The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Infrastructure (Executive Session)” mentioning Roy Blunt was published in the Senate section on pages S2102-S2106 on April 21.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Infrastructure
Ms. ERNST. Mr. President, when you hear the word ``infrastructure,'' what comes to mind? For folks across Iowa, it is roads; it is bridges, locks and dams, ports, waterways, and broadband. But according to the Biden administration, infrastructure is now a buzzword that encompasses just about every item on the progressive wish list. As a result, the President's infrastructure proposal takes a very sharp left turn by including everything from elements of the socialist Green New Deal to higher taxes on American workers.
Some of my Democratic colleagues are even urging the President to include a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants in the infrastructure package.
How about we make the wall on our southern border infrastructure?
Probably to no one's surprise, once again, the Senate majority leader is plotting to pass the bill in a totally partisan process.
Folks, we really need to pump the brakes. The Democrats are steering us the wrong way on this issue. Infrastructure is an issue that has always enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Congress.
We may disagree on how much to spend or how to pay for the costs, but we all agree that maintaining and improving our roads, bridges, ports, and waterways is one of the most important roles of the Federal Government's. There is no reason to drive us apart on such an important issue that typically brings us together and impacts all of our States.
But President Biden is on a one-way street to more gridlock. Only about 5 to 6 percent of the $2.2 trillion of the Biden proposal is dedicated to roads and bridges. The Biden plan spends less fixing potholes and repairing roads than it does on promoting electric vehicles and perks for the coastal elites who drive them, and you had better believe that this could have a devastating impact on Iowa's ethanol and biodiesel industries, which support our States' local economies. Even the liberal Washington Post is taking issue with the Democratic administration's claim that 19 million jobs will be created by the proposal. The real number is less than 3 million. Each job created by this so-called American Jobs Act will cost our taxpayers
$865,000, and because American workers will bear the brunt of the higher taxes in the Biden plan, that will mean lower wages. These costs are sure to give taxpayers road rage.
There is no reason to take this radical left turn. Last Congress, the Democrats and the Republicans on the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, which I serve on, worked together to unanimously pass out of committee an important infrastructure bill to help fix our roadways. This highway bill provides us with a great starting point to move us forward in the right direction--toward a bipartisan infrastructure plan. This 5-year, $287 billion bill was the largest highway bill in history, and it was supported by Senators from across the political spectrum who represented States from Vermont and New York to Alabama, Mississippi, and, of course, Iowa.
In hailing from a very rural part of Iowa, I am all for looking at ways to invest in broadband expansion, to support our roadways, and to make sure we have the right infrastructure in place to combat flooding in my home State. Those are true infrastructure needs and are the ones that I believe would get strong bipartisan support in a 50-50 Senate, but by throwing in progressive policy wish list items and noninfrastructure-related provisions, the Biden plan is headed down a dead-end street.
The President needs to do a U-turn and start working with the Republicans on a bipartisan roadmap for America. By putting aside the partisan pet projects--projects like the Honolulu High-Capacity Transit Corridor Project--and picking up where we left off, with the unanimously bipartisan highway bill, we can steer the infrastructure bill into the passing lane under the Senate's regular order.
So, folks, let's come together and literally start building some bipartisan bridges.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I want to talk also about infrastructure and associate myself with the interest that the country has in infrastructure.
In fact, one of the things that the government has done the longest has been roads and bridges and canals. I think, initially, the term
``internal improvements'' was, in the early 19th century, what they would have talked about when they talked about what we began to talk about later as ``infrastructure.'' During almost the entire history of the country, there was an understanding of what ``infrastructure'' meant in America.
Infrastructure is pretty popular, and infrastructure is definitely something that you generally can't do for yourself. You can't, on your own, provide the waterline that connects your house to the next house. On your own, you can't provide the road that gets you from home to work. On your own, you can't do a lot of things that we did early on and up until right now and call them infrastructure. Normally, they were seen as things like roads and bridges and dams--big projects that sometimes crossed State lines--or big projects that sometimes were just too big for a State or a town to handle, like water systems that needed to be improved.
