Earl Blumenauer: “I see what the subcommittee has done here is not an effort to somehow dictate to local governments what they have to do…”

“I see what the subcommittee has done here is not an effort to somehow dictate to local governments what they have to do, but instead, structuring how to get more out of scarce Federal investments. As has been noted on the floor by people on both sides of the aisle, we are approaching a transportation infrastructure funding crisis in this country. There is not enough money remaining in the trust fund to deal with the existing level of programming, let alone what is going to be required as we move it in the next three authorizations. And countries around the world are spending trillions of dollars in China, in the European Union, in Japan, while we're falling behind. I appreciate the big-picture approach that the subcommittee has taken in terms of dealing with location efficiencies, with balanced transportation, with initiatives to green the infrastructure. I am hopeful that the instruction that the subcommittee has given to some of the Federal transportation agencies on how to have maximum impact by weighing factors of economic development and trip reduction to stretch more of those scarce dollars. I applaud funding the $1.4 billion for Amtrak, which hints at efficiencies that we can have in the long run.”