Dick Durbin: “May 31--today is May 12. On May 31, the Federal highway trust fund authorization expires. What it means is at that point…”

“May 31--today is May 12. On May 31, the Federal highway trust fund authorization expires. What it means is at that point in time, the Federal Government will stop sending Federal dollars back to our States to build highways and bridges and support buses and mass transit--May 31. What are we going to do about it? We have 19 days to do something about it. Sadly, we know what we are going to do about it. The Republicans who control the House and the Senate have failed to come up with any means of extending the highway trust fund. What they are going to do probably is ask us for a short-term extension--1 month, 2 months. The reason we think this will happen is that in the past 6 years, there have been 32 extensions of the highway trust fund. We used to pass highway trust fund bills to last 6 years, for obvious reasons. You cannot build highways a month at a time. You have to know you have money that is going to be there for years to build a highway, to repair a bridge, to make certain you have new mass transit modernization. But the Republicans have been unable to reauthorize the highway trust fund for any period of time. They want to extend it 30 days at a time, 60 days at a time. There are some realities that we need to accept. We cannot patch our way to prosperity in America. You cannot fill enough potholes to build a highway.…”