Lincoln Chafee: “this is an amendment, as I said, that I sent to the desk last Friday. It would require the Secretary of Transportation…”

“this is an amendment, as I said, that I sent to the desk last Friday. It would require the Secretary of Transportation to reduce the amounts made available under the so-called ISTEA Act for fiscal year 1998 by the amounts made available under the Surface Transportation Extension Act of 1997, the so-called 6-month extension. Last year, Mr. President, as you recall, in the latter part of the calendar year, around October, the Senate passed a 6-month extension of the ISTEA legislation which allowed States to use their unobligated balances to fund eligible transportation projects. It also allocated an additional $5.5 billion in new money to the States. The Senate agreed to provide that $5.5 billion on the condition that the amounts allocated to the States under the ISTEA II legislation in fiscal year 1998 would be reduced by the amount each State received for the 6-month extension. In other words, under the legislation we are now considering, Mr. President, we provide money for the entire fiscal year of 1998. What this amendment would do is say the amounts we previously gave the States in October for this fiscal year will be deducted from the total amount that we provide for the entire fiscal year for them. By the way, Mr. President, the amounts would be allocated to each of the categories for which they had received that amount previously.”