James Oberstar: “Mr. Speaker, the appropriators come to the floor fulminating that we have made aviation the highest priority. "Before…”

“Mr. Speaker, the appropriators come to the floor fulminating that we have made aviation the highest priority. "Before all others," they said. Well, not before all other issues that have a trust fund. Housing does not have a trust fund. If it did, we would be advocating the same thing. My good colleague from Minnesota said he would like to put other issues in the care of our committee. Give them to us. We will deal with them. But it does not have a trust fund, housing. This does have a trust fund, and what we are simply doing is keeping faith with the traveling public, who agreed to be taxed for a specific purpose. All increases come from spending the taxes and interest out of the trust fund. What the Committee on Appropriations would argue here is that they should be allowed to hoard those dollars in the budget, hold the trust fund hostage, in order, as one conferee from the other body said in the course of our debate in the conference, so we could fund Amtrak. They want to fund Amtrak out of the surplus they want to keep in the Aviation Trust Fund. That does not keep faith with the traveling public.”