James Moran: “First of all I wanted to reiterate what the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) said with regard to the transit…”

“First of all I wanted to reiterate what the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) said with regard to the transit benefit. When we offered this benefit to executive branch employees, Mr. Tim Aiken on my staff has been working on it very closely, we saw an immediate increase of more than 70,000 riders of transit in the executive branch taking advantage of this. It has continued to increase dramatically and steadily every month. This works. Providing the $65 transit benefit to the legislative branch employees, we trust, will have the same effect of getting people out of their single-occupant vehicles into public transit. That helps all of us, both those people who drive to work as well as, of course, helping the financing of our Metro system. It also is going to help in achieving our pollution attainment standards which are a major problem right now for the Washington metro area. This is a good idea. It is eventually going to go up to $100. I am underscoring it because I want all of the people that work for the legislative branch to be aware that this $65 transit benefit will now be available to them. It is tax-free; there is no reason not to take advantage of it if you can possibly use public transit. And so we very much encourage people in the Legislative Branch to take advantage of this benefit.”