On the recordJuly 15, 2015
I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, in the greatest, most capacitated nation on Earth, there is no excuse for so many crumbling roads and bridges and for the ever- growing traffic gridlock and congestion that we see every day that we try to get to work. There is no reason why hundreds of thousands of men and women in the construction industry today should remain unemployed because this Congress won't do its job of replenishing the highway trust fund. It is crazy. We know that when we repair a road or a bridge, we put an American to work, and we make it easier for all of us to get to work so we can be more efficient. But here we are for the 34th time doing a patch to the highway trust fund, which doesn't help any city or county in America because you don't build a road or build a bridge or retrofit a bridge with 2 months of funding or 5 months of funding. You need 6 years to know how much money you can rely on because that contractor doesn't buy cement or lumber for 2 months or 6 months. They buy for 4 or 5 years because, for them, time is money. We are costing the American people a ton of money by doing these constant patches. Why? Because we are not willing to do what we were elected to do: our job. Instead of just spectating, we should be coming up with the funds to have those roads built and repaired, those bridges built and repaired, to replace those aging buses and trains that stop us from being efficient. Mr.…
