Barbara Boxer

Reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I would like to get 20 minutes to speak following Senator Coburn.

I am pleased that Congressman Ken Calvert has sponsored this legislation in the House of Representatives, where it passed in the last Congress by a vote of 410-0.

This bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, MAP-21, will maintain current funding levels, protect existing jobs, help spur economic recovery.

We will see a loss of 620,000 jobs between highway and transit, 500,000 of those on the highway side.

We can't allow those ideas, whether it is an infrastructure bank or anything else, to replace the basic funding mechanism.

I hope that we won't be the only ones listening to ourselves.

I must say, Senator Baucus and Senator Vitter, who are the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, were extraordinarily helpful and we had many, many meetings for more than a year now.

We can't keep building bridges in Baghdad and Kandahar and not Baltimore and Kansas City.

If we don't prioritize smart transportation investments today, we will fall behind tomorrow.

I so appreciate your asking that question.

So we now have to keep up the momentum.

They actually do mention only one spending priority, and that is the Highway Trust Fund.

They have to feel that this is a priority.

Put simply, we cannot afford any cuts to infrastructure spending, and at the very least we must maintain current levels.

We need a national, strategic transportation policy that establishes clear, measurable goals for the future.

And I honestly believe, in this effort, and I cannot thank the staff enough, Republican staff, Democratic staff, this has been a team effort.

I think this is a day that we will remember for a long time.

We have to mark up this bill before we leave this summer. We have to get this bill to the Senate floor and pass it.

This is not going to be easy. But it is necessary.

This is a question of priorities.

If we don't act, this is the fact, we will see a cut of one-third, actually 36 percent.

We really do believe this is a basic function of the national government, to address our infrastructure needs.

If you can't move people and you can't move goods, you are just not going to grow.

I want to thank so much my friend and colleague, Senator Jim Inhofe, for ensuring that our differences on many other issues never got in the way of our working toward a bipartisan Transportation Bill.

I just want to say to each and every one of you, this job that I have, that Senator Inhofe has, the rest of us, we would be nowhere without the people.