Chuck Grassley: “today is our final step to positively reaffirm our commitment to a strong and dedicated highway program, the safety and…”

“today is our final step to positively reaffirm our commitment to a strong and dedicated highway program, the safety and soundness of its infrastructure, and the security of the Nation's transportation network. But in the process of pursuing and completing those goals, conferees had to make many decisions. As chairman of the Finance Committee, at the outset, I committed to several fundamental principles during this conference. First, that the bill be paid for. Whatever we added to the trust fund should not increase the deficit. If you look at the revenue table, prepared by Joint Tax, you will see that the new trust fund money raised by fuel fraud enforcement is raised in a deficit-neutral manner. The tax-writing committees were fiscally responsible in our efforts to grow the trust fund. Second, highway taxes pay for highways. These are taxes that will be collected regardless of whether or not we have a highway bill. They can't be used for anything else. The tax provisions of the highway bill aggressively focus on collecting all of the taxes due and owed to the highway trust fund. So we increase the size of the trust fund. Primarily, we do it by being tough on fraud. Some of this fraud is just plain old criminal activity--but we have reason to believe that billions of our highway tax dollars are being stolen for a more sinister purpose, that being the potential funding of terrorism.…”