Bud Shuster: “I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. DeFAZIO. How much time do I have remaining? The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman…”

“I reserve the balance of my time. Mr. DeFAZIO. How much time do I have remaining? The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Oregon has 6\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from Pennsylvania has 20\1/2\ minutes remaining. Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First off, I want to join in what many others have said: transportation infrastructure has not been historically nor should it become a partisan issue. I appreciate the chairman's willingness to work together on many aspects. We will at times disagree over elements of bills, but in general we agree that what makes this country great, what makes us competitive in the world is a world-class system of transportation infrastructure and other critical infrastructure, and today we are deficient. I talked during my introductory remarks about some of the needs. Let me just talk about the revenues. Back in 1993, when the gas tax was raised by a bipartisan coalition in the House--actually, on the Republican side, led by the chairman's father, Bud Shuster--we paid about 14 percent. Every time you went to the pump, with the increase in the gas tax in 1993, 14 percent of your bill went to invest in the Nation's infrastructure. Yet today, some 22 years later, 7 percent goes to the infrastructure. Population has grown, road miles have increased, and the Eisenhower infrastructure has aged. Infrastructure doesn't just age a little bit each year.…”