[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 198 (Monday, November 15, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S8072-S8075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, for many years now, there is a joke that
Presidents have what is called infrastructure week, where they talk
about infrastructure and the need for us to move our country forward
and fix our outdated system of roads and bridges, freight lines, our
ports.
We are, as a country, behind others countries in terms of investing
in infrastructure, yet infrastructure week comes and goes without any
progress.
Well, today, we had a true infrastructure week because the President
of the United States signed legislation that came out of this body--it
was bipartisan--that helps to repair our infrastructure in ways that is
historic in the sense that it is a broader infrastructure bill than we
have passed around here in decades.
It is a big day for infrastructure and, therefore, a good day for my
constituents in Ohio and people all around the country--people who are
stuck in a traffic jam or maybe people who are worried about the bridge
they are going over, whether it is safe or not, which is the case of a
big bridge in my community; or whether it is people who don't have
access to high-speed internet and, therefore, can't do their school
work or can't start a business or be able to get their telehealth. If
you are a veteran in Ohio and you want to access telehealth, it is
tough to do it in about one-third of our State because you don't have
high-speed internet.
So there are a lot of different things that are in this legislation
that will help the people who I represent. We have a lot of aging
infrastructure in Ohio on the water side, so our water infrastructure
includes a lot of lead pipes still, as an example, and, therefore,
drinking water issues.
But we also have a lot of edicts that have come down from the Federal
Government that say you have to stop the combined sewer overflow. Our
municipalities can't pay for the changes. This will help them as well.
In Cleveland, OH, we have a two-decade-old--I think it is a 47-year-
old transit system. The cars, frankly, are being taken off track
because they have gotten to a point where they can't be used any more,
and yet it is way too expensive. The funding for transit will be very
helpful in Cleveland, OH.
In my own community, we have a bridge people have been talking about
fixing for, literally, 25 years, because I have been involved in that
discussion when I was in the House and now in the Senate. The problem
is the bridge was constructed assuming a certain amount of traffic, and
yet the amount of traffic has more than doubled. As a result, they have
taken the shoulders off the bridge in order to create more room for
another lane. As a result, when you have a flat tire or an accident,
God forbid, on the bridge--which, unfortunately, happens too often--
there is no place to go and, therefore, causes even more safety
hazards. The bridge is a bottleneck every single day, not just in rush
hour. I can go there in the afternoon--you know, 2, 3 in the afternoon
and people are backed up on this bridge.
A lot of the people who are backed up, by the way, are people who are
in business. Eighteen-wheelers are trying to get through because it is
the confluence of I-71 and I-75, two major interstates. So it is a big
economic issue with all that lost time in commuting every day across
that bridge, and all the lost time in terms of the freight has a big
economic impact--billions of dollars, they say. Three percent of
America's commerce goes across that bridge every day, so it is a real
problem.
We have never been able to figure out how to fix it because we can't
accumulate enough money locally--the State, Federal--to be able to make
the big change that has to occur, which is building another bridge,
expanding and fixing up the current one. It has been frustrating.
This legislation signed today will finally provide the tools to do
that. They have to apply like any other project around the country. It
is a grant that is based on merit, but the grant is specifically
focused on major bridges, like ours, where you have this economic
impact that are so-called functionally obsolete, meaning they are
carrying more traffic than they should be. Ours is carrying twice as
much.
It should fit very well, but they are going to have to come up with a
local match as well. I am confident that it can be found--a local
match, which is less than we did before when we had a tough time
finding that local match and were not able to move forward.
People in my community, they are ready for this bridge to be fixed. I
mean, the Brent Spence Bridge is something I have heard about, again,
during my entire career.
I got a little bit of funding here and there to do the environmental
impact statement or do the engineering, but to actually get in there
and do it is going to be extremely expensive. You are not going to find
2, 3-plus billion dollars without this kind of a Federal commitment.
That is in this legislation, as an example.
It is also helpful that this legislation deals with our ports because
one of the issues right now we have with the supply chain crisis is
things are just not moving through our ports as quickly as they should,
in part because our ports have fallen behind.
I mentioned other countries who spend more infrastructure. Countries
like China spend a lot on their ports. China spends more than we do, as
do other countries, because they know if you spend money on
infrastructure, you get a more efficient economy that leads to higher
productivity, and that, in turn, leads to economic growth and more tax
revenue coming in, frankly. These are all factors that should be
considered in looking at an infrastructure bill.
It is not like normal spending that might be stimulative spending
that goes out the door right away. This spending will happen over 2, 3,
5, 10, even 15 years for these major projects. And then these assets
that you are investing in--let's say it is a port, let's say it is
freight rail, or let's say it is the bridge in Cincinnati or the
infrastructure that is a water infrastructure issue in northeast Ohio
because of lead pipes--what is fixed will last for a long time, so it
is an investment in a long-term asset.
Right now, our country is facing historically high levels of
inflation--the highest inflation we have had in more than 30 years. It
is a big problem. Everything has gone up.
