On the recordNovember 9, 2011
I thank the Senator from Texas for the time. This is a critical subject she is dealing with right now, but the thing in common is the problem we are having right now with regulation. I think we are going to be talking about that this afternoon. I only wanted to get one thing in, and that is about something the Chair is fully aware of because he was there all morning. Something very significant happened this morning. In our Environment and Public Works Committee we passed out a highway reauthorization bill. We have not done this since 2005, and this morning we did. This is one where we sat down--one of the few times that Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, can get in a room and hammer out their differences and get things done. I wish the committee would be successful in doing that as we were this morning in getting a highway bill. So we are going to have a highway bill at the current spending level which, if my colleagues remember back in 2005, it was $286.4 billion, and that was for a 5-year bill. That spending level right now would be, to sustain that, somewhere between $40 billion and $42 billion a year for 2 years. This is a 2-year bill, and the 2-year bill cannot pass until we locate an additional $12 billion to make this happen. I think a lot of us don't want to take what would constitute a 34-percent cut in funding for our roads and highways and bridges throughout America and be able to sustain that. This is a life-and-death type of issue.…
