Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to rise in support of legislation, which I think is very important not only to the people back home in Kansas but also to the people of this country. I am here in part to commend the gentleman from Alaska, Chairman Young, and his colleagues on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. But also to commend the gentleman from Illinois, Speaker Hastert, for his continued efforts in trying to fashion a piece of legislation that can succeed here in the halls of Congress.
This legislation matters a lot to us as a nation and matters a lot to the Kansans that I represent. In many ways this is about the creation of jobs at home. We often think about jobs as being something that we see when construction workers are working on highway projects. But I can tell my colleagues, from a Kansas perspective, this bill gives us the ability to get our manufactured goods to market and to get our agriculture commodities sold around the world in a cost-effective, efficient way.
This country must invest in its infrastructure. We talk today about the outsourcing of jobs. One of the components that can help to address this issue, one of the things that can make a difference, is to make sure that manufactured goods and agriculture commodities can be taken to market in a way that allows us to continue to be competitive in world markets.
There are concerns in Congress about the deficit. This is a bill that is funded by the Highway Trust Fund. What we are asking to have occur here is dollars that are paid for by users, by taxpayers into the fund, be utilized for the very reason the fund was created.
There are many things we do in this Congress that add to the deficit, but spending money in a trust fund for purposes of infrastructure is not one of them. As a conservative Member of Congress, if I am going to put resources, dollars, hard-earned, taxpayer funding into spending in our nation's capital, I will tell my colleagues that my constituents are better served by the utilization of those dollars in building infrastructure, as compared to additional bureaucracy. Put the money into projects, construction and infrastructure across our nation.
Finally, I know that there are concerns about the donor and donee issue, that states may contribute more than they receive. My state of Kansas is neutral on this issue. We get about as many dollars back as we pay. And I would urge my colleagues to give the Chairman and others the opportunity to work on this, so that we can address the inequities that may occur if you are a state that is paying more money into the trust fund than you are receiving. 
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