When we did that--and I will talk later about the way we did that--
the bipartisan agreement also largely led to figuring out ways that infrastructure would pay for itself, in that the people who used the infrastructure would pay for the infrastructure, and we looked at that in a number of different ways.
Now, in the package that the administration has proposed, the $2.3 trillion package, there are lots of things in there that I don't disagree that the Senate should debate or I don't even rule out of hand that the country might want to do. Yet I think they are not infrastructure, and the funding way to get to them makes it harder to have the kind of bipartisan agreement that, I think, we could have in an infrastructure bill. The Republicans are for it, and the Democrats are for it in the House, in the Senate. Let's talk about how to get there.
Let's also make the point, of the $213 billion in this plan that is for Green New Deal building makeovers, there may be a place to do that, and it is something that we could clearly debate, but it is not the same thing as infrastructure. I was, at one time, the chairman of the Missouri Housing Development Commission. We did a lot of things to make it possible for people to have houses or for people to have buildings that they could have an opportunity to be a part of, but we never really called it infrastructure, and we did it in a different way.
On surface transportation, generally, for decades, that was paid by the highway trust fund. How did you fund the highway trust fund? You funded the highway trust fund by people pulling up to service stations and putting fuel in their cars, and when they did that, they paid into the highway trust fund. The more miles you drove, the more you paid into the highway trust fund, and Americans thought that was fair. We haven't raised the highway gas tax since 1993, and that could very well be a debate we should have as part of an infrastructure package. If not the gas tax, what other kind of user fee could there be? Lots of people use the highways, the roads, the bridges, and the Interstate Highway System who don't pay a gas tax now because they are transitioning to vehicles like electric vehicles that don't fill up at that gas pump.
That is a debate I think we should have as part of an infrastructure debate. Just last year, it was predicted that the highway trust fund would run out of money before the year was over, and it did. Because we collect less money every year than we spend every year, we decided to subsidize that out of general revenue, but nobody in that debate ever thought that it should be the permanent solution.
For other kinds of projects, we look for ways to help the end user make a project possible both in urban communities and rural communities. There are programs in which you can replace your water system or your stormwater system with something that works and price it appropriately. What we have done there is say: Well, we are going to figure out how we can either guarantee your bonds or write down your loans or both so that the users in those systems over, maybe, 30 years would pay back in amounts they could afford--what happened when you turned the lead water pipe into an appropriate water pipe. I am in favor of replacing every lead water pipe in America, but I think you can do that in a way that the users of those systems pay for those systems just like all of their neighbors in neighboring communities are paying for their systems. We could help them do that, and we have proven we can help them do that.
We could also create an infrastructure bank. Senator Warner and I have worked on that for years. I think we are going to reintroduce the REPAIR Act, which would really be a nonpartisan financing authority whereby the government guarantees a certain amount of that money, and maybe government assistance in putting together a public-private partnership creates another way that a little bit of Federal money creates a lot more infrastructure activity.
You could look at these and other issues like asset recycling, where the government leases or sells some existing public infrastructure and uses the proceeds of that to fund new projects. In Australia, they used that system to help pay for an expansion of subway systems and other things. In fact, the Federal Government would encourage local governments to privatize one of their local government assets that had customers. Then they would take that money, maybe, and build sidewalks that don't have customers, and the water systems that would have customers would have helped to build the sidewalks as it would be managed by a private company, but all of those private companies would be regulated in a way that people who would be customers would know they were protected.
We have had a lot of bipartisan infrastructure bills over the last decades and more than decades. Infrastructure bills are not new to America. Figuring out how you have an infrastructure bill that meets the definition of ``infrastructure'' and a system where the infrastructure goes as far as it possibly can to pay for itself by those people who use it has always involved Republicans and Democrats reaching an agreement. I don't know that there has ever been a partisan infrastructure bill. It has always involved reaching agreement on what would be in the bill and reaching agreement on finding ways to pay for it.
