[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 171 (Thursday, September 30, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H5557-H5558]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         SUPPORT FOR THE INFRASTRUCTURE INVESTMENT AND JOBS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentlewoman from 
Kansas (Ms. Davids) for 5 minutes.
  Ms. DAVIDS of Kansas. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. It would bring billions of 
dollars to much-needed infrastructure projects in my home State, from 
bridges to broadband, and it does so without raising taxes on people 
who make less than $400,000 a year.
  As I have said before, this bill is not absolutely perfect, but it is 
absolutely necessary. It is a product of compromise. That is, at the 
end of the day, what legislating often means.
  In the district I represent, this bill has received a remarkable 
amount of support, including everyone from labor unions to local 
chambers of commerce to climate groups. They are joined by national 
organizations like the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce, and hundreds of labor and trade associations.
  I urge my colleagues to listen to their communities who are calling 
for these investments and not to give in to the Washington machine that 
so often turns shared bipartisan goals into political games.

  This bill reminds me of the last time that we saw this level of 
investment in America's infrastructure, when President Eisenhower, who 
was from Kansas, recognized an opportunity to rebuild the economy and 
create jobs through infrastructure. We were then, as we are today, in a 
challenging time defined by a national crisis and economic difficulty.
  I believe, as Eisenhower did, that infrastructure is key to building 
long-term economic growth. At the end of the day, infrastructure is 
made up of many everyday systems that connect us to one another and 
broaden opportunities.
  If we don't invest in the health of those systems, whether it is the 
safety of highways like U.S. 69 in the district I get to represent, or 
access to high-speed internet in areas across Kansas, both urban and 
rural, we pay the price, and it is not just in the ways we might think.
  We feel the impact of past decades of underinvestment in 
infrastructure, in our economy, in our educational systems, in the 
health of our kids, and in the health of our planet.
  That is why this bill is absolutely necessary because infrastructure 
touches so many parts of our lives and the lives of our future 
generations. This bipartisan bill boosts American competitiveness, 
tackles climate change, and advances equity now and into the future. It 
is projected to create 2 million jobs per year for the next decade, 
with fair wage requirements written into the text.
  Independent studies have shown that the investments in this bill will 
have multiplier effects on the economy, improving productivity and 
boosting economic output without increasing inflation. This 
infrastructure bill is large, but so is the problem.
  There are immediate infrastructure needs, from roads and bridges to 
public transit and rail, waterways, and airports. All of these need 
attention. This bill will undoubtedly bring the Federal funding needed 
to address those issues here in the near term, and it makes significant 
progress toward longer-term goals, like replacing lead pipes so that 
every child can have access to clean drinking water or promoting Buy 
American provisions that create good-paying jobs for both construction 
and production of materials or modernizing our electric grid to prevent 
blackouts, like the ones we saw in Kansas and those we saw in Texas 
earlier this year.

[[Page H5558]]

  For people sitting in traffic on U.S. 69 or waiting for the bus in 
Wyandotte County or wondering why that one road floods every single 
year no matter how many times we fix it, this cannot wait. Not to 
mention, if we fail to act, critical surface transportation 
authorizations are going to run out by Friday.
  I urge my colleagues to set aside gamesmanship and not see this as an 
opportunity for political points but instead an opportunity to deliver 
for our communities, the opportunity that our communities have been 
asking for us to deliver on.

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