[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 16, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1798-E1799]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        PUT AMERICANS BACK TO WORK: PASS THE REBUILD AMERICA ACT

                                 ______
                                 

                         HON. JAMES L. OBERSTAR

                              of minnesota

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 16, 2003

  Mr. OBERSTAR. Mr. Speaker, on September 1, we celebrated Labor Day, a 
day to honor America's working men and women. On that same day, 
America's most respected journalist, Walter Cronkite, wrote a newspaper 
column reminding us all of the millions of Americans who are unemployed 
and the need to put them back to work.
  Mr. Cronkite recalled how public investment in our national 
infrastructure, through programs such as the Works Progress 
Administration, once created jobs by building new public facilities: 
highways, bridges, airports, libraries, schools, courthouses, even New 
York's Lincoln Tunnel and the Overseas Highway linking the Florida 
Keys.
  ``The W.P.A. built what in many ways is the America we know today,'' 
Mr. Cronkite wrote.
  I salute Mr. Cronkite for once again reminding us who we are, where 
we came from and how we got here. I further commend him for recognizing 
that the same approach that helped America recover from the worst 
economic disaster in its history, the Great Depression, can and will 
work today.
  Mr. Speaker, a few short weeks ago, I joined the gentleman from 
Illinois, Mr. Costello, and the rest of my Democratic colleagues on the 
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, in introducing H.R. 2615, 
the Rebuild America Act of 2003. This bill is designed to put Americans 
back to work now--within 90 days of the bill's enactment. It invests 
$50 billion in our national economy by building and improving roads, 
bridges and transit systems, expanding airport capacity and enhancing 
safety, rebuilding wastewater systems and treatment plants, upgrading 
beds for high-speed service and many other projects.

  Over the 10-year life of this bill we can generate $310 billion in 
economic activity and, most importantly, create 2.3 million jobs.
  The Rebuild America Act is built for speed. It gives priority to 
projects that are ready for construction, thereby creating jobs 
immediately and giving our economy a quick jump-start. Mr. Speaker, if 
we were to enact this bill by the end of September, we could be putting 
Americans to work by Christmas.
  And next Labor Day, Mr. Cronkite can write about all the new jobs we 
created.
  I call upon my colleagues to bring up and pass the Rebuild America 
Act without any further delay, and I commend to you all the complete 
text of Mr. Cronkite's column, as published in the Sioux City Journal, 
and I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a summary of the 
Rebuild America Act:

                   Little to Celebrate for Unemployed

       So Labor Day comes again. Many will celebrate this annual 
     recognition of the dignity of our American labor force.
       But there is little to celebrate for 9 million Americans on 
     the unemployment rolls and somewhere around 1 million others, 
     our invisible unemployed, who we are told have yielded to 
     soul-searing despondency and no longer even seek work. Maybe 
     we should make them visible. We could put yellow ribbons on 
     their homes in the same manner we recognize our heroes, for 
     those civilians who, through no fault of their own, have 
     fallen on outrageous fortune.
       As they get jobs, the yellow ribbons would be removed. 
     Perhaps that would make it harder for administration 
     representatives to disguise how serious the unemployment 
     problem really is.
       We might note here that the frightening number of 
     unemployed does not include the tens of thousands of others 
     who have lost good jobs in industry and commerce and have 
     only been able to find work in menial or low-paying temporary 
     jobs. At the same time, we see a rise in the U.S. 
     productivity data, an important economic indicator. However, 
     that improvement is in part because thousands of jobs have 
     gone overseas, where wages are lower.
       A few days ago, the Labor Department reported that the 
     number of persons filing new unemployment claims last month 
     was the lowest in six months. Good news that things aren't 
     getting worse, but the numbers still leave millions 
     unemployed, an unacceptable figure in a caring society.
       With that and some other favorable economic indicators, the 
     Bush administration finds cause to boast. It sees 
     justification of its contention, when it was negotiating its 
     $1.6 trillion tax cut, that the rich who immediately 
     benefited eventually would put their tax savings back into 
     the economy and thus feed its recovery and gradual re-
     employment. This trickle down theory might work in time, but 
     the thousands of unemployed don't have that time as their 
     families do without life's essentials--food, clothing and 
     shelter.
       To speed their re-employment, there recently have been 
     suggestions, mostly by Democrats, that what is needed is the 
     resurrection of Franklin Roosevelt's formula to deal with the 
     Great Depression he inherited in 1933.
       Roosevelt's brain trust believed in ``trickle up'' rather 
     than trickle down--give people work, and the vast payroll 
     spread widely across the country would speed recovery from 
     the Depression.
       His program, called the Works Progress Administration, 
     almost instantaneously put one-third of the country's 
     unemployed back to work--some 8.5 million people. The WPA 
     built what in many ways is the America we know today.
       In the eight years of its existence (until wartime demands 
     created a labor shortage), the government-subsidized workers 
     built 116,000 buildings--including schools, libraries, 
     hospitals and courthouses--78,000 bridges and 651,000 miles 
     of highways, and improved 8,000 airports. Among the WPA's 
     other monumental achievements: the Golden Gate Bridge, New 
     York's Lincoln Tunnel, Virginia's Skyline Drive and the 
     Florida Keys' Overseas Highway.
       A similar project today could answer the urgent need to 
     repair and upgrade the nation's crumbling infrastructure--our 
     electric power grids, our bridges and highways, our dams and 
     waterways, our schools.
       Such a program would cost billions of dollars, which our 
     Treasury does not have, thanks to the Bush tax cut and 
     disastrous underestimation of the costs of the Iraq war and 
     reconstruction. What is required now is political leaders 
     courageous enough to defy the maxim that no one ever gets 
     elected proposing higher taxes. They would call for repeal of 
     the Bush tax cut and the imposition of the new taxes that 
     will be necessary not only to put our unemployed to work but 
     to begin reducing the national debt, that financial burden 
     that we are unconscionably about to unload on future 
     generations.
                                  ____


     A Bill to Rebuild America by Investing in Transportation and 
               Environmental Infrastructure and Security

 [Introduced by Cong. Costello, Cong. Davis, Cong. Oberstar and other 
       Democratic Members of the Committee on Transportation and 
                     Infrastructure, June 12, 2003]


               $50 BILLION FOR INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT

       Provide $50 billion for infrastructure investment to 
     enhance the safety, security, and efficiency of our highway, 
     transit, aviation, rail, port, environmental, and public 
     buildings infrastructure. By leveraging Federal investments, 
     the ten-year cost to the Treasury of this bill is less than 
     $34 billion.
       Highways, $5 billion; transit, $3 billion; aviation, $3 
     billion; high-speed rail, $14 billion; passenger and freight 
     rail, $7.5 billion; port security, $2.5 billion; 
     environmental infrastructure, $11.5 billion; water resources, 
     $1.5 billion; economic development, $1.5 billion; and public 
     buildings, $500 million,
       The bill requires these funds to be invested in ready-to-go 
     projects. Priority shall be given to projects that can award 
     bids within 90 days of enactment. The bill also requires 
     funds to be obligated within two years.
       The bill includes a maintenance of effort provision to 
     ensure that recipients continue their current investment 
     levels, particularly with regard to infrastructure security.

[[Page E1799]]

       Finally, the bill allows recipients an extended period of 
     time to meet their state and local match requirements.

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