Lawmaker from Washington's 2nd District urges timely passage of bipartisan surface transportation bill

A lawmaker from Washington's 2nd Congressional District urged colleagues to pass the Build America 250 Act promptly, saying timely action would provide "certainty, industry stability and jobs." The speaker framed the bill as a continuation of Congress's long history of building and maintaining the nation's transportation network.

The lawmaker opened by saying, "Every day is infrastructure day in Washington State's 2nd Congressional District," and traced federal transportation efforts from early post roads to the Cumberland Road (now I-70) to underline the federal role in supporting travel and commerce. They said Congress has been "very aggressive about identifying the transportation infrastructure needs of this country and, taking action in Congress, to support those needs."

The speaker pointed to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (commonly called the BIL) as precedent, saying the last surface bill supported "more than 116,000 projects, across the country in every congressional district," and added that the BIL "also created 700,000 new jobs in construction and engineering and transit and trucking and rail." The lawmaker said those investments translate into "stronger, newer infrastructure, and safer, more efficient travel options in the communities we represent."

Describing the Build America 250 Act as "a product of months of negotiations and thousands of policy ideas from constituents, stakeholders, and members," the lawmaker acknowledged the version under consideration did not include everything they or the subcommittee ranking member, Norton, sought. Still, they said the markup preserves key priorities: maintaining current funding levels for surface transportation modes; advancing accountability measures and highway investments; enacting rail safety reforms; and protecting transportation jobs and worker safety gains. "I'm pleased with the work we did to support these goals," the lawmaker said.

The speaker also noted a bipartisan partnership with Chair Graves, saying the two have served in Congress together for more than two decades and expressing satisfaction that they had managed to "deliver a bipartisan surface transportation bill." The remarks closed with the lawmaker yielding back.

The record in the transcript is limited to this opening statement: there is no vote or formal tally recorded in these segments, and the text reflects statements made on the House floor or in a committee-facing context rather than final enactment. Next procedural steps (committee votes, amendments, or floor action) were not specified in the provided segments and are therefore not reported here.