[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 72 (Tuesday, April 27, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2215-S2217]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Surface Transportation Plan

  Mr. President, we also need to reauthorize the new surface 
transportation plan before October 1. I know that it can be done 
because I did it twice with Senator Boxer. We did the MAP-21 program; 
that was in 2012. We did the FAST Act in 2015. We were successful 
because we focused on actual infrastructure--roads, highways, bridges, 
waterways, and the like.
  Senator Capito rolled out a meaningful infrastructure package this 
last week. It is bold and focused on what our country actually needs.
  While President Biden and the Biden administration recognize the 
Republican plan as a starting point, sadly, Senate Democrats dismiss it 
outright, without even waiting to read it. And why? Because the extreme 
left wants to hijack the popularity of infrastructure to pass their 
Green New Deal agenda
  You know, I had the honor of being with the President and the Vice 
President in the White House their first week in office. At that time, 
they were talking about the infrastructure package of the 
administration. I told the President at that time that one of the 
problems I have with what I feel is going to be in his infrastructure 
package is going to be using the popularity of infrastructure repair. 
That is popular. People want roads. They want highways. They want 
infrastructure. But they want to use that popularity to get their 
agenda passed.
  Now, in the infrastructure package that the President came out with, 
only about 7 percent of that actually addresses roads, highways, and 
bridges. So that is not what we want. We do have a bill coming out of 
the committee.
  The proof is in the numbers. The Biden plan would spend more on 
electric vehicle charging ports and subsidies for electric cars than it 
does on roads, bridges, and airports combined. You know, I didn't 
believe that when I first saw it. How can he come out with something 
that would actually spend more just on electrical vehicles than it does 
on roads, highways, and bridges? But that is exactly right because it 
would be $157 billion for roads, highways, and bridges but $174 billion 
for electrical vehicle support.
  If this sounds familiar to you, that is because it is. Remember then-
President Obama's American ``Recovery'' Plan that was supposed to be a 
massive investment in infrastructure with ``shovel ready jobs''? Well, 
less than 5 percent of that bill went into infrastructure. The rest of 
the $800 billion went to finance the Obama climate agenda. I guess 
history really does repeat itself because that same thing is happening 
today. Worse, it trades responsible pay-for methods with a tax-and-
spend approach.
  A lot of people here may be too young to remember this, but I 
remember when the biggest problem we had in the highway trust fund was 
that we had too much money, that we had too much surplus.
  I ask the Presiding Officer, can you believe that, because you 
haven't been here that long? But that actually was the problem. The 
highway trust fund was actually more than it needed to be.
  I can remember back during the Clinton administration, I was pretty 
upset when he took several billion dollars out of that program. The 
surplus was there--I grant you that--but nonetheless we knew that 
leaner times were coming and that we would end up with a highway 
program that we would not be able to pay for out of the highway trust 
fund if we let people take money out of that trust fund.
  But, anyway, a lot of people here may be too young to remember that, 
but that actually did happen.
  One of the unique things about our highway system is the ``user pays; 
user benefits'' model. At a recent EPW hearing that we had--that was 
just 2 weeks ago--every single witness was in agreement that users who 
benefit should pay into the system. They all agreed that electric 
vehicles should be paying their fair share to maintain and improve our 
infrastructure. But, instead, the Biden plan takes the tax-and-spend 
approach, increasing the deficit and raising our corporate tax rate, 
undoing the historic tax cuts that we achieved under the previous 
administration, the Trump administration.
  People hear that, and they don't fully appreciate just what it means. 
They think that corporate tax rates won't affect them. But the people 
hurt the most by the higher corporate tax rate tend to be in the most 
vulnerable categories. That is because higher taxes on job creators not 
only hurts American competitiveness around the world, but it means 
lower wages, lower GDP growth, and fewer jobs to go around.
  In fact, the nonpartisan CBO found that 70 percent of the savings 
businesses got when they lowered the corporate tax rate in the Trump 
tax cuts went straight to worker wages, and the Biden plan would undo 
that very successful program. A study done by Rice University found 
that raising the corporate tax rate back to 28 percent, like the Biden 
plans do, will actually kill 1 million jobs in just 2 years.
  Before the pandemic, the economy was growing fast, thanks in large 
part to the historic tax cuts and the regulatory reforms that drove the 
record job growth.
  In fact, we had the best economy in my lifetime, prior to the 
pandemic problem that came along. And now, 12 months into the pandemic, 
as many States are just now allowing businesses to reopen, the 
administration is looking to raise taxes on job creators who can get 
our economy back on track.
  The White House said it was serious about infrastructure investment, 
and I am committed to working with the President and my colleagues in 
the Senate to do this. It can be done this year, just as it has been 
many times in the past, but it needs to be real infrastructure and not 
just a big-spending liberal climate bill.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia
  Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to 
vote for this motion to proceed to the bipartisan Drinking Water and 
Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021, otherwise known as DWWIA.
  As the ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, 
I have been working closely with Chairman Carper and Senators 
Duckworth, Lummis, Cardin, and Cramer to craft meaningful legislation 
that addresses our country's aging

