Transportation
Yesterday, Republicans unveiled a more-of-the-same budget for fiscal year 2013 that ends the Medicare guarantee while protecting tax cuts for the wealthy, and puts our economic recovery at risk. The Republican budget makes the wrong choices and places the burden of deficit reduction onto seniors, the middle class, working families, and the most vulnerable by refusing to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute. Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan called on the American people to make a choice between two futuresfor our nation. Here’s a look at our future under the Republican budget – and the future Democrats envision instead.
"After weeks of watching House Republicans attempt unsuccessfully to bring a highway bill to the Floor, today the Senate passed bipartisan legislation in the long tradition of working together on investing in our transportation infrastructure...
Just a quick note for Speaker Boehner: When it comes to your behemoth of a highway bill, the problem is your policies, not the process. Republicans are scrambling to split the bill into parts to make it more palatable to Republicans already skeptical of the measure, but that won’t change the fact that the bill destroys 550,000 jobs, bankrupts the highway trust fund by 2016 and leaves our roads and bridges woefully underfunded.
With Speaker Boehner and Reps. Mica and Hastings set to discuss a long-term surface transportation bill at a press conference this morning, we here in the Democratic Whip Press Shop wanted to offer up a few suggested questions to pose for the lawmakers:
1.) After 11 months in the majority, why have Republicans still not come up with a comprehensive jobs plan?
I am pleased that Republicans have agreed to work with us to fund our nation’s critical highways, mass transit, and aviation systems and not place nearly one million jobs at needless risk. However, legislation extending the FAA and Highway bills is in no way a substitute for responsible long-term authorizations of both these measures. Democrats have long advocated for improving our infrastructure in order to help America to compete with the world and create jobs here at home. Investing in infrastructure is a key component of our Make It In America plan.
I welcome the President’s speech before a Joint Session of Congress next week to discuss the critical issues of putting more Americans back to work and getting our fiscal house in order. While Republicans have yet to put forth a comprehensive jobs plan, I look forward to hearing President Obama’s ideas and to working with him to implement the Democrats’ Make It In America plan to revitalize our economy and get more Americans back to work.
Today the House will consider a short term continuing resolution to fund the government for the next three weeks. Democrats continue to call on Republicans to cut and compromise on a measure that funds the government for the full year so that we prevent a shutdown and stop funding the government in week-by-week increments, which is inefficient and disruptive to the private and public sector.
I want to thank Chairman Rockefeller and Ranking Member Hutchison for giving me the opportunity to speak on one of our nation’s defining challenges: strengthening and creating jobs for America’s middle class. That same goal is behind the Democrats’ Make It In America agenda. Make It In America is about creating an environment in which American businesses can thrive, innovate, and create jobs here—and it is about ensuring we have a workforce that can fill the well-paying jobs of the future. I believe that when more products are made in America, more families will be able to Make It In America.
When Republicans took the House majority, they pledged to create jobs and immediately start cutting the deficit. But they still haven’t put forward a real agenda to create jobs or to address the deficit in a serious way. A look at the past two months shows Republicans have failed to address Americans’ top priorities:
We need to cut spending but make critical investments that allow our nation to out-innovate and out-build our competitors throughout the world, and Republicans fail that test.