[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 132 (Wednesday, July 28, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5130-S5132]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Infrastructure

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it was 1 week ago that the Senate held a 
procedural vote on a bill that hadn't even been written. And to no 
one's surprise, it failed.
  Republicans, for our part, said it made no sense to advance to a more 
than $1 trillion infrastructure plan before knowing what was in the 
plan and how it would be paid for.
  Our Democratic colleagues argued that the big text was imminent, 
coming any moment, any second, and it was critical to get the process 
started.
  Well, here we are, 1 week later. I guess the bill text wasn't 
imminent because we still haven't seen it yet.
  Earlier today, we heard that there was an agreement, I assume in 
principle, on the major portions of the proposed plan, which I concede 
is a major sign of progress. I want to commend all of our colleagues, 
including Senators Portman, Collins, Romney, and Cassidy, who have been 
working hard on our side of the aisle to achieve consensus, and on the 
Democratic side, Senators like Senator Manchin and Sinema and others.
  But this infrastructure plan that we haven't seen yet is no more 
ready for action today on the floor than it was last week. We made 
clear last week that we wanted to see the details before voting on a 
trillion-dollar bill that will impact every community across this 
country.
  Until this bill is actually written and we have a chance to review 
it, including all the details, the costs, the pay-fors, and the impact 
it will have on our States, I will not support it. And I imagine the 
majority of my Republican colleagues feel the same way.
  Now, I say that also believing that it is important for us to get a 
bipartisan infrastructure bill. I actually want us to. But part of the 
challenge is these groups of gangs that operate outside of what we 
would call regular order here; that is, the committees of jurisdiction, 
where all Senators get to participate in the final product, including 
on the floor of the Senate, that is really not possible when you have a 
group--a small group, a subset of the Senate negotiating a deal among 
themselves, and then they present it to us as a fait accompli and say: 
You have to accept it.
  Well, it doesn't work very well, ordinarily, but I am willing to give 
them a chance because I know they have committed a lot of time and 
effort into this. But it is going to depend on a couple of things. My 
vote, ultimately, is going to depend on a couple of things.
  First of all, we fund our highways, our roads, and bridges mainly 
through the gas tax. That is the amount of money that goes into the 
gallon of gas that is dedicated for the highway trust fund. Well, 
because our cars are getting more mileage now and because we are seeing 
alternatives, like electric vehicles, the highway trust fund is simply 
inadequate to fund the demand of our infrastructure: roads and bridges 
and the like.
  But that is no excuse for us to get away from what has heretofore 
been a pay-for model or a user-fee model. In other words, 
infrastructure should be paid for by the people who use it, not people 
who don't use it. And that is why the gas tax, at least as originally 
conceived, made a lot of sense.
  But we made a couple of mistakes. One, we didn't index it to 
inflation. And, secondly, we just couldn't account, back when the gas 
tax was adopted, for the innovation we have seen in transportation--
natural gas-driven vehicles, electric vehicles, and the like--that pay 
nothing for our roads and infrastructure.

[[Page S5131]]

