David Thomas: “I just came back from my home in Wyoming. I heard a great deal of conversation about highways and the highway bill and…”

“I just came back from my home in Wyoming. I heard a great deal of conversation about highways and the highway bill and the fact that we have not yet been able to pass a highway bill, both in the House and the Senate, and get together. The highway bill, of course, under which we have lived for the last 6 years, has expired, and we are doing a month or two extension of time. The fact is, that does not work very well. With some issues I suppose we could continue to do extensions. Building highways and upgrading highways is all done by contracts. The people responsible for highways need to know what their resources are going to be into the future so they can make those long-term decisions for highway construction contracts. We are unable to do that now. The highway bill is one of the issues before us that is time imperative. The Environment and Public Works Committee, of which I am a member, has the primary responsibility for putting out a highway bill. We worked on it for a long time. We brought a bill to the floor, and it was passed by this body. It is a very good bill. It is a larger bill than the one that passed out of the House, and it expends more money than the bill from the White House. The fact is, it is based on the money that is available, that is paid in taxes for highways.”