Ron Kind: “I thank my friend from Michigan for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this place is riddled with ironies from week to…”

“I thank my friend from Michigan for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this place is riddled with ironies from week to week, and this week is no different. Yesterday, the Ways and Means Committee was working on a markup of legislation for another short-term extension of the highway trust fund--the transportation and infrastructure investment we desperately need in this country. We were scratching and clawing to try to find an additional $10 billion over the next 10 months to try to keep some of these projects moving forward; and here, today, we have another permanent change to the Tax Code at a cost of $287 billion over the next 10 years and not a nickel of it paid for--no offset, no effort to pay for this at all; yet our roads are deteriorating, and our bridges are falling down. We are literally becoming a Third World nation when it comes to our infrastructure system, and I am afraid that is becoming an insult to Third World countries today. We are turning into a Fourth World nation when it comes to our infrastructure. Instead of having this fruitless debate on the floor yet again, knowing that this legislation won't be moving forward, we ought to be having a hearing in the Ways and Means Committee to develop consensus on a 6-year transportation bill that every State desperately needs in our country, but we are not doing that. In fact, the easiest thing to do during an election year, apparently, is to support tax cuts without paying for them.…”