New definitions can really confuse ideas that the American people think they understand. People are for infrastructure. They think that it is something the government should do. They can pass a test on what they believe ``infrastructure'' means if they have ever watched an infrastructure debate before. Let's find a way that we can move forward in a bipartisan way with an infrastructure bill that meets the standards of infrastructure and meets the standards of doing everything we can to be sure the system is fairly paid for by the people who use it and can afford to pay for it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The Senator from Wyoming.
Mrs. LUMMIS. Madam President, I rise to echo and augment the remarks of the gentleman from Missouri and to call on President Biden and the Democrats in Congress to work with the Republicans on a bipartisan infrastructure bill. As the only Senator in the unique position of sitting on all three committees with jurisdiction over transportation, I have a particular interest in making sure we are adequately funding our roads and bridges.
I have had many conversations with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle since I have joined the Senate, and everyone agrees that we have real infrastructure and transportation needs that must be addressed. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave our roads a D-
minus rating, noting our $786 billion backlog on roads' and bridges' capital needs. They gave our bridges a C-minus rating and a repair tag of $125 billion.
We also need to take another look at how we fund our highway system. Right now, we have a highway trust fund that we can't actually trust. Since 2008, we have been relying on general fund transfers to pay for our roads and bridges instead of fixing our user fee model to keep the trust fund solvent. User fees give users the benefit of seeing where their money is going, and they allow those people deriving the most benefit from the system to give the most in support. This is a very fair, American way of doing things, and the certainty we get from a functioning user fee model is important for rural States, like my home State of Wyoming.
While much divides Congress these days, infrastructure, as that term is understood by most Americans, is a bipartisan issue. As such, one would assume that President Biden would want to find some common ground in order to build relationships in Congress and address the needs of every citizen. So it is perplexing that President Biden, who campaigned on bringing our Nation together, is now pushing a blatantly partisan infrastructure bill.
Let me show you why partisanship is unnecessary in the infrastructure space. I recently helped my Democratic colleagues on the Environment and Public Works Committee pass a bipartisan water and wastewater infrastructure bill out of committee with unanimous support. This is clear evidence that Democrats and Republicans can come together on infrastructure issues and find common ground. In 2019, the EPW Committee, under the leadership of my fellow Senator from Wyoming, John Barrasso, unanimously passed a bipartisan 5-year highway funding bill. This would be a great place to start for any infrastructure bill in Congress.
But this barely scratches the surface of bipartisan infrastructure legislation. Honestly, I am hard-pressed to remember a time when infrastructure was not bipartisan. The American Water Infrastructure Act of 2018? Bipartisan. The Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act of 2016? Bipartisan. The Highway Transportation Funding Act of 2015? Bipartisan. The Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act of 2015? Bipartisan. The Water Resources Development Act of 2014? Bipartisan. This isn't even a full decade of congressional action, and all of these things happened in partisan environments, when Americans were divided on a host of issues. But despite our divisions, we have always come together to address American infrastructure. In 2021, this should be no different.
If President Biden wants to truly unite the Nation, he can start by working with Republicans on the most basic bipartisan issues, and he might be surprised which Members of Congress are there to join him.
I will use myself as an example. I have opposed many of President Biden's actions to date, but I support his decision to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, and I am doing so publicly. I have also supported several of President Biden's nominees, including Secretary Buttigieg.
I can promise President Biden that if he comes in good faith to work with Republicans and Democrats on a bipartisan infrastructure bill, I will be there to work with him every step of the way. I know my colleagues feel the same. All we are asking is for the ``unity'' President to come to the table.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. CRAMER. Madam President, I am pleased to have joined my Republican colleagues on the floor today. I associate myself with all of their comments, especially the speech just delivered by my friend from Wyoming, and demonstrate my strong support for a significant investment in America's infrastructure.
You know, as my colleagues have said, infrastructure has been one of the most bipartisan policy areas in Congress over the decades, and rightfully so. I mean, we are obligated to provide for the national infrastructure.
As the lead Republican on the EPW Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure, I am committed to doing my part. I am confident we can accomplish this on a national level and in a strong bipartisan fashion.
