Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, released the statement below following the President's signing of the transportation reauthorization bill into law. Senator Boxer served as the chair of the House-Senate, bipartisan conference on the transportation legislation. The bill, which passed both the Senate and House of Representatives on June 29, with overwhelming bipartisan support, keeps funding at current levels through 2014.

Senator Boxer said, "On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the first highway bill into law. Today, over half a century later, the biggest jobs bill of the 112th Congress - a measure that will preserve and improve America's critical interstate transportation system - became law. My spirit soars knowing that with a stroke of the President's pen, nearly 200,000 Californian jobs will be saved, 100,000 created and nearly three million American jobs will be saved and created nationwide. Not only will this law provide a boost to the economy and the construction industry, but it will also invest in America's crumbling roads and bridges."

Senator Boxer and Ranking Member, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) sponsored the transportation bill, Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century (MAP-21), which passed through the Senate in March and then went to conference. Click here for a summary of the reforms in the transportation bill conference report.

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