[[Page S2216]]

drinking water and wastewater systems. Every city and town can tell you 
all about it.
  This bill authorizes more than $35 billion for water resource 
development projects across the country, with a focus on upgrading 
aging infrastructure, addressing the emerging threats of extreme 
weather events, including those resulting from climate change, and 
cyber security vulnerabilities. This bill also includes measures to 
invest in innovative technologies, and it provides assistance to 
marginalized communities. All of these things will help our communities 
keep their water safe and clean.
  Something I am particularly proud of is how this bill provides 
flexibility to both rural and urban areas and lets them decide how they 
can best address their needs.
  The most significant investments in this bill are in the drinking 
water and clean water State revolving funds. We know them as SRFs. The 
SRFs maximize authority for the States to determine how best to address 
drinking and wastewater challenges, utilizing a revolving loan fund to 
facilitate additional future investments.
  For rural States like West Virginia, we offer several solutions to 
unique water challenges. I will add here that we have a lot of great 
water in West Virginia. First, the bill invests $50 billion for those 
currently being served by intractable water systems. Those are the 
systems that service fewer than 1,000 people and that have typically 
been abandoned by the operator. We have quite a few of those. Towns in 
the southern coalfields of West Virginia, like those in McDowell 
County, have historically struggled with this.
  Since many of these households cannot connect to municipal water 
systems in an economic or technologically feasible way, the funding 
will go to a grant program to help them install environmentally sound, 
decentralized wastewater systems. This language is something that I 
worked on previously with my colleague from New Jersey Cory Booker when 
he was on the committee in the last Congress.
  The most pressing water issue, from a human health and environmental 
perspective in Appalachia, is undoubtedly straight piping. This 
practice is common in other exceptionally rural and remote areas around 
the country. So with new septic tanks installed, the grant program is 
working to improve quality of life and addresses public health and 
environmental concerns about straight piping waste into rivers and 
streams.
  Infrastructure resiliency and sustainability is also a priority in 
this bill. In rural areas especially, some of the pipes are nearly 100 
years old. I have actually heard about wooden pipes. Small towns often 
don't have the revenues to spend on expensive drinking water and 
wastewater infrastructure upgrades. That is why this legislation 
creates grants for small public water systems to replace components, to 
identify and prevent leaks, and to install meters.
  This is based off of language I introduced last Congress in the 
Assuring Quality Water Infrastructure Act. I was joined there by my 
colleague Ben Cardin of Maryland to address the needs of small water 
systems that are facing operational challenges in maintaining drinking 
water services. Every State has them.
  In West Virginia, that is often the result of old infrastructure or 
the lack of adequate mapping of where these assets actually exist. It 
is hard to fix leaks when you can't find them.
  Reports have shown--this stunned me when I saw this--that only one-
quarter of the water that West Virginia water systems pay to have 
treated and pumped even reaches a faucet--one quarter. That is how much 
water leaks out. I think about other States that have water shortages, 
and here we are wasting so much water in a State like ours, which has 
an abundance of water.
  Water is a precious resource, and wasting that much of it because of 
leaky pipes and faulty infrastructure is absolutely unacceptable. The 
$250 million grant program will help provide the technical assistance 
and infrastructure investments that these small systems, serving 10,000 
people or fewer, need to address to get those challenges off their 
backs and to get on sure fiscal footing as they better serve their 
customers.
  Of course, we don't want to forget about our midsize and large 
drinking water systems. Another program that I worked on last Congress, 
again, with Senator Cardin, addresses the resiliency of drinking water 
and wastewater systems.
  Adapted from the Clean Water Infrastructure Resilience and 
Sustainability Act, these programs, totaling $370 million over 5 years, 
will help to protect public water systems from a host of threats, both 
natural and manmade.
  In West Virginia and in many other parts of the country, the greatest 
threats to drinking and wastewater infrastructure come from flooding. 
These investments will harden infrastructure against these threats and 
protect taxpayers from paying for the same infrastructure again and 
again.
  I just discussed physical resilience, but we must also ensure the 
resilience of our water utility workforce, those workers who ensure the 
continued operation and maintenance of drinking water and wastewater 
systems every day.
  Section 211 of DWWIA focuses on the resilience of America's water 
utility workforce by addressing recruitment, training, and retention 
challenges. This is a topic very important to me, and I worked, again, 
with my colleague from New Jersey Senator Booker, on this issue
  I cannot help but think that we regularly take for granted the public 
health services provided by this Nation's water utility workforce. We 
just don't really think about who is actually working there and 
providing the service that we sometimes take for granted.
  Unfortunately, a large portion of the men and women who are in our 
water treatment facilities are getting older and they are retiring, and 
that is why we need to make sure that we have the next generation of 
water workers ready.
  This bill increases funding authorized to $25 million over 5 years 
for the program that helps water systems grow their workforce through 
apprenticeships, through training programs, and it also helps with 
their retention efforts. This program has been extremely popular with 
water systems around the country, and Congress has recognized this by 
funding it beyond the authorization level.
  It is critical that we provide the tools and investments necessary to 
help our drinking water and wastewater systems face these challenges 
head-on. After all, this is the workforce that will ensure the 
operation and maintenance of all the other infrastructure investments 
this package creates.
  Additional technical assistance can also help systems with 
operations--it is much more complicated than what it used to be--and 
prevent outages and costly compliance issues. Section 206 establishes 
and authorizes a circuit rider program designed to help owners and 
operators of small- and medium-sized publicly owned treatment works.
  We have heard from the water community that other circuit rider 
programs have been a tremendous asset in providing technical 
assistance. It only makes sense for the EPA to similarly provide 
technical assistance since they implement the relevant regulations. 
This can be tremendously helpful where a system may be struggling with 
an insufficient workforce and also must be a part of the resilience 
discussion.
  Another concern for us was the alarming trend in cyber security 
threats in water systems. In February, you all might remember, hackers 
accessed a Florida water treatment facility computer system and were 
able to remotely raise the level of sodium hydroxide in the water. That 
is not just scary; it is alarming.
  This has huge national security implications on top of the obvious 
public health concerns. Thankfully, that hack was detected and the 
system was returned to normal before the public was ever at risk. But 
in this day and age, water infrastructure resiliency also has to 
include addressing these cyber security issues. So we made sure that 
these vulnerabilities could be addressed under resiliency grants.
  While water infrastructure investments are critical to ensuring we 
are not wasting water and our water is clean, it is also critical from 
an economic development perspective. Berkeley County--close here to 
Washington,

