Congressman Peter DeFazio was first elected to the U.S. Congress in 1986 and is now the longest serving House member in Oregon’s history. As the dean of the Oregon House delegation, he has developed a reputation as an independent, passionate and effective lawmaker.
In 2014, DeFazio was elected to the powerful position of Ranking Member on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Coast Guard, highways and transit, water resources, railroads, aviation, and economic development.
DeFazio has served as a member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee since he first entered Congress in 1987. During his time on the Committee, he has served as Chairman or Ranking Member of four of the six subcommittees: Aviation, Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation, Highways and Transit, and Water Resources and Environment.
Funding for infrastructure: what’s really happening
The president seems to be saying, “I want real money, I want to do real things.” His staff is saying, “We want ideology written by right wing think tanks. We want a privatized toll, everything in America.” Of course, that doesn’t even work out because most of it isn’t profitably tollable. It’s a fake plan…I see very little prospect at this point unless the president comes out very strongly and repeatedly and with some juice behind it, for a major increase in the user fee or a substantial increase in user fee and bonding, or even my idea of indexation and bonding with a minimal impact at the pump. But, unless he does that the whole thing is dead on arrival, period.
Ideology beating out real investment
DJ Gribbin, and others gathered at the White House, want to devolve the burden onto the local governments and the states, pretend they did something, and that’s it. It’s all ideology, and part of Paul Ryan is ideology. All the people are fighting against real investment. They’re doing it from the ideology, including the hypocrisy of Grover Norquist who blessed the five cent increase in the inland diesel tax and called it a user fee. But, if we want to increase the diesel or gas tax on trucks and cars, “No, that’s a tax, you can’t do that.” What a bunch of shit.
Republicans still afraid of user fees
Especially Republicans can urge President Trump to take a strong position and can assail the Republican leadership as losers because they want to just watch the country fall apart and are scared of their own shadow and don’t have the guts to talk about a user fee increase that has been done in 25 states with nobody losing an election and nobody being recalled. In fact, the only people who have lost an election recently in a state that’s raised user fees, are two state senators in New Jersey who voted against the increase in the gas tax. Now, maybe there’s some other reason they lost, but they’re the only two people. I’m surrounded by gutless wanderers or ideologues and that’s it, end of story. Not much more to talk about. I got to go vote.
Download full transcript (PDF): Congressman Peter DeFazio on The Infra Blog
Tags: Infrastructure Bill, Paul Ryan, Peter DeFazio, President Trump, Representative DeFazio
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