Representative Don Young

REP. DON YOUNG: Thank you for that great introduction, but wasn't Chicago, it was Chico.

JOE GRIFFITH: Well, I guess I.....

REP. YOUNG: It was a small college, state college, I don't know what this thing is doing. There you go. And had 2,200 students and today it has 20,000 students, but I'm the only one that became a Congressman, so I want to say it's a pretty good school.

Thanks for letting me speak with you today. And most of you have heard me speak before. I do this in a very informal fashion. I don't have any notes, don't have anything written down. I'm not for sure what I'm going to say, but I will say that when I get done hopefully you will have some questions. I like to field questions because then I have a better understanding of what's really on your mind other than what I have to speak to you about.

First, I'd like to again, acknowledge my Governors, Governor Hickel who served with me as Governor when I was down in the State legislative body. And that's when we could do things and I do them very quickly. We didn't have a staff. There was no staff. We used to meet with the Governor and what I call the leaders and we'd decide what we're going to do, shake hands and that was the deal we cut. And that's the way government should be, but it's not that way today, I can guarantee you. Of course, Governor Sheffield has become a very close ally of mine, not only in the railroad when he operated the railroad, but now the port. And I said please don't take another job after the port because I don't have enough money to take care of everything.

With your help this is my 31st year, I have been able to do what many Congressmen have not been able to do, the chair of two major committees in the United States Congress. I'm one of the few people that have been hung twice, I hope I don't get hung again, but I got hung twice. That means my picture now is in two committee rooms. And that's kind of egotistical but I enjoy every moment of it. One is quite large because my wife made sure, you only go through life once you're going to be the biggest one in the transportation room, and it really is. If you have not seen it, it's an outstanding portrait. It has the Alaska Railroad in it, it has Alaska Airlines in it, it has a cruise ship in it, it has fishing boats in it. It has just about every form of transportation in that picture somewhere. And I take great pride in that because that's what the Transportation Committee does.

The Infrastructure Committee has charge of everything that man uses as far as moving goods and people. It's a huge responsibility and one which I enjoy. The committee has 75 people on it. It's the largest committee in the house. It is very bipartisan in the sense everybody has a project they want. And I have the pencil or the pen and I can erase something very quickly if things don't go the way I'd like to have it. I enjoy this immensely by the way, if you (indiscernible) you can understand that.

But we have a very important challenge this session for this bill because we're now re-authorizing Air 21, which is moved out of the committee which will be about $4 1/2 billion of additional funds for airport improvements and for navigational aides in airports so we can get better use of our airports. It's a good bill.

We also have Right (ph) 21. Right 21 is a railroad bill. It's the largest railroad bill that I believe Congress has acted on in the last 50 years because I believe very strongly that rail plays a major role in moving product. In fact, it is the one way we can relieve a lot of congestion on our roads, but overall the rails have not been able to keep up. And so this bill will allow the railroads to advance and to improve especially the short rails into the major feeder lines thus taking trucks off the major rails. That bill should be moving sometime this coming month.

And, of course, then we have the big one. We have the TEALU. It's not T-21 anymore. It's the Transportation Equity Act Logistics Utilization. If you can't figure out why I named it Lu you'd better reconsider your occupation. That's because my wife was going to get that name and everybody said oh, he's making fun of the issue and I'm not. I'm very serious about logistics utilization.

Now what are we going to do in that bill and how are we going to do it? The problem we have is we have an administration right now that hasn't come to grips with the importance of transportation. They came down with their budget with less money than we're spending today on transportation and we're way behind right now. We are spending right now every day or every year about $70 billion sitting still. Sitting still. Just sitting still $70 billion. That is is a tax of about $1,200 per car per year per owner because you're sitting still. It's one and a half weeks of lost effort on productivity and more than that it's a social disease. It's a frustrating disease because you're locked in traffic. I see it here in Anchorage. I was amazed last night, it looked like Los Angeles.

It is not the right way to live and it creates tremendous pressure upon the families. I'll give you an example. Let's say you're going to go to work and you have to leave an hour and a half to get to work and, unfortunately, there is an accident and you're stuck in traffic, so you're frustrated because people are waving at you with one finger hand waves and that they're frustrated because they're honking the horn and by the time you get to work you're tremendously upset, you're 10 minutes late, the boss bawls you out and your productivity doesn't start until about 11:00. And then it's lunch time. Your food doesn't digest well and you go back to work and about 3:00 o'clock you start thinking about the drive home.

You get stuck in traffic again. You miss your son's basketball game, you're late for summer. Your wife doesn't talk to you. You had a hell of a good day. And that's going on all around this nation. I've been to 50 cities in the last two years and there isn't a city in this nation that doesn't have that problem. And that is reality. And the effect upon the economy is devastating.

We have to address that issue. And I'm suggesting we can do it through rail, we can do it through water, and it can do it improvement of our highways and we can do it in mass transit. To do that though, I have to have a larger user fee. And I made a suggestion to the White House and to my leaders in December that we had six ways to do it including a user fee. And one of the major components of that is indexes because we made one mistake in 1993 when we passed this first Transportation bill. We did not index it, so our purchasing power today instead of 18.2 cents per gallon is about 12 cents of purchasing power. So we get further behind every day we don't do something.

And by the way, the public supports me in this effort as long as they know that money is going for exclusive transportation solving the problem. They don't want it to go to the general budget. They do not want it to go someplace else. They want it, in fact, to be earmarked for, and that's what our bill does, every cent that comes in to that fund is spent on transportation.

I'm making progress. There's beginning a weakness (ph) , I think I will get a user fee. I do think I'll get an indexing. We will get the return on the ethanol money. It will be in the fund and I'm going to try and seek $375 billion over a six year period of time and that will help solve some of our problems.

Now there's some people that say why are we addressing mass transit because you're paying for it, the automobile user and the trucker. Because, again, the theme and the need is to remove the congestion. Remove the congestion because that is the evil that's facing this country today. If we're going to compete globally we have to improve the transportation system.

And I mention one fact in my bill, there will be a provision for use of (indiscernible). I think we must use it. I had the privilege just last week or yeah, two weeks ago to go to Newark, New Jersey to christen a ship built in Alaska in Sitka. A 144 passenger ferry. A guy in New York has bought 12 of those, ships them around through the canal, up to New York and New Jersey and they use it. He moved 2.5 million people last year on those boats. And he's going to improve that fleet and probably move about 4.2 million people this year 'cause there's a reason. They can go from Newark to Manhattan in about three and a half minutes. If they go through the Tunnel, the Lincoln Tunnel and the bridge it takes about two hours. That's the frustration so people are beginning -- and they're paying big bucks. $12 one way. But it's better than sitting in traffic. So I'm going to promote utilization of higher speed ferries across this nation especially in our bay area cities such as Los Angeles and Seattle which has the slower ferries. And of course, it possibly could even work here in Alaska in some of our areas and I know the State's considered it.

Ironically, the State is building a high speed ferry in New York. That doesn't quite make sense to me, but -- especially when Mr. Allen builds a beautiful ship in Sitka, Alaska. And also employs 90 people year round. It's the only real blue collar jobs left in Sitka, Alaska is one of the standards of Sitka.

Now, with rail, mass transit which we have to have to move people, with railroads, water and air I believe I can start this program for this nation to relieve the congestion and leave the legacies for future generations. For the State of Alaska I'm committed to three major projects. I'm committed to the Ketchikan bridge, I'm committed to the Knik Crossing and I'm committed to a highway being built in Southeast Alaska. We have not built a road since 1972, a new road. We've improved and we've widened. We've got some terrible pot holes in the state. That's not my fault. But we need to build more transportation corridors so people cannot be so crowded and congested together. Those are my main projects for this State of Alaska and I believe I can achieve that with the partnership, with the Governor, and with the State legislative body.

Again, I want to stress if we ignore the transportation problem in the state of Alaska, if we ignore the transportation in this nation we've ignored the future. People talk about social security. They talk about prescription drugs. They talk about education. They talk about all these things that feel good, but in reality none of those things can exist if you don't have a proper transportation system in place because it is the system that drives the economic will of this great nation of ours.

How did we get where we are so far behind? Well, there's two reasons. One is we never thought we'd have this many people and nobody was really reading the projections. Two is we had a group of people that said no, we don't need any more roads. We don't need any more overpasses. We don't need any more cloverleafs. We don't need to do this. There isn't the need so they stopped doing it. And they stopped raising the money and they started spending the money on everything other than transportation.

We changed that in 1996. We put the fire walls up. We have collected the money and we have done a much better job, but we have to recognize that we have to continue it and increase those efforts if we are to leave the legacy that I hope to leave. I can't do this by myself. It's going to take a great deal of effort across this nation. And I've generated that within this state. You've got to start talking to your legislative body and quit worrying about a street. Start talking about roads. Start talking about bypasses. Start talking about the Knik Crossing. This is a state project. And I'll tell you I'm proud Fairbanks supports it. Southeast has supported it. We have support across the state for the Knik Crossing which to me is crucially important because that opens the interior, it gets people out of this area, it gets them off the hill. It gives a chance to the state to develop power. And that's my legacy and I hope to be able to leave it behind and I'm going to do everything within my power with your help to achieve those goals.

I'm excited about this job. The Lord willing when I finally finish it three years from now all those little seedlings will be planted and we'll see the results in the future before the good Lord decides to take me. I'm not retiring, I can tell you that right now so don't anybody get any ideas.

With those words of short wisdom, it was very short, I thank you for your attention and I'll gladly answer any questions. It doesn't even have to be about transportation. I'm excited about being here today. And by the way I know you usually meet in the mornings, I'm glad to talk to you at noon. I'm not too bright in the morning, maybe not at noon either, but the one most thing I get up for in the morning is to go hunting. Now that I will do, so if you want to do it noontimes I appreciate it a great deal. Thank you very much.