Barbara Boxer: “my State counts on the Federal Government for one-half of its transportation funding, highways, and transit. Rhode…”

“my State counts on the Federal Government for one-half of its transportation funding, highways, and transit. Rhode Island counts on the Federal Government for 100 percent; Alaska, 93 percent; Montana, 87 percent; South Carolina, 79 percent; Hawaii, 79 percent; North Dakota, 78 percent; Wyoming, 73 percent; Connecticut, 71 percent; New Mexico, 70 percent, and it goes down from there, but the vast majority of our States count on the Federal Government for funding. What we have done, as both Senators Reid and McConnell have pointed out, is we just keep patching up the highway trust fund. I could go to a bank and say: I want to buy a House. The banker says: You have great credit. That's the good news. The bad news is you can only get a 5-month mortgage. What would I do in that case? I would sadly walk away. I can't afford to invest in a home if I have only 5 months of a mortgage. It is the same way with the States. The way the House went about it, and the way some of my colleagues on both sides want to handle it, is another 5-month extension, and our States are stopping. On Tuesday, the general contractors told us that in 25 States they have begun to lay off many, many, many construction workers. We all know at the height of the great recession we had millions of unemployed construction workers. It has been tough to get them back to work, and remember the businesses that employ them, it has been tough to get them back to work.…”