Jeff Bingaman: “first, I am disappointed that the Senator from Colorado has chosen to propose striking this provision entirely. The…”

“first, I am disappointed that the Senator from Colorado has chosen to propose striking this provision entirely. The provision is clearly written in a way that provides absolute maximum flexibility to States to participate or not participate. The Senator starts out with the argument that we do not know how much this will cost. That is right because this is strictly an authorization. It will cost whatever we decide to appropriate for this program. Congress will still have to make a judgment as to whether to appropriate anything for this program. This is a grant program to States that want to participate. We will either put some money in to fund this grant program or we will not, and we will specify each year the amount of funds we think should be made available to the Department of Transportation to fund this program. It is clear it is a purely voluntary program on the part of States. There are some States that have vehicle scrappage programs in place today. There may be other States that would want to consider that. The purpose of the provision is obvious. The purpose of the provision is to try to assist with getting extremely fuel-inefficient vehicles, high-emission vehicles off the road where there is a desire on the part of the owner of the vehicle to either improve the efficiency of that vehicle or to trade that vehicle in and get something else. That is the clear intent of these programs that some States have adopted.”