REP. MALONEY URGES HOUSE PASSAGE OF SENATE-APPROVED TRANSPORTATION BILL

– Bipartisan Measure Will Create More Than 2 Million Jobs, Preserve Funding for Vital NY Mass Transit Programs –
Mar 16, 2012 Issues: Transportation
Press Contact: 
Brice Peyre (212) 860-0606

New York, NY – Today, Congresswoman Carolyn B. Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens) called on House Republican leadership to abandon its hyperpartisan transportation bill that would cripple vital urban and suburban transportation projects, and bring to the House floor the bipartisan transportation measure that passed the Senate this week by a 74 to 22 vote.

“This week, Democrats and Republicans in the Senate joined together to pass a transportation bill that will help create more than 2 millions jobs while allowing America to repair its aging infrastructure, fix its roads, bridges, and tunnels, and bolster our economy.  I urge House leadership to abandon its ill-conceived, dead-on-arrival one-house bill, bring the Senate measure to the House floor for an up-or-down vote, and then send it to the White House before vital funding for current transportation projects expires at month’s end,” said Congresswoman Maloney.

“With unemployment still too high and our nation’s languishing infrastructure putting America at a competitive disadvantage in the world economy, this is no time for the House GOP to double down on its tiresome ,‘my way or the highway’, ‘no new jobs’ playbook. The American people need and deserve swift House action on the bipartisan transportation legislation passed overwhelmingly by the Senate,” Representative Maloney said.

“Transportation has long been a bipartisan issue – and I salute the Senate for maintaining that tradition this week.  In contrast, House Republicans have advanced H.R. 3864 – a bill that Transportation Secretary and former longtime Republican House Member Ray LaHood called the worst transportation bill he’d ever seen – which would, among other ill-conceived provisions, strip mass transit programs of the guaranteed funding that currently supported by revenues derived from the federal gasoline tax. The House Republicans’ proposal would instead make mass transit funding entirely dependent on the annual appropriations process. That uncertainty is eliminated in the Senate bill, which preserves the dedicated funding stream for mass transit, including critical funding for the MTA. Transit projects are among the best economic stimulus programs around – indeed, experts estimate that every dollar spent on public infrastructure boosts our economy by an estimated $1.59,” said Maloney.

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