  And I think it is a very serious problem for us from a fiscal point 
of view to get away from the user-fee model. First of all, we know that 
we have had to spend a lot of money to fight the COVID-19 virus, to 
deal with the public health and the economic consequences associated 
with it.
  That is why we passed, I believe it was, a total of five bills last 
year alone on a bipartisan basis to defeat this virus. And you could 
tell from some of the face masks being worn here in the Chamber right 
now, we have not yet been able to defeat it finally, notwithstanding 
the discovery and broad use of vaccines and other treatments.
  But an infrastructure bill is different than a pandemic because we 
actually should be in the position of paying for our spending rather 
than borrowing from future generations.
  I appreciate the good work that has been done by the bipartisan 
negotiating group to try to come up with some credible pay-fors, but 
they haven't been able to use the traditional user-fee model because 
President Biden and his administration took it off the bargaining 
table, which means you have to use other pay-fors outside of a user-fee 
model in order to pay for it or else you just merely add to our debt 
and pass on the responsibility to pay those bills back to future 
generations.
  Well, I don't think any of this is news to the majority leader, who, 
once again, has scheduled a vote before we have a bill that we can 
actually read, discuss with our constituents.
  I, for example, would like to be able to discuss the contents of the 
bill with my friends at the Texas Department of Transportation and the 
Governor and other people who are very much engaged in what the 
infrastructure in my State looks like, what it should be, and what we 
need in terms of investments in the future. But I can't do that if the 
bill text hasn't even been released yet, and the majority leader knows 
that.
  So the question I have is: Why in the world would the majority leader 
schedule another vote before the bill is even released, before we can 
read it and consult with our staff and outside experts, like my friends 
at the Texas Department of Transportation?
  We have seen contradictory signs about what our Democratic colleagues 
really hope to do. When asked about the fate of the bipartisan 
infrastructure plan, the Democratic majority whip said talks have gone 
on long enough, and he would support rolling it into the Democrats' 
reckless tax-and-spending bill that Nancy Pelosi said she would not 
pass in the House a bipartisan infrastructure bill unless, at the same 
time, she was able to pass what has nominally been called a $3.5 
trillion spending bill, but we know it is actually spending a whole lot 
more money than that.
  President Biden spilled the beans when this bipartisan group was at 
the White House a few weeks ago, where he said he would not sign the 
bipartisan bill into law unless, at the same time, he could sign the 
partisan, reckless tax-and-spending bill that is passed purely on a 
partisan basis. In other words, they are linked both by Speaker Pelosi 
and by President Biden.
  Now, President Biden did walk that back, or at least he tried to, but 
Speaker Pelosi has remained adamant that she will not pass any 
bipartisan infrastructure bill in the House unless she can get the 
votes in the House and, presumably, in the Senate in order to put 
pressure on some of the Democrats who are resistant to seeing us 
continue to add to our national debt and fuel inflation by more 
reckless spending, as well as the huge tax increases that would 
necessarily go along with it.
  So I am beginning to wonder if there was actually a sincere desire on 
the part of our Democratic leaders here in the Senate whether they 
actually wanted to pass a bipartisan bill or whether their goal was 
really to pass the reckless tax-and-spending-spree bill that Speaker 
Pelosi said had to pass if we were going to pass a bipartisan bill.
  We also need to know whether Senator Schumer will honor requests for 
people who were not part of the negotiating group, the gang--I guess 
they call themselves G-10 or G-20 or G-21--whatever they are called. 
But it is a subset of Senators who have been negotiating the bill. The 
question is whether the majority will permit other Senators who are not 
part of that negotiating group to offer amendments to the bill and 
whether they will permit us to have debate and votes on those 
amendments because I didn't delegate the responsibilities I have as a 
Senator, representing 29 million Americans, to them to negotiate a bill 
for my State. That is my responsibility, and I insist on having a 
chance to read the bill, to consult with them, and to see what the 
impact is going to be on my State and to consult with my Governor and 
the head of the Texas Department of Transportation and others to see 
whether this is something they believe that earns my support and that 
Texas should support.
  None of this is mysterious. This is the normal way of doing business 
around here. Moving bills through committee, Democrats and Republicans 
get a chance to shape those bills in committee, and then the majority 
leader brings it to the floor, and then everybody else gets to 
participate in the process.
  I hope in his rush to get this bill out the door, that the majority 
leader will allow a reasonable amendment process. This isn't like the 
early days of the pandemic, when we were experiencing a global 
emergency. We need to deal with our infrastructure needs, but this 
isn't emergency spending. This is part of the daily or annual bread and 
butter of what the legislative process should be about, and that is 
another reason why we shouldn't pass a bill without responsible pay-
fors.
  Well, we have seen this kind of political maneuvering before. In 
fact, Senator Schumer's designed-to-fail agenda practically dominated 
the work of this Chamber last month. He scheduled votes on some of the 
most controversial bills out there in order to orchestrate Republican 
opposition: legislation that exploits the cause of pay fairness to line 
the pockets of trial lawyers, a bill to seize States' power to regulate 
their own elections, as provided for in the Constitution, and to cement 
the Democratic majorities in the Congress for the foreseeable future.
  And now the majority leader is threatening to tank an infrastructure 
bill so he can go on to another partisan tax-and-spending-spree bill, 
which makes me think that is really what they care the most about. 
Rather than give the negotiators time to succeed and the rest of us 
time to understand what is in the bill and to consult appropriately 
with our constituents, Senator Schumer turned what should be a unifying 
process to build consensus into a divisive one, all in order to tee up 
his desire to see us pass a multitrillion-dollar tax-and-spending bill. 
That is on top of all the spending that we have done on a bipartisan 
basis for COVID-19, at least until the first part of this year, when 
our Democratic colleagues insisted on pushing through another $1.9 
trillion of unpaid-for spending, all in the name of COVID-19, when we 
all know that only about 10 percent of it was addressed at the 
pandemic, which causes all of us to recall Rahm Emanuel's famous 
statement that ``an emergency is a terrible thing to waste.'' And in 
the name of COVID-19 relief, another $1.9 trillion was added to our 
children and grandchildren's debt burden.
  Well, for the reckless tax-and-spending bill that Speaker Pelosi so 
desperately wants, the pricetag has been put on that legislation at 
another $3.5 trillion, and I don't think most of us can really get our 
head around what a trillion is. It is more than a billion, we know. It 
is a whole lot more than a million. But this kind of reckless spending 
is really unprecedented, except in a national emergency, like COVID-19 
relief.
  Some budget experts have estimated that the reckless tax-and-
spending-spree bill that Speaker Pelosi so desperately wants could 
actually cost $5.5 trillion, and if our Democratic colleagues insist on 
rolling the bipartisan infrastructure bill into that plan, it will cost 
taxpayers even more.
  Well, as a reminder, our Democratic colleagues spent more than $2 
trillion earlier this year alone, as I mentioned, and the result of 
this reckless spending spree speaks for itself.
  Democrats have sent big incentives to workers to remain at home, not 
back at work, through September of this year by enhancing their 
unemployment benefits with an additional Federal Government bonus, 
which provided that in my State about 80 percent of

