James Oberstar: “I rise in support of the Petri-Olver amendment. We are here today to discuss one of the cornerstones of ISTEA and TEA-21…”

“I rise in support of the Petri-Olver amendment. We are here today to discuss one of the cornerstones of ISTEA and TEA-21 of our current transportation program, a cornerstone that our current Secretary of Transportation not only supports, the administration supports it, the bill to extend the life of TEA-21, but our current Secretary of Transportation was chair of the Surface Transportation Subcommittee in 1991 when we fashioned the enhancements provisions of ISTEA. And what we did in 1991 was landmark legislation. We had come to the end of the interstate era, and now the debate focused on the future of transportation in America. What would be the face of transportation in the post-interstate era? How would we best invest our dollars? We assessed the quality of transportation and the quality of life in America in a long series of hearings, some of which I conducted as Chair of the Oversight Investigations Committee, as Chairman Mineta did in the surface subcommittee, as the gentleman from Wisconsin participated in, now the Chair of that subcommittee. And what we found was that Americans wanted more out of their transportation experience than simply getting from point A to point B.”