Washington, D.C. – U.S. Rep. Steve Pearce issued this statement today following his vote to disapprove the Conference Report to accompany the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Bill (H.R. 22):
"Our nation's transportation infrastructure is in dire need of repair," stated Pearce. "Unfortunately, the bill voted on today, fails to make the needed changes to provide long term funding, stability, and certainty to our infrastructure nationwide. As I said when the House first voted on this bill in November, 90 percent of the money in the Highway Trust Fund comes from the gas tax, yet more and more is being spent not on roads and transportation infrastructure, but rather on bike paths, landscaping, and community planning - all of which do not contribute to the Fund. Instead of addressing this broken program, Congress has bailed it out again with questionable funding."
"This bill pays for highway spending by selling over 65 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. These sales are going to flood the market with excess product that will negatively impact the New Mexico state budget, jobs within the state, and our state's economy overall. Oil and gas production in New Mexico are critical to the state's budget, providing nearly 40 percent of its overall funding, it would be wrong to support a broken bill that threatens this critical funding.
"In addition, the bill is going to adversely impact midsize banks nationwide, making it more difficult for them to offer loans, which will result in fewer businesses starting, growing, and hiring more employees. While this legislation seems to provide the long term solutions our transportation infrastructure needs, it in fact fails to address the true problems plaguing the system, and uses questionable spending offsets to bail the program out in the short term."