[[Page S2217]]

DC--in West Virginia made huge investments into their water 
infrastructure system to ensure the system could handle the volume of 
water that the brand-new Procter & Gamble plant needed. And it is 
massive amounts of water, and it is a massive plant. We are very happy 
that they are there employing over 1,000 West Virginians.
  So with that upgraded water system, P&G was able to operate more 
efficiently and even to expand--and they are still expanding--and that 
meant more jobs. That kind of opportunity needs to be available 
everywhere, not just in my home State but in Connecticut and in other 
places around the country.
  These are just a few of the provisions that address and are informed 
by the particular challenges that face my State. But based on the 
feedback of my colleagues in both parties and the groundswell of 
support from various water advocacy groups, it is clear these 
provisions have broad applicability to help communities all across this 
beautiful country.
  It is why we have such a diverse and growing coalition of more than 
70 supporters--from water systems to local governments, to industry, to 
labor, to environmental organizations--who are supporting this 
legislation, not to mention that we had a unanimous vote out of 
committee.
  These organizations recognize the value of this legislation and its 
commonsense and responsible approach to addressing our water 
infrastructure issues. We will be discussing more of the valuable 
provisions of this bill on the Senate floor this week, and I look 
forward to that debate.
  In closing, I just want to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of 
advancing this bill and, later, for final passage. I mentioned it 
passed unanimously out of committee. There is a big debate in the 
broader sense: Can Congress get together on infrastructure? This is 
what I would define as basic, core infrastructure. This, I think, is a 
good test case for us, and this, I think, is one in which we all have a 
great interest. Conservatives, moderates, and liberals all came 
together on this.
  I would like to thank my counterpart and my chairman, Senator Carper, 
and his staff for their work, as well as our Water Subcommittee 
counterpart chairman, Senator Duckworth, and Ranking Member Lummis.
  This bill is proof that we can work together on infrastructure. This 
is a bipartisan, responsible, meaningful investment. We are taking care 
of pipes, we are looking out for our environment, and we are putting 
special emphasis on helping rural and disadvantaged communities. At the 
end of the day, this bill is really about helping people. This is a 
bipartisan bill that we can all be proud of.
  Again, I ask my colleagues to vote yes on the motion to proceed and 
again on the underlying bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Markey). The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to 
complete my remarks, given the time constraints.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered