Rob Portman: “thank you. To the chair of the committee, congratulations, Mr. Inhofe, on the progress made so far with regard to the…”

“thank you. To the chair of the committee, congratulations, Mr. Inhofe, on the progress made so far with regard to the highway bill, indicating that we will pass something on Thursday and send it over to the House. It is important we address this issue. It is important we put people back to work. We have crumbling roads and bridges. I hope everybody in this Chamber agrees that we need a highway bill and, specifically, we need one as long-term as possible in order to give people predictability and certainty to be able to plan projects and to be able to deal with what is an increasing problem in our country, which is a lack of funds in infrastructure. I hear it back home in Ohio. What I am hearing is: Give us certainty. Let us know what the plan is. Congress, in doing these short-term extensions, is not creating a plan. If we end up with a short-term extension because the House and Senate can't agree, then I hope we will make a commitment when we do that to say: OK. After whatever that short-term period is--I have heard the rumor of 3 months--that at that point we will come up with a long-term proposal together. I happen to think one way we could find a longer term proposal is to have international tax reform. We should do it anyway. We should do it whether or not the highway trust fund is connected to it.…”