As has been said, 2 years ago, under the leadership of Chairman Barrasso, EPW unanimously passed America's Transportation Infrastructure Act. It was the most substantial highway bill yet in our history. It authorized hundreds of billions of Federal dollars to maintain and repair America's roads and bridges, and it made reasonable regulatory changes--very important regulatory changes--so that projects wouldn't get derailed by endless bureaucracy.
It also maintained the current formula for deciding how States will receive the Federal funds. This funding formula ensures that States with small populations but expansive road systems, like North Dakota and Wyoming and Oklahoma, receive sufficient resources to update their roads and bridges within their borders. It is States like ours that feed and fuel the country. So not only does the traditional funding formula protect the interests of rural America, it protects all of America.
The movement of goods and services in support of our economy and the consumers cannot reserve a few thousand miles here and there of interstate for gravel. Interstate commerce requires a transportation system that is safe and sufficient for every mile. The pavement can't end in Minneapolis and get picked up in Seattle. For food to get to your table requires thousands of miles of safe, reliable roads, bridges, rails, and waterways.
My State of North Dakota is literally the center of the North American continent and is a top producer of dozens of crops and other food items. For example, we are the very top producer--by a long ways, by the way--of durum. Durum is the wheat that is ground into semolina flour, which is the main ingredient in pasta. So if you love cooking spaghetti in your kitchen or ordering penne at your favorite restaurant, you have to get the durum off the field in North Dakota to the elevator, where a train or a truck will pick it up and take it to the mill, where it will be ground into semolina before getting on another truck or train to the pasta plant, then to the grocery warehouse in another State, where it catches a ride to a distribution company or a retailer before it gets put into a pot of boiling water on its way to your plate in your Manhattan apartment or your favorite Los Angeles restaurant.
That is why we included the formula in the last highway bill when I was in the House. It is why we kept it in the highway bill at the committee level last Congress. And there is every good reason why we ought to include it now.
Under the leadership of Chairman Carper and Ranking Member Capito, EPW has had two hearings reiterating the importance of investing in America and dealing with the solvency of the highway trust fund.
It was disheartening to read a news story earlier this week and see how many of my colleagues are urging the President to not work with Republicans and to go it alone on infrastructure. One even said he was worried that Republicans would ``never show up.'' Well, here we are. We have shown up.
Like I told Chairman Carper just last week, I believe we should go big. We should aim high. This is a tremendous opportunity to pass a major bill that will benefit our country as a whole and the States we represent. We cannot let one of the most bipartisan policy areas in Washington get derailed now because a narrow majority in the Senate decided to pursue a partisan, shortsighted goal instead.
I am committed to advancing an infrastructure package that is bold, bipartisan, and meets the demands of the moment, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Madam President, let me read to you a section of the proposal on infrastructure that has been put out by the White House, just one section of many sections that are there. This particular section on national critical infrastructure reads this way:
Funds for schools to reduce or eliminate the use of paper plates and disposable materials.
I don't know what your definition of ``infrastructure'' is, but I don't meet a lot of Oklahomans who, when I say ``infrastructure,'' they think school lunch trays.
We need to work on infrastructure, and I would tell you, I don't meet a Republican who is not engaged in this issue of infrastructure. And it is not the first time for any of us to work on infrastructure; we have had multiple bills. I remind people around my State that every time you are driving around my State and you see an orange construction zone and a flashing sign, that is a previous infrastructure bill that was done. In every direction that you go in my State, you are going to see infrastructure that is already happening and working because working on infrastructure is a common part of what we do.
Republicans have stepped to the table and have said: Let's work on infrastructure together. In fact, it was interesting--President Trump over and over again talked about working on infrastructure and tried to be able to get a major infrastructure proposal.
Our definition of ``infrastructure,'' though, doesn't include school lunch trays. We would like to work on highways. This particular package that the White House has sent us, we have just raised our hands and said: We have a few questions before you want to be able to move this forward.
This particular proposal spends $174 billion for electric vehicles but only $115 billion for the highways that they will drive on. We just believe we need to spend more on highways. We don't mind incentivizing electric vehicles, but, quite frankly, there have been a lot of incentives out there already.
