David Price

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the subcommittee chairman for yielding. I simply want to underscore his opposition to this amendment. It would block Amtrak's loan request for $2.5 billion for new Acela high- speed train sets. This loan would make it possible to upgrade Amtrak's best and most profitable service, but one that is severely stressed. We need to remind ourselves that the cars in which people died in Philadelphia were 40 years old. We desperately need the kind of investment that this loan would make possible. As the chairman has stressed, this may turn out to be the way that we can fund positive train control. It may be the only way, given other limitations in the bill, other limitations in Amtrak funding. It would prevent loans that exceed $600 million for other purposes, including safety purposes. This is a very, very ill-advised amendment. I urge colleagues to reject it.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise, honestly, in some disbelief that this amendment is actually being offered. Members of Congress and industry stakeholders have been calling for months for the DOT to complete its rulemaking to update the integrity of tank cars that carry energy products and other hazardous materials. The DOT got the final rule out on May 8, and now, today, the gentleman wants to stop the implementation of that rule in its tracks. There have been countless examples of derailments involving trains that carry crude oil and other energy products. These incidents have resulted in explosive fires that burn for days. The incident that occurred in Quebec resulted in the preventable deaths of almost 50 people. U.S. and Canadian transportation officials have worked hard to try to improve the safe transportation of these dangerous products. The railroad industry wants stronger cars. Safety groups want stronger cars. Communities desperately want stronger cars. We ought not to delay the implementation of this long-awaited rule, so I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment. I am now happy to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Diaz- Balart), our distinguished subcommittee chairman.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. The rule in question, HUD's rule, is intended to help communities more fully comply with the law and to avoid costly and time-consuming legal challenges. The charge that this rule injects HUD into local planning and zoning conditions is simply inaccurate. Nor does it set up additional hurdles to Federal funding. That is inaccurate too. The rule allows for communities to better understand local conditions and to create locally decided and implemented solutions. I don't understand why we would want to revert back to a standard that relied on drawn-out litigation rather than simply presenting communities up front with information on local housing conditions and letting them address their needs. I know my local officials prefer community developed solutions over decrees that are judicially imposed. With that, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison), a distinguished member of the Financial Services Committee, to express his opposition to this amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield an additional 1 minute to my colleague.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I thank my colleague for offering this amendment. It calls attention to the gross underfunding in this bill, not just of TIGER, but of virtually every HUD and transportation program so that it is very hard, of course, to find offsets. There is very little money in this bill. We should be breaking out of that mold. We should be going after a budget agreement that will let us write a decent bill and meet this country's needs. Her amendment, better than anything we have heard thus far tonight, underscores that need. I thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. The gentleman does have an amendment that fits my description; is that true?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar), a distinguished member of our Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Illinois.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let me inquire of the chairman, does he plan to claim the time in opposition?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, my friend Mr. Dent has proposed an increase in an appropriation for a worthy purpose, to install inward-facing cameras on Amtrak locomotives, but his amendment offers another example of why the overall allocation in this T-HUD bill is completely inadequate. The offsets may represent relatively small reductions in DOT's administrative accounts, each of these accounts: the DOT Secretary's salaries and expenses, the Federal Transit Administration's administrative expenses account, the Saint Lawrence Seaway. All of these would be cut below last year's level. At this point, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur), my colleague from the full committee.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition so as to raise objections about the offsets proposed in this amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I have no further speakers, so I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time both sides have remaining?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. As for the ideas that are being thrown back and forth here tonight about highway safety and driver safety, the advocates for highway and auto safety who are looking at this bill and evaluating this bill include the Teamsters and the Short Line Railroad Association. My own highway patrol in North Carolina came to see me; they came on their own volition, and they had pictures, Mr. Chairman, of carnage on our highways. It left no doubt that they were not interested in seeing heavier and longer trucks and relaxed rules on our highways. I suggest that Members might want to check in with safety advocates and with law enforcement in their own States and see what kind of assessments they get of this highly irregular effort that is going on here tonight of writing into appropriations bills provisions that haven't had hearings, that haven't had thorough evaluations. In some cases, they overturn evaluations that are already in the process--evaluations that this body has ordered up--prejudging the consequences and the conclusions of those studies and are moving ahead with ill-advised relaxations in truck and auto safety. I suggest that Members will want to take a critical look at that. