Mr. Speaker:
I rise to strike the last word. As the Ranking Member of the Transportation Subcommittee on Rail, I find this funding cut, which would block “all of the remaining, unobligated high speed rail funding originally approved by the economic stimulus bill,” entirely unacceptable, and detrimental, not only to our nation’s transportation future, but to our economy.
Now, I come from Florida, the state where we have a governor who does not see the value in High Speed Rail or in transportation and infrastructure investment either. Governor Scott in fact, sent $2.3 billion in high speed rail funds back to the federal government to be distributed to other states. For Florida, a state with nearly 11% unemployment, he not only neglected to bring the state into the modern age by improving our transportation system, but by not accepting this funding, he also sent tens of thousands of jobs out of Florida, which will now benefit other states.
I would like to stress to Governor Scott and to those who support this provision that for every $1 billion in transportation and infrastructure funding, approximately 34,000 jobs are created! And these are good paying jobs that will be kept here domestically, the kind that cannot be shipped overseas.
As a nation, I strongly believe that the United States would benefit tremendously from a high speed rail system. In fact, if our country would fund just the first few high speed rail lines and get them up and running, I am certain that the benefits of high speed and commuter rail investment would soon become evident both to the American people and to everyone here in Washington. These initial lines would then serve as a successful model and allow us to keep up with our competitors in Europe – who already have outstanding systems: the AVE in Spain, the TGV in France, and the Trans rapid Maglev system in Germany.
Without a doubt, a robust, high-speed rail system would also go a long way toward solving many of our nation’s economic, energy, environmental, and transportation problems. Congestion is crippling our major cities and small towns, and our infrastructure is aging at an alarming rate. In fact, it is estimated that traffic congestion costs our nation tens of billions of dollars, including over 4 billion hours of delays and just under 3 billion gallons of wasted fuel in our country’s metropolitan areas! Solving the problem of congestion will take more than just building new roads, and high-speed rail is a key part of the solution. We need to think outside the box, and we have to find broader solutions to address our transportation problems. That is why we must develop high-speed rail here in the United States and build on our intercity passenger rail systems.
The United States was the first nation to invent a passenger and freight rail system and now our passenger system is the caboose and they don’t even make cabooses anymore! I urge my colleagues to reject this bill, and this provision in particular - and send it back to the drawing board!
I would also like to add something about our overall transportation funding program. Our nation needs and deserves a well funded multi modal transportation system. The Republican proposal that was introduced last week does anything but that. In fact, this proposal has the potential to bleed our nation of approximately half a million jobs (including over 20,000 in my state of Florida), by imposing significant cuts to our transportation programs.
Certainly, at a time when our nation’s unemployment rate remains above 9 percent, an adequately funded six year surface transportation reauthorization bill is crucial. What our country needs is a Surface Transportation bill that strengthens our infrastructure, provides quality jobs, and serves as a tool to put America back on a path toward long-term economic growth, not one that drags us in the wrong direction by drastically underfunding our system. The Republican proposal would only fund our nation’s transportation and infrastructure system at a level of between $215 billion and $230 billion, far less than a $286 billion bill approved in 2005 that many highway proponents said even at that time was deeply inadequate.
Indeed, our nation’s long term prosperity requires that we invest in our infrastructure. In the not so distant past, our transportation system used to be the best in the world, but investments have not kept up with the needs, and the U.S. continues to fall behind other nations. China, for example, currently spends nearly 9% of its GDP on infrastructure, while we are spending a meager 2%. Clearly, this lack of investment has led to a crumbling of our infrastructure system as a whole, leading the American Society of Civil Engineers, in their 2009 "Report Card for America's Infrastructure" to give the United States a grade of D!!
This situation is entirely unacceptable – and is something we need to begin to change! We need to properly fund our transportation and infrastructure system, and this bill’s provision to cut high speed rail funding is NOT the way to accomplish this!