Max Baucus: “This country is changing. The country, in 1997, is not what it was in 1987, not what it was in 1980. The fact is that…”

“This country is changing. The country, in 1997, is not what it was in 1987, not what it was in 1980. The fact is that, in 1991, in an ISTEA bill, the highway bill, this Congress essentially did not update data. It just took the 1980 data. That is, lane and miles traveled, vehicle miles traveled. We even used a postal roads component which was enacted maybe at the turn of the century. We used very old data when we wrote the ISTEA bill that we are now currently operating under. It is just unfortunate. At the same time, in the earlier ISTEA bills--not the one before us, but current law and the earlier one--the main effort was to complete construction of the interstate system. That was the main purpose of the program in the first place. The current ISTEA bill--not the one on the floor, but current law--based its formula essentially, as I said, on old data and upon completion of the interstate program, and that is what we did.”