[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