David Price: “We are coming to the end of several days of floor debate on the 2016 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development…”

“We are coming to the end of several days of floor debate on the 2016 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations bill. I want to, again, express my appreciation to Chairman Diaz-Balart, subcommittee members from both sides of the aisle, and our remarkable, dedicated staff for all the hard work that has gone into this bill and for the orderly and civil character of our floor deliberations. I very much wish that all of this work and all of our efforts at cooperation were being more adequately rewarded, but they are not. And that is not the chairman's fault. It is the fault of the majority's profoundly misguided and flawed budget policy, a policy that has left this bill a mere shadow of what it should be and has decimated the investments a great country should be making. Make no mistake, Madam Chair, our roads, our highways are crumbling. One out of every nine bridges in this country is structurally deficient and in need of repair or replacement. Americans spend the equivalent of one work week a year sitting in congestion caused by overcrowded highways. The capital backlog for our transit systems is nearly $78 billion. And make no mistake, our public housing resources don't meet the basic needs of millions of vulnerable and low-income Americans. On any given night, 575,000 of our constituents, including more than 50,000 veterans, are homeless. The maintenance backlog for public housing approaches $25 billion.…”