Contact: Rob Ostrander 202.224.7627 Shana Stribling 202.224.0309
Tuesday, May 25, 2004

WASHINGTON – Calling for quick passage of the highway bill, U.S. Senator Kit Bond today thanked Missouri labor and business groups and elected officials for their help in getting the highway bill moving, after Democrats were forced to abandon their effort to block the bill from moving forward.

"Working together, our Missouri team got this bill moving again," said Bond, Chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittee and a lead conference negotiator. "Now, we need to go to conference as soon as possible. We can no longer let jobs and safety take a back seat to election year politics. Too much is at stake."

Under the $318 billion Senate bill authored by Bond, Missouri would receive about $1.4 billion in new transportation dollars to improve Missouri roads and help create an estimated 69,000 jobs for the state.

"When it looked like the highway bill was about to die, it was Kit Bond's leadership that saved it," said Patty York, St. Charles Mayor. "When a lot of people said it couldn't be done, Kit Bond was determined to make it happen and he delivered. Missouri can count on Kit and it's that same leadership that we will be able to count on to get this bill passed."

After months of stonewalling the transportation bill, Minority Leader Tom Daschle, under intense pressure from Bond and other pro-highway bill forces, last week agreed to let the bill move forward to a House-Senate conference to negotiate a final bill.

"Four times last month Majority Leader Frist and I went to the Senate floor to appoint highway bill conferees and four times Senate Democrats objected," said Bond. "Finally, thanks to continued pressure from the grassroots level my colleagues have realized that people want progress, not politics when it comes to safety and security on our nations roads and bridges. While this is good news, the fact is we have already lost this year's construction season because of obstructionism and we still have much difficult work to do before this bill is signed into law."

On May 14, a broad statewide coalition of Missouri labor groups, business groups, civic leaders, elected officials and construction organizations joined with Bond in sending a letter to Senate leaders urging an end to the partisan politics delaying action on the highway bill.

The groups signing the letter ranged from the Greater Kansas City Building and Construction Trades Council, AFL-CIO to the Mayors of Kansas City, St. Louis and Columbia, to the Missouri Farm Bureau and the St. Louis Regional Business Council.