[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 183 (Tuesday, December 8, 2009)]
[House]
[Pages H13601-H13602]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 IT'S TIME FOR A NEW ATTITUDE DOWNTOWN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, America's infrastructure is in an 
extraordinarily sad state of disrepair, in fact, endangering and 
killing Americans. We need a new attitude in terms of rebuilding our 
infrastructure and bringing it up to a state of good repair at the 
White House.
  There seems to be some reluctance. The President said after his jobs 
summit that he just had to admit that shovel ready wasn't always shovel 
ready, and he seemed to be referring to infrastructure. But actually, 
the infrastructure money is already 60 percent spent and underway and 
the other 40 percent will be obligated before spring to begin to catch 
up with that deficit.
  Now, the Department of Energy has already spent about 8 percent of 
their money; HUD, I don't know if they've spent any of it. There are 
all sorts of fantasy programs out there that were in the stimulus where 
money hasn't been expended, but in transportation and infrastructure it 
has been invested and it is going to save lives and it is going to get 
people to work with less congestion and less damage to their vehicles 
by bringing the infrastructure up to date.
  I would like to try and bring this home to the White House because 
they just don't seem to be listening. This was--or is--a lag bolt; it's 
about 60 years old. You can see it's kind of missing the bottom. Well, 
this lag bolt was involved in an accident on the Chicago Transit 
Authority. This is what holds down the metal plates that hold down the 
rail. They have a life span of about 40 years. There are thousands of 
them on the system waiting to fail.
  Now, when the Chicago Transit Authority got $250 million--that's a 
lot of money--under the stimulus bill, they spent the money in 30 days. 
Thirty days. These aren't just your old public works construction jobs; 
these are, first off, almost all private sector jobs bid out on 
contract. Secondly, much of it was invested in sophisticated equipment 
and manufactured goods. So that $250 million produced a huge multiplier 
effect. They were buying new buses because their buses are decrepit. 
People who build buses were getting good wages. The people who build 
things to go on buses--tires, brakes, all that because of ``Made in 
America''--they were getting jobs, too. So actually, the shovel-ready 
stuff was ready and is underway when it comes to transit and highway 
infrastructure.
  Like this failed bolt in Chicago, the Chicago Transit Authority could 
spend another $6.5 billion just to bring their system up to a state of 
good repair, and they can spend that money very quickly with a huge 
multiplier effect. Why can't the economic team at the White House 
understand that? Their pointy-head theories about, oh, infrastructure 
takes so long and it doesn't have a good multiplier, unlike giving 
people a little bit of money in withholding--or green grid, whatever 
that is, where a penny hasn't been spent. Somehow this is just too old 
school for them, fixing up our country, putting people to work, 
manufacturing and construction jobs.
  We have 160,000 bridges on the Federal system that should be posted. 
The American people should see a big sign saying, ``Danger, the bridge 
over which you are about to drive is either weight limited, 
structurally deficient, or functionally obsolete.'' One hundred sixty 
thousand bridges. Now, if we began a program to replace those, it 
doesn't take long, look how quickly we replaced the bridge in 
Minnesota. It doesn't require lengthy environmental impact statements 
or planning, it's replace and fix the bridges, it's concrete, it's 
steel, it's workers, it's aggregate, it's made in America. You can't 
export those jobs.
  But somehow the people on the President's economic team don't get 
that, or maybe from the back seat of their limousines they can't see 
that the bridges and the infrastructure are deteriorated, and they sure 
as heck aren't on the creaky public transit systems that are falling 
apart and here in D.C. killing people because the infrastructure is so 
outmoded and so substandard.
  It is embarrassing for the greatest nation on Earth to be devolving 
toward a fourth-world infrastructure--we're not even third world. We 
are investing less of our GDP in our infrastructure than are many 
third-world countries. We are formerly first world, formerly world 
leader. Now we are watching our competitors around the world vault 
ahead of us with high-speed rail, with modern transit, with beautiful 
new highways, with safe bridges that are designed to current standards. 
But no, we can't afford it. And even if we could afford it, like taking 
some of that unspent TARP money or maybe some of the other unspent 
stimulus money, they don't want to do it downtown.
  It's time for a new attitude downtown. Don't jeopardize the people of 
America with this kind of outmoded infrastructure anymore. Get it, 
guys. This means jobs, and it's something the American people believe 
in.

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