Gas--I heard yesterday now gas has gone up 50 percent this year. Two
weeks ago, it was 42 percent. But all I know is it has gone up about a
buck a gallon. When I fill up my pickup truck, I am spending $100 now.
That is tough for people, particularly people who have to commute for
their work.
For lower middle-income families in Ohio, this inflation is really
devastating. You go to the grocery--I just had somebody show me a
photograph recently that someone took with an iPhone of three rib eye
steaks for $100 at Costco. Everything is going up, and that is really
devastating.
You wouldn't want this infrastructure bill to add to that
inflationary pressure. The good news is, as economists look at this,
they say that it goes into the economy in ways that
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should actually be counterinflationary over time.
What does that mean?
Well, inflation is where you have too much demand and not enough
supply, right?
You have, coming off the pandemic, more people getting out and buying
stuff, yet the supply wasn't there. That causes inflation.
Here in the Congress, we passed legislation that aggravated that--
made it worse--because we passed $1.9 trillion spending in March, much
of which went into people's pockets. Think of the stimulus checks, $600
more on unemployment insurance, and some of the tax provisions. And, in
effect, it created more demand out there and the supply wasn't there,
which raises inflation.
This spending is different. Again, this is not stimulus spending.
This is long-term spending for capital assets.
What these economists say, including some conservatives, like Michael
Strain at AEI and Doug Holtz-Eakin at American Action Forum, they say
this is actually going to lead to less inflation because you are adding
to the supply side.
So by building that bridge, that is part of the supply side of the
economy rather than the demand side of the economy. I am pleased with
that too. What we want right now is to push back against this
inflation, not do something that creates more demand and more
inflation.
One of my concerns about the other legislation that is being talked
about is not the infrastructure bill, but it is called the
reconciliation bill. The Democrats, I heard today, are calling it Build
Back Better more often, but others call it the tax-and-spend bill. That
is about more stimulative spending.
I have very serious concerns about that adding to the inflationary
pressures we already have, which are so serious. And unlike what the
administration said previously, it is not transitory. It is going to be
around for a while. Every economist I talk to says expect it to be
around for a year or two, best-case scenario.
Again, what we signed today, the infrastructure bill, should, over
time, actually have a counterinflationary effect. Most of the money,
again, is not going to be spent in the near term. Most will be spent
over time. But when it is spent, it is spent on the supply side of the
economy rather than the demand side of the economy.
I am really pleased that we were able to pass this legislation. I
hope that it is not just going to provide a model for what we ought to
do in terms of substance--you know, helping make our economy more
efficient, more productive; doing things that make sense for the people
we represent in terms of reducing their commute or making their bridges
safer, as I said; or dealing with the online issue--not having access
to high-speed internet; being sure that people will have safe drinking
water. But, also, it is important, I think, that this bill be looked at
as a model of bipartisanship.
What do I mean by that?
Well, typically, around here, you kind of have a Republican or
Democratic approach to something, and we kind of fight over it and
there is not much space in the middle. The reconciliation bill that is
being talked about right now, as an example, is all Democrats. There
are no Republicans supporting it.
The question is, how do you tough it out through the process?
And because reconciliation can be done with just 50 votes, not 60
votes, the notion is you get every Democrat, and the Vice President
will break the tie.
It is much better, I think, if you do something on a bipartisan basis
because you get more buy-in from the country. You pass better
legislation. It makes more sense for our country, like this
infrastructure bill.
And the model that was used here was that some Republicans and some
Democrats got together and said: Let's come up with a bipartisan
approach to infrastructure, working from the middle out, not taking our
directions from leadership on the right or on the left--Democrat,
Republican or the White House. Let's come up with something ourselves
that makes sense.
This was in the context of an early Biden administration proposal on
infrastructure. Again, it is confusing because there are so many
different bills out there, but this one sort of combined the
infrastructure bill that was passed today and the so-called Build Back
Better legislation they are now trying to pass. It had high tax
increases--significant tax increases, mostly on the corporate side, but
would affect working families. In my view and a lot of people's views
on my side of the aisle, everybody was against the tax increases.
Plus it had a lot of what the Biden administration called human
infrastructure. It wasn't just talking about core infrastructure, as we
talked about today, the roads and the bridges and the rail and the
waterways and other things that you would normally think of when you
think of infrastructure: transportation infrastructure, airports, the
ports.
Instead it also included a lot of support for soft infrastructure, as
they called it, or human infrastructure, which in that case was
healthcare, taking care of Medicare changes; some changes, I believe,
in terms of childcare in the current Build Back Better.
What we said as a group--five Democrats, five Republicans--was we
want to do infrastructure. This is something that has been talked
about, again, forever. Every President in modern times, every Congress
in modern times, has promoted the idea of a significant investment in
infrastructure because America is falling behind.
What we said is: Let's make that promise we have given to the
American people, something that we can actually follow through on this
time, by having a bipartisan bill that has the support of both sides.
