Barbara Boxer: “Thank you very much, Mr. President. Highway Bill I come to talk about something different than the pending…”

“Thank you very much, Mr. President. Highway Bill I come to talk about something different than the pending legislation--I have a number of things to say about that, a number of amendments I am supporting, many of them bipartisan. At this point, I want to talk about the crisis we are facing in terms of our highway bill. We now have 51 days until the highway trust fund is empty. For all of us, this is a terrible prospect because a lot of our States rely on the Federal Government for up to 85 to 90 percent of their funding. Some States rely on less. My State relies on about 50 percent, but it is still huge. When this trust fund goes under, we are going to be in a lot of trouble. What we have seen in this particular Senate since our Republican friends took over--and they are my friends--are a number of self- inflicted crises. Lord knows we have enough of them coming our way, we don't have to invent them--but we have seen several. In the first crisis we had, we were headed toward a partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security over an unrelated immigration issue. That was ridiculous. There was a lot of angst and finally it was resolved. The second self-inflicted crisis ended last week, and it was brought about because the Republican leader didn't like the USA FREEDOM Act the House had passed overwhelmingly.…”