On the recordNovember 1, 2011
this amendment is not about taking funds from beautification and putting them into bridges. As a matter of fact, what this amendment does is it prohibits any bridge that is a historic bridge from being fixed, and there are thousands of those bridges all over this great Nation, including the Brooklyn Bridge. Second, it would tell our States they can't use these TIGR funds for things they want. I know my colleague thinks it is beautification to have a pedestrian or a bicycle path built. The fact is, 13 percent of traffic fatalities nationwide occur because we don't have these safety improvements. There were 47,000 pedestrians killed between 2000 and 2009. That is the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every month. So this isn't about taking money for beautification. Senator Inhofe and I have worked very closely to make sure we are not frivolous in what we fund. Please vote this down. We have voted down a similar amendment before. The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Kentucky has 3 seconds.
