Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I do understand the difficulty of dealing with these formulas, and I am sure the chairman of the committee and the…”

“I do understand the difficulty of dealing with these formulas, and I am sure the chairman of the committee and the ranking member tried in every way to please as many people as they possibly could. It just seems wrong to create a new level of super donor State. Yes, we have increased to 42 percent instead of the average 36 percent, but that is because our people are putting more in the highway fund because we are buying more gasoline. Therefore, of course, our rate of increase would go up. We are still in the same position of sending a dollar to Washington and getting 90.5 cents back until year 6. It is just hard to see that a donee State has more infrastructure burden than a State like Texas which not only has the most highway miles but has 80 percent of the traffic from NAFTA. I would love to take the chairman of the committee to I-35 where it is a parking lot from Austin to Dallas. It takes more time to drive from Austin to Dallas than it does to fly from Austin to Washington. It is just ridiculous. It is a parking lot, and that is because it comes from Mexico through Texas and we do not have the capability to expand at the rate the traffic is expanding on that NAFTA corridor. As I said in my statement, the chairman did create a real border corridor fund that will be helpful, but it still does not nearly make up for the deficit we are sending in this new super donor State capacity to Washington.”