Every Tesla that you pull up next to, when you turn over and see them at a stoplight, you should ask for your turn to drive because every one of those beautiful Tesla vehicles, the Federal taxpayers also kicked in
$7,800 in Federal tax subsidies for that beautiful $60,000 automobile that someone else is driving.
There have been tax incentives that have been out there for electric vehicles; we just believe we need to spend more on actually dealing with our roads and bridges because they have major problems.
So what can we do? For those of us in Oklahoma, we know full well. I-
35, Interstate 44, Interstate 40 all cross in my beautiful State. We are the center of the country in trucking. We are the center of the country in railways. We have the farthest, northernmost inland port that is actually in Oklahoma, where a lot of wheat and fertilizer move through our State, coming from the north to get into the ports to be able to get out.
We understand the significance of what it means to be able to work on our ports, our waterways, our highways, our bridges; to deal with clean water, to deal with sewage water; to be able to deal with even broadband. All those things are essential for every farm to be able to operate and for every section of our economy to be able to function.
Let's work on this together. Let's find a way that we can actually hit common ground and agree that working on airports and working on highways and working on bridges is vital to us, and then let's talk about the rest of the other things on this because we have a lot of debt as a country, and adding another $2.5 trillion and having a debate about a corporate tax change that--quite frankly, in 2017, when we made that corporate tax change, 70 percent of the difference in those companies went to employees' wages. Now to go back and to raise that corporate tax again, we know exactly what that is going to mean for employees of those companies and future raises that they may or may not get.
So let's actually talk about this, and let's work on infrastructure together, but let's actually work on what is truly infrastructure.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, first, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Boozman, Senator Marshall, and Senator Durbin all be permitted to speak for up to 5 minutes prior to the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I come to the floor today to associate myself with the remarks from the Senator from Oklahoma.
We are here as Republicans who believe in free markets, and so do the American people. The Democrats, on the other hand, are running a 100-
yard dash towards socialism. They have decided to redistribute America's wealth. President Obama used to call this ``spreading the wealth around.'' Democrats are taking the wealth of our Nation and they are gathering it up in Washington, DC, and deciding then how they want to spend it.
In March, President Biden signed a big payoff to the people who run the Democratic Party--the union bosses, the DC bureaucrats, and bankrupt blue States. He said it was a coronavirus relief bill. Yet only 9 percent of the money actually went for healthcare.
Just weeks later, President Biden came back again, now requesting
$2.7 trillion under the namesake of ``infrastructure.'' When you read through it, it looks like once again he is trying to spread the wealth around, gathering it not for what we consider traditional infrastructure--roads, bridges, ports, highways, airports, waterways, all of those things, dams, reservoirs, you name it--it seems that once again it is going for the Democratic elites. It looks to me to be a slush fund for liberal spending, going to union bosses, climate activists, and the Silicon Valley contributors to the party.
Where is the money coming from? The last bill went on the credit card. The next one is coming out of the wallets of the American people. President Biden is proposing the largest tax increase in a generation. Working families and small businesses are going to be on the hook. They will put the American worker at a disadvantage.
Look, there hasn't been a proposed tax increase of this size in this century. It is going to affect everyone in this country, and it is going to be a rude awakening for the many small businesses that are finally reopening after living the past year with the coronavirus pandemic. Now, in addition to the struggle they have been through, they are going to be hit with a big tax increase. Now, in addition to the struggles they have been through, they are going to be hit with a big tax increase.
Now, we know who is going to end up footing the bill for the President's tax hikes. He may say that it is just corporations. The American people are going to be hit with this tax increase. You can call it a tax hike on corporations, but that absolutely just ricochets back onto the people who work for those businesses and who buy the products of those businesses.
President Biden is going to try to spin it another way, but the highest costs of all of this is going to be borne by American families.
Higher taxes, of course, mean fewer jobs. One estimate says that the bill is going to kill a million jobs. These aren't CEO jobs. These are middle-class jobs. These are the jobs of hard-working families in my state of Wyoming and in States all around the country.