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee), one of those additional speakers, a member of the Committee on Appropriations.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Chair, this amendment that the gentleman from California has offered is about as indiscriminate as it gets. He apparently has ideas, and those ideas ought to be heard to reform this program, to make it more efficient and more effective and more targeted. The place to do that is in the authorizing committee. We have forums where we can discuss those ideas and act on them. To come in tonight and offer this indiscriminate amendment which, by the way, not only cuts this overall program by more than half, but also cuts the allocation for this bill, which is already so inadequate, it is not an approach that this body should endorse. The program we are talking about, Essential Air Services, was created after deregulation. It has remained essential to keep service going to many, many small communities in this country, including Crescent City, El Centro, Merced, and Visalia in California. It is funded through annual appropriations, and also funded through overflight fees that are collected when foreign air carriers traverse through U.S. airspace. If this amendment were adopted, many small communities would lose air service. Madam Chair, this isn't the way to reform the program, so I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition with considerable enthusiasm. It is as though what I said 5 minutes ago about the deficiencies of this bill--this whole budget strategy that has left us so unable to address our needs--it is as though the gentleman took that and went in exactly the opposite direction. His amendment reduced an allocation that is already far too low, and it takes these rental assistance programs and reduces them further. Not only does it not meet the need that we are seeing but actually reduces what we are already doing. This means evictions. I promise you, it means large-scale evictions. It means a cutting back in communities across this country of the housing alternatives that people have. I have always thought, Mr. Chairman, that rental assistance--Section 8--should be a housing program that conservatives should love because it is market-based. It is not, contrary to what the gentleman says, a total free ride. As a matter of fact, people pay a third of their income in rent. What Section 8 provides is a modest boost so that these housing developments and these apartment buildings can work. People can live there. They put their own money in, and they get a boost. They are able to move toward self-sufficiency. So it is not public housing. It is housing for people who are able to do more for themselves and who are receiving support as they do that. This would be unconscionable to cut this program further. With great conviction I believe this would be a mistaken amendment, a hard-hearted amendment, and one that this body should reject. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to echo his opposition to this amendment, although I do commend Mr. Garrett for his focus on safety and operations. I, too, would like to raise that appropriation to the request level. That is a good objective. There are a couple of problems here, though. One, is that because of differences in outlay rates, to pick up $17 million on the safety and operations side you have to cut $83 million from the transit New Starts. That has to do with differences in outlay rates. But the fact is, it is a substantial cut. And these New Starts in the bill, I remind colleagues, are already $1.3 billion below the President's request. They are $198 million below what we have this year. These are badly underfunded items. So we simply, again, are robbing Peter to pay Paul. But because of the disproportionate impact here, and the fact that New Starts are already so underresourced, I reluctantly oppose this amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Chair, we have an amendment before us that would strike a provision that has been carried in every transportation appropriations bill since 2009. The section simply grants the Secretary or his representatives the authority to engage in activities with States and State legislators to consider proposals related to the reduction of motorcycle fatalities. This consultation is entirely voluntary. Madam Chair, in 2013, we had 5,000 motorcycle fatalities in this country. That is the last year for which we have data. The research and expertise of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration can be extremely helpful--helpful to State highway traffic safety agencies as they consider measures they might want to undertake to improve motorcycle safety. Why wouldn't we want to be in partnership with the States as they address this important safety issue? Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I commend my colleague for offering this amendment, and I want to offer my strong support. Mr. Chairman, we are talking here about annualizing the funding--in other words, bringing these people on board permanently--for pipeline safety inspectors who were hired in fiscal year 2015. We are also talking about the better coordination of enforcement activities between Federal, State, and local officials. I would like to remind my colleagues we have 2.6 million miles of pipeline across this country. I think the number is maybe 548 personnel in the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. This is an enormous task. The gentlewoman's amendment would greatly improve our capacity to address this challenge, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong opposition to this amendment which, purely and simply, would end intercity passenger rail for our Nation. I remind colleagues, there is not a single mode of transportation in this country that is not subsidized, contrary to what we have just heard. To make the case further, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown), a distinguished member of the authorizing committee.