[[Page S5132]]

the people collecting unemployment insurance were making more on 
unemployment insurance than they were going back to work. So it is no 
wonder that we had trouble getting people back to work, and businesses 
had to cut back on their open hours. Restaurants had to close down 
because they simply couldn't find the workers, or the businesses 
couldn't compete with the Federal Government for these essential 
workers.
  We are a long way from reaching prepandemic unemployment rates. And, 
surprisingly, job openings are at record highs.
  But here is one of the biggest concerns that is borne out by polling 
that people are beginning to have, and that is inflation. We are seeing 
inflation at a 13-year high. Consumers are feeling the sting of rising 
prices for virtually everything they buy. That is what happens when too 
much money chases too few goods and services. Prices go up. And we are 
seeing the cause of that inflation, its impact on gasoline, on 
groceries, and on appliances. Folks are shelling out more money for 
these products today than they have been as recently as a year ago.

  And if you have gone to the used car lot recently, you are bound for 
some serious sticker shock. And you can't even get a new car because of 
the semiconductor shortage caused by the pandemic. But over the last 
year alone, used car prices have gone up an eye-popping 45 percent.
  As I said, there is another reason why new cars aren't available, and 
that is because the semiconductors that make these computers on wheels 
actually run have not been available because 90 percent of them are 
made overseas, in Asia.
  Now, we have taken an important step to try to deal with this 
vulnerable supply chain of semiconductors, which affects both our 
economy and our national security, when we passed the U.S. Innovation 
and Competition Act last month here in the Senate. So we are capable of 
doing things on a bipartisan basis if given the opportunity.
  The Wall Street Journal recently called this bill, the Innovation and 
Competition Act, the ``third infrastructure initiative'' and noted that 
while smaller, it is ``freighted with just as much long-term economic 
and strategic importance.''
  So as Congress debates infrastructure investments, we can't let the 
one that passed the Senate last month slip through the cracks. There is 
a lot on the line for our economy and national security, and we need 
the CHIPS program up and running, which is a $52 billion investment in 
domestic manufacturing of advanced semiconductors--something that we 
rely on Asia for, and principally Taiwan, which produces 63 percent of 
advanced semiconductors. And we can only imagine if that supply chain 
from Taiwan or Asia was disrupted by another pandemic, a natural 
disaster, or, Heaven forbid, a military conflict.
  I want to make sure that our colleagues know that I appreciate the 
work they have put into this bill, but I know they also appreciate the 
individual responsibility that we have as Senators to participate in 
the process, particularly when it comes to spending $1 trillion on 
infrastructure.
  We need to have the text of the bill, not just a summary. I 
appreciate our colleagues giving some of us a notebook. It is a 
bipartisan infrastructure investment and jobs act summary. That is 
helpful, but that is not legislative text. And then we need an open 
amendment process so that those of us who weren't party to the 
bipartisan negotiations can participate in the process. Hopefully, it 
will make the bill better. I would like to see us actually substitute 
some of the spending pay-fors with a user-fee model that has been 
traditional, using the gas tax. As I said earlier, the gas tax has 
become a little outmoded and insufficient to pay for the infrastructure 
that we all want and need.
  There is a real need to invest in America's infrastructure, and it 
has never been more important for us to actually pay for those 
investments in a responsible way.
  As it stands today, our debt-to-GDP ratio--gross domestic product--is 
at the highest level since World War II. This is not the time to 
continue spending and spending and spending until our grandkids are 
left sitting in a pit of debt so deep they will never climb out of it.
  I am encouraged that our colleagues have gotten us this far, but the 
bill is not ready, and we need to see the text and be given adequate 
time to read it and consult with our constituents about it and to 
satisfy ourselves that the summaries they provided us and the pay-fors 
are real.
  Senator Schumer would be wise to postpone today's vote until Members 
on both sides have had a chance to evaluate the details of this 
legislation.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that at certain 
times during my remarks I be allowed to address the Senate in Spanish.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.