Senator Brown asked and was granted unanimous consent to make a statement and moved that the statement be printed in the Journal.
The motion prevailed.
Senator Brown’s statement is as follows:
I would ask members to adopt the concurrent resolution that urges President Obama to grant Michigan a waiver from the federal matching requirements for federal-aid highway projects. Michigan has been a donor state for transportation dollars since the mid-1950s. Michigan receives only 92 percent of the share of the federal tax revenue that we generate. This should be changed, especially at a time when Michigan has many transportation needs as evidenced by the Transportation Funding Task Force that suggested that some $3 billion is needed for transportation projects.
Michigan would benefit from a waiver from the federal matching requirement, much like what was granted to every state under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Representative Candice Miller recently introduced H.R. 3102 that would waive for two years the federal match requirement for transportation. This resolution calls on the President to support Representative Miller’s bill to help Michigan during these challenging times.