Elaine Chao Wins Senate Confirmation 93-6

However, as deputy secretary in the department during President George H.W. Bush’s administration, she served among Republican leadership that favored a robust ground infrastructure policy—an approach that seems to have returned a quarter-century later with the incoming Trump presidency. Bush pledged during his 1991 State of the Union address to send Congress “a blueprint for a new national highway system [and] a critical investment in our transportation infrastructure.” His team, led by department chief and Chao’s superior Sam Skinner, followed through with a request to boost investment in highways and bridges by 40 percent over a five-year period. Chao called the transportation blueprint “the first growth budget in seven years.” By the end of the year, Congress and Bush had enacted the wonkily titled Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (Ice Tea), which prioritized key national roads to receive federal resources and tried to provide state and local governments so-called “flexibility” in their own transportation planning. Some right-leaning analysis criticized the plan as a classic Washington hog roast, incentivizing wasteful spending on pork-barrel projects. But the president was bullish on the future of infrastructure his legislation would shape. “We pursued this law because it moves us closer to our three top domestic priorities: jobs, jobs, and jobs,” he said. “Our national transportation policy begins with a big dose of common sense. It acknowledges that you don’t get anywhere in a traffic jam, and a worker can’t do much for the economy or the family or for the community by sitting on a highway listening to the radio. A vital piece of equipment trapped on a truck trapped in traffic won’t do much good for the factory that needs it.” Bush added “you have to move to improve.”