[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 69 (Wednesday, April 21, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2102-S2106]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             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

[[Page S2103]]

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

[[Page S2104]]

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?

[[Page S2105]]

  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

[[Page S2106]]

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.