[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 100 (Wednesday, June 9, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4000-S4001]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Infrastructure

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I was disappointed to learn yesterday 
that President Biden had walked away from negotiations on 
infrastructure spending with Senator Capito.
  For several weeks, the ranking member of the EPW Committee has been 
engaged in good faith on finding common ground with the administration. 
She has led several of our colleagues in literally exhaustive efforts 
to put a bipartisan deal within reach.
  Senate Republicans proposed historic investments in the kinds of 
things most Americans would call actual infrastructure. They met and 
exceeded the President's own threshold demands, and then they were left 
at the table.
  Our colleagues weren't wrong to bet on bipartisanship. For one thing, 
it is what the American people actually deserve. For another, as I have 
noted before, infrastructure investments have historically featured 
overwhelming bipartisan consensus. But an agreement requires that 
actually each side is willing to give up some of what it wants. And as 
we learned yesterday, President Biden is unwilling to let go of some of 
the most radical promises he made to the leftwing of his party.
  From the day the White House rolled out its first ``infrastructure'' 
plan in

[[Page S4001]]

March, it has been clear that the left's definition of the word is 
evolving faster than even some Democrats can actually keep up with. 
Medicaid expansion is now infrastructure, paid leave is now 
infrastructure, and job-killing tax increases to hold the assortment 
all together.
  At every step of the way, Republicans have focused on targeted 
investments in roads, bridges, airports, waterways, and broadband 
infrastructure the American people actually need.
  But yesterday, President Biden showed that his patience for the 
smart, bipartisan approach was wearing thin. He directed Democratic 
leaders in Congress to get ready to ram through more expansive, 
unrelated spending unilaterally.
  Meanwhile, Senator Capito and our colleagues on the EPW Committee 
continue to demonstrate that bipartisan infrastructure investment is 
actually still within reach.
  In April, the Senate passed their water infrastructure bill by a 
count of 89 to 2. And just a couple weeks ago, the committee reported 
out a historic investment to surface transportation, and they did it 
unanimously. It is disappointing that President Biden has been 
unwilling to follow the Senate's productive example.
  And now some of our colleagues have signaled that they intend to use 
this month to depart from that example, themselves. The Democratic 
leader has laid out a partisan agenda he seems to hope will illustrate 
that the Senate is somehow broken.
  Remember, the Senate is 50-50--50-50. The American people did not 
hand the Democrats a mandate in the Senate. This series of radical 
proposals has no chance of becoming law, but every intention of 
justifying reckless changes to the way the body actually operates--
plans to jam hospitals, schools, and small businesses with new high-
stakes tests of ``wokeness,'' to dramatically curtail Americans' right 
to keep and bear arms, and, of course, to tip the scales of our 
electoral system permanently in their favor.
  Yesterday, the radical parade began with an attempt to use the cause 
of paycheck fairness as cover for placing unprecedented new legal 
burdens on American employers. Wage discrimination on the basis of sex 
has been illegal for 60 years. Wage discrimination on the basis of sex 
has been illegal for 60 years. What Democrats proposed yesterday was to 
kick down carefully constructed protections to leave even the smallest 
American business at risk of unlimited liability in workplace cases--
listen to this--even where malice plays no part. Their bill would force 
workers to opt out of, rather than into, class-action suits--in other 
words, a gift-wrapped bonanza for the trial bar. Unsurprisingly, that 
gambit not only failed to pass; it failed to even unite a majority of 
the Senate.
  So if our colleagues intended to actually earn support for consensus 
steps on paycheck fairness, they might have considered subjecting their 
proposal to scrutiny through the normal legislative process--perhaps a 
markup or even a committee hearing.
  Well, apparently when your agenda is designed to fail, regular order 
is just a waste of time.