Prices across the country are already going up under President Biden. The cost of energy went up 9 percent just last month. Gasoline prices are up over 50-cents a gallon since President Biden took office and started his Executive orders attacking American energy.
If this bill that is being proposed now under the name of infrastructure becomes law, well, we will know that the price increases are just beginning. Because of President Biden, more wealth is about to be taken from places all across middle America and certainly in my home State of Wyoming. It will be sent to the Democrat elites in Manhattan and Silicon Valley and, of course, here in Washington, DC.
Democrats are focused on redistributing our wealth. They want to take it from working families and give it to their liberal donors. It is a bad law. It is bad economics. And I urge my colleagues to stand for jobs, for higher wages, and for the working men and women of our Nation, who know what infrastructure really means and the kind of infrastructure they need for their communities.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.
Mr. BOOZMAN. Madam President, I join my colleagues today to address the ongoing discussions taking place in Congress among the executive branch and in communities across the country about the state of our Nation's infrastructure and how to improve it to propel our economy forward and enhance the quality of life in Arkansas and every State.
As a member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, I understand the importance of infrastructure investment. I have been a constant advocate for water resources development, surface transportation investments, and the expansion of rural broadband.
President Biden recently released a plan that claims to rebuild America, claims to rebuild its crumbling infrastructure. While I agree that infrastructure investment must be a top priority, I have serious concerns about this particular proposal. The President should look to the successful example of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as a starting point for this critical bill. There are a number of bipartisan infrastructure-related bills in the Senate which have been thoroughly vetted and are ready to be passed. Instead, the administration is trying to reinvent the wheel.
My advice to President Biden is simple. The path to achieve long-term infrastructure improvement is through bipartisanship. Just weeks ago, the Environment and Public Works Committee unanimously passed the Drinking Water and Waste Water Act.
Last Congress, the Committee unanimously passed America's Transportation Infrastructure Act to provide resources and long-term certainty for States and local governments to build safer and more modern highways, railroads, and bridges.
These bills are just two examples of the good work the Senate has been doing to invest in our Nation's crumbling infrastructure. I am pleased to hear this Chamber may begin consideration of the Drinking Water and Waste Water Infrastructure Act this month.
Unlike the House of Representatives and the Biden administration, which continue to undermine bipartisanship by developing and advancing a progressive policy agenda, the Senate has been working in a bipartisan manner to find solutions for our transportation challenges.
If President Biden is listening, my message to him is this: Work smarter, not harder. There is no reason we need to start at the beginning of this process. The Senate EPW Committee has done the work which can and should be the basis for any infrastructure proposal.
I have always said that if you take the ``E'' out of EPW, we actually get a lot done in our committee. For a good example of the type of cooperation that can be achieved, look no further than the work of Senator Inhofe and former Senator Boxer. These two colleagues had little in common. However, they agreed on the importance of infrastructure investment, and they were able to usher major legislation through Congress through a collaborative and deliberative process.
The same is true for Chairman Carper and Ranking Member Capito. While these two have ideological differences, they have demonstrated their ability to work together to create a bipartisan product.
We want to work with the Biden administration on infrastructure to update basic public services, such as safe roads and bridges. With innovative financing and private sector investment, we will be creating jobs and keeping commodity prices low while remaining competitive in the global marketplace. However, we will not tolerate a partisan process where only one side gets to offer input with the end result being a liberal wish list of projects and priorities that have nothing to do with infrastructure investment.
Infrastructure is about as ripe as any area that we have to actually get something done of a major nature in a bipartisan, cooperative way.
I am back in Arkansas almost every week, and I can tell you what Arkansans want. They want us to be able to disagree while also being able to create a good commonsense policy. A bipartisan infrastructure bill is a way to demonstrate the President's willingness to work across the aisle. I am ready to create a path forward to update and modernize our Nation's infrastructure needs as well as make wise investments in our water systems, energy grids, and broadband deployment, where there is bipartisan agreement on the urgent need to act.
