Young Oak Kim: “This amendment is to save $90 million or stop funding, no matter of $90 million on highway projects. That is why I am…”

“This amendment is to save $90 million or stop funding, no matter of $90 million on highway projects. That is why I am rising in opposition to this amendment. If we stop funding now, the highway project will just stop, unfinished. That is not the way it should be. If we try to pick up this highway program later, it is going cost twice as much, sometimes three times as much. This is not a good practice, stopping the highway program almost in the middle of completion. As my colleagues know, 70 percent of the total 3,025 miles of highway has been completed. We have only 22 percent to go. This is not the time to stop it. Second, the mentioning of this duplicate roadway funding; this is not true. ISTEA funding was merely proposed by Mr. Clinton, and that funding has not been approved by this Congress yet. Even if approved, we are not talking about seeing overlapping funding. We are talking about additional funding to accelerate those highway programs so we can finish earlier rather than dragging on.”