fact is that if you don't have a highway system within the United States, you can't adequately supply the necessary means to fight and win wars. So that was the very first motivation for it. In laying out the full interstate system, Eisenhower envisioned it to be the physical backbone of the economy, fueling the growth of our GDP, our cities, and the competitiveness of our exports. Now, this vision and certainty maximized the economic and mobility benefits of the system. Businesses and individuals knew that if they could locate somewhere on a future interstate system, they would be connected not just with the Nation but with the world. I am afraid this legacy system, which was built with a 50-year design life, is now more than 50 years old. So we are out of warranty now, and we need to address that. That is the sense of urgency that we have. We are in serious danger of eroding a half century of investments without proper maintenance, modernization, and reconstruction. We are on borrowed time with a system that is in full need of restoration. Our national interstate system currently has a maintenance backlog of $185 billion. Now that national interstate system is actually 47,000 miles in length, and just to bring back the system to the original 1956 design, it would be that expensive. Maintaining Eisenhower's vision of economic opportunity and strength in defense requires a continued partnership between the Federal Government and the States, which is the hallmark of the DRIVE Act. Yet due to 33 short-term passages since 2005, the highway construction now consists of maintenance patchwork. This is what happened. We had a transportation reauthorization bill that was a 5-year bill. This was in 2005. I am very familiar with it. I was the author of the bill at that time. In 2005, we passed this long- term bill. Since that time, we have been unable to pass a long-term reauthorization bill. So we have been operating on extensions--short- term extensions. It is interesting that we are now looking at something that has both a liberal and a conservative perspective. The conservative position is a long-term bill because the only alternative is short-term extensions. Short-term extensions--I don't think anyone has ever challenged this-- costs about 30 percent more because you can't get big projects, which we are talking about in a minute. So we are now to the point where we are going to be able to do something with a long-term bill. Passing a long-term bill is crucial in many aspects of day-to-day life in America. More than 250 million vehicles and 18 billion tons valued at $17 trillion in goods traverse across the country every year. Yet every day 2,000 miles of our highways slow below the posted speed limits because of the stop-and-go conditions of overcongestion. The National Highway System--this is kind of interesting. Not many people are aware of this. Our whole National Highway System is 5.5 percent of the total Nation's roads, but it carries 55 percent of all vehicles traveling and 97 percent of the truck-borne freight. So 5.5 percent of the Nation's roads account for the transportation of 97 percent of the freight crossing this country. This type of congestion has a huge negative impact on our businesses throughout America. Congress just passed a 2-month extension, and we now have a responsibility to pass a long-term solution. As I mentioned, they did pass something over in the House that we are in agreement that will get them to conference with us, and I think most of them are going to be-- from the ones I talked to over there--very excited about the fact that we are going to have funding for a 6-year bill. The highway trust fund needs $15 billion a year to maintain current spending. What we are saying there is, if you take proceeds of the gas tax that is out there in order to do what we are currently doing, it takes an additional $15 billion each year just to do that, but we need to do more than just maintain the system. We need to improve it for the future of America's growing economy. Fortunately, my committee just passed this bill unanimously with what we call the DRIVE Act. The DRIVE Act will put America back on the map as the best place to do business. The DRIVE Act has several key components to position America's transportation system to support our growing economy. First of all, it prioritizes funding for core transportation formula programs to provide States and local governments with strong Federal partners. In other words, the States have needs. They articulate those needs to the Federal Government. The Federal Government goes in and makes sure that is going to be a reality. Let's keep in mind, there are some States--suggesting Wyoming as an example--it would take three times as much money actually to take care of the roads in Wyoming than could be produced by the sparse population of that State. So that is one of the major initial reasons for the program. Secondly, it prioritizes the interstate system, the National Highway System, and the bridges at risk system. Well, as I said, the interstate system is 47,000 miles, but the National Highway System is 220,000 miles, which does encompass the 47,000 miles of the interstate system. Thirdly, it creates a new multibillion-dollar-per-year freight program to help the States deliver projects that promote the safe, efficient, and reliable transportation of consumer goods and products across the United States. The fourth thing is--and this is something a lot of people are not aware of--a lot of people think that we in Washington have this infinite wisdom that we know what is best for the States. We don't believe that. We believe the States should set their own priorities. In my State of Oklahoma, I don't even get involved in what projects are going to be there. We have a State system, where the State does evaluate, and certainly they know more about our needs in Oklahoma than the Federal Government does. Don't you agree? That is right. Well, that is where we are on that. We