I yield the floor
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
Mr. MARSHALL. Madam President, simply stated, President Biden's so-
called infrastructure plan helps China and hurts hard-working Americans. Let me say it again. This bill helps China and hurts hard-
working Americans. Less than 5 percent--that is how much of this $2 trillion infrastructure proposal actually goes toward building roads and bridges in the United States. Instead, this partisan proposal is loaded with Green New Deal pet projects and an abundance of spending that stretches far beyond recognition of what hard-working Americans define as infrastructure.
This is not the first time we have seen Democratic attempts to redefine the traditional meaning of words. In recent weeks, the White House has also moved to change how people perceive bipartisanship in Congress. No longer do our colleagues across the aisle need to secure Republican votes in order to successfully pass a so-called
``bipartisan'' bill. One obscure poll with cleverly worded questions that helps to garner bipartisan support from the respondents will do the trick. It is a manipulation of words that would allow President Biden to try to ram through this radical agenda and sell it to the American people as fulfilling his campaign promise of unity.
President Lincoln once said: ``You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.''
The American people won't be duped by Washington doublespeak. I hosted five townhalls this past weekend, and Kansans have their eyes open to what is in this bill. Kansans understand that while this bill provides $115 billion for roads and bridges, more than half of over $2 trillion is devoted to green energy projects and the elimination of fossil fuels.
Among these green provisions is $170 billion for electric car chargers and tax incentives for purchasing electric cars. It also calls for electrifying one-fifth of the Nation's school buses and all 650,000 of the U.S. Postal Service's delivery trucks, which will result in driving up costs to Americans.
When unveiling this infrastructure plan, President Biden mentioned China six times as he attempted to sell it as a way to compete with China. However, this rapid jump to electric vehicles does the opposite and will benefit China more than many hard-working Americans. That is because China leads the world in manufacturing 80 percent of the materials needed for batteries and will continue to do so. Of the 136 lithium-ion battery plants in the pipeline between now and 2029, 101 are based in China.
China mines 64 percent of the world's silicon and makes 80 percent of the world's polysilicon with coal-generated electricity--the key component to solar panels. This bill will serve as a boon for China while decimating our domestic oil and gas industry, which helped us achieve our long-held goal of energy independence in 2019.
This bill will harm our general economic output by taking $2 trillion out of the private sector. We should really be calling this package the
``grab your wallet bill'' or ``raise your taxes bill.''
The legislation calls for the largest corporate tax increase in decades and will put the tax burden on American companies toward the top of the developed world list. This will make American companies less competitive in the global market. It is a recipe to kill the economy at a time when our Nation is still recovering from COVID. It will also negatively impact our economy in the long-term.
According to projections from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, as a result of this partisan legislation, overall GDP will be decreased 0.9 percent lower in 2031 and 0.8 percent lower in 2050. Hourly wages would be down by 0.7 percent in 2031 and 0.8 percent in 2050.
Perhaps what is most disappointing is that this bill demonstrates that gone are the days when infrastructure packages were an opportunity to build bipartisan bridges. Thanks to Republicans' control of the Senate and reaching across the aisle, the two most recent bills governing spending on roads and bridges both passed with overwhelming bipartisanship support before they were signed into law.
So in case there is still an opportunity for bipartisanship, let me tell you what I am for. I am for a package that, No. 1, reaches across the aisle and rebuilds our aging roads and bridges; next, incentivizes innovation, invests in future generations, ensures high-speed internet for all Americans, and reforms our permitting process so that when we say ``shovel-ready,'' we really mean shovel-ready, as opposed to going through years of permitting and driving up the cost of the project.
Look, pre-COVID, we had the strongest economy in my lifetime, thanks to Republican-led policies put in place over the last 4 years. Lower taxes and deregulation resulted in historically low unemployment rates, as well as energy independence and affordable energy costs. We need to get back to these policies and not continue the onslaught of harmful redtape, proposed tax increases, and unprecedented spending sprees.
The future of our children and grandchildren depends on it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority whip.
Alerts Sign-up