let the States determine what projects we are going to be doing. The fifth thing is to provide greater efficiency in the project delivery process through reforms that put DOT in the driver's seat during the NEPA process by requiring other agents to bring in their issues. Here is what happens. We have a lot of good rules in the NEPA Program, in the environmental programs, but there are some things where we feel that should not slow down the construction of roads, highways, and bridges, both new bridges and repairs. To do that, we have to write that into the law, so that streamlines the system. If you have nothing but short-term extensions, that doesn't happen. They don't get streamlined. Let me compliment my partner in this, the ranking member Senator Boxer from California. It is interesting. I am among one of the most conservative Members of the U.S. Senate. She is a very proud liberal. Yet we both agree on what our priorities should be, and that makes this process more important. She has been willing to do things she didn't really want to do because it does short-circuit some of the NEPA requirements, and as a general rule she would not want to do that. But this has been a give-and-take, and that is why we have a bill that passed our committee unanimously. The sixth or seventh thing is eliminating duplicative reviews and expanding categorical exclusions. To give an example of that, we have bridge projects that are given special considerations with new exemptions from section 4(f), the historic property reviews. Now, to be a historic property, it has to be over 50 years old. For them to continue to be able to do it, it takes these exemptions from what other historic things have to go through because we are in the business of building bridges. Secondly, we have the Migratory Bird Treaty Act on the books, and it allows us to go ahead and start working on projects even though swallows nests--I know it sounds kind of insignificant, but it is not, because swallows go in there, and while they are not protected or listed as an endangered species, they still are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and they have caused us to stop construction on many of the bridges around the country. This is kind of a brief overview of the bill. As the DRIVE Act progresses on the floor, I intend to address the significance of each program in a lot more detail. Most importantly, the DRIVE Act sets up funding levels for the next 6 years. This is at the very best what the Federal Government should provide so States and local officials in the construction industry can gear up for large projects--the $500 million to $2 billion projects. These are things you can't do with extensions, but you can do with a bill such as the bill we have successfully passed. We have thousands of projects around the Nation that are currently in jeopardy, and construction will come to a halt unless this legislation becomes a reality. As shown in this picture I have in the Chamber, this is the Brent Spence Bridge. This goes from Kentucky to Ohio. Right now it is in dire need. One can see actually the problems with this antiquated bridge. There are chunks of it dropping off into the river below and it has become very dangerous. We saw not long ago in another adjoining State what can happen if a bridge goes down. Here in DC we had the Memorial Bridge. It is literally crumbling. You can go right down and you can see the pieces of the bridge dropping into the Potomac River. It was built in 1932. It has only received patchwork ever since that time. It is estimated that nearly $250 million will be required to keep the bridge operational. That is not a new bridge. That is to make that into an operational bridge. You recognize this. You drive by it, many of you, every day. But you don't see--you have to get down there and you can see concrete dropping into the Potomac. We have many more like this. What else do we have here? The Mobile River Bridge. This is in Alabama. This is what it will look like later. That is not a current picture. This is what it is right now. These are the types of projects that we can do now which we could not do with just extensions, as we have been doing since 2009. I believe more than just a small part of the economic success enjoyed by the United States over the past 50 years has been the interstate system started by President Eisenhower. But today we literally sit in a situation where we would have to do something to carry this forward. That is why Senator Boxer and I are bringing the DRIVE Act to the Senate floor. It will ensure that States have the tools and certainty to make the necessary new investments to rebuild Eisenhower's vision, fight growing congestion and maintain the mobility of goods and services across our country. So we are going to have this up. I think this will be on the floor, probably the next thing after we finish with the education bill. Again, no one can argue that this is the second most significant bill that we address each year. We have not addressed this one in the right way since 2005. So it is very significant. We are looking forward it to. Anyway, we are going to be coming forth with this, I'm going to be coming to the floor and talking about it in a lot more detail. We have got to get the roads and the bridges taken care of. We intend to do it. The product to do that is the DRIVE Act. I yield the floor.

Mr. INHOFE

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion of the remarks of the Senator from Virginia, I be recognized for 5 minutes.

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

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

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that, notwithstanding the filing deadline in rule XXII, it be in order for me to offer a modification to the pending Hatch amendment No. 1911 with the text that is at the desk.

Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I send the amendment to the desk.

Mr. INHOFE. Will the Senator withhold?