So we basically took the bigger bill the Biden administration
proposed, pulled out the taxes--so no tax hikes--but also pulled out
the so-called human infrastructure or soft infrastructure and focused
just on core infrastructure. That was the principle basis upon which we
went forward.
The other thing that we decided was that not only are we going to
keep taxes out and focus on core infrastructure, but we were going to
make it truly bipartisan, meaning we are going to come up with a
negotiated settlement and we are going to make concessions on both
sides to find that common ground and get this thing done. We are going
to do it.
Sure enough, we did it. It took us 4 or 5 months. We started 8 months
ago and passed it here about 5 months ago, but we had setbacks because
there were tough issues we had to grapple with: how much money to put
into the way you expand broadband, as an example, and how should it be
done through the States or through the Fed?
We came up with ways we thought made the most sense, but also could
pass muster up here in terms of bipartisanship. In the end, as a rule--
not in all cases, but it is a rule--if it has to be bipartisan, if you
make that your commitment, you are going to get better legislation
because you are listening to everybody, including to the Governors in
the case of broadband, including to the companies that provide the
broadband, but also including the families and the parents who are
driving to the McDonald's to get internet access for their kid to be
able to do her homework, and listening to the small business
entrepreneurs who are saying, We need this level of high-speed internet
to be able to start a successful company in a rural area--say my home
State of Ohio--and also listening to those who are interested in having
enough access to internet to be able to get their medicine online,
basically, to telehealth--to do actual discussions with medical
professionals online rather than having to drive to the hospital, say,
from a rural area.
That was all part of what we intended to do, was to not just have a
good bill substantively, but to show you can do this in a bipartisan
way. That group of 10--5 Democrats and 5 Republicans--then became 11
Democrats and 11 Republicans. We kind of grew out from there. By the
end of the process, we had Democrats and Republicans supporting the
final product, including the majority leader Chuck Schumer and the
Republican leader Mitch McConnell. They both supported it.
And Senator McConnell, in particular, because I am on the Republican
side, gave us the space to be able
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to work this out. He didn't agree with everything that we were doing
all the time. He let his views be known, of course, but he knew that,
you know, we had in our intentions to come up with something that was
truly bipartisan and good for the country and that infrastructure was
an area where we typically had had bipartisan support, but we just
couldn't get it over the line because of the partisan gridlock around
here to do anything.
And in this case, he gave us that space. We came up with a good bill,
and he supported it, and Mitch McConnell's support was helpful. In the
end, 19 Republicans supported the legislation in the House.
Unfortunately, it went over there a few months ago and sat and sat
and sat, and that concerned some of us because we could just see it
becoming more political, more partisan.
And we had a commitment from President Biden and a commitment among
ourselves--not only no taxes, being sure that it focused on core
infrastructure, but also that we would ensure that it was delinked from
anything else, particularly the larger reconciliation bill that is now
being discussed, the so-called Build Back Better bill, but this was
separate. We wanted our bill to be addressed on its merits, which is
what our constituents expect. The American people don't want us to do
Christmas trees up here, where you are trading things off. They want to
know that if you have a good bill, you should be able to get it to the
floor and get it passed, which we did here in the Senate, and I
appreciate that.
But in the House, it got all entangled with this legislation that was
partisan that no Republican supported.
Again, this is the large taxes, large spending bill that is called
Build Back Better, probably $2 trillion of spending. I saw some
analysis today that if you don't sunset all the spending provisions, it
is more like $4.7 trillion, and there is about $1.8 trillion in tax
increases to pay for that.
So we will see what happens. I think there is going to be a gap in
their revenue and their spending based on the analysis I have seen, and
I just think it is the wrong time in the economy, as I said earlier, to
even think about this sort of thing. One, to raise taxes on the economy
right now, that is, I think, exactly the wrong thing to do. We should
be helping to encourage those businesses that are finally coming out of
this pandemic and have been struggling, don't have enough workers, to
be sure that they can get back on their feet, not taxing them, and same
with families, same with the so-called--the passthrough companies, the
smaller companies that would be hurt.
And then we have got to be sure that as we move forward, we are not
increasing inflation again and not--this stimulus to spending that goes
to the demand side that puts more money in people's pockets, it is part
of the reason we have this high inflation.
So I really hope that that legislation, the Build Back Better
legislation, does not move forward.
But my point is, the infrastructure bill needed to be dealt with on
its own and it got tangled up with that and that is too bad. But at the
end, there was a vote permitted finally in the House of
Representatives. After several pledges to have votes that did not
happen, finally, it was voted on about 10 days ago now. And when that
vote occurred, there was enough bipartisan support--not as much as I
would have liked to have seen on the Republican side, frankly, because
I think it is a good bill that Republicans should support, but there
was support on the Republican side and the Democratic side, and it was
passed into law and sent to President Biden, and he signed it today. So
that is the good news, that we were able to get this done, and I hope,
again, provide, at least in terms of what we did here in the Senate, a
model going forward of finding out where can you find consensus between
Republicans and Democrats on big issues that the American people care
about.
I mean, we have got plenty of them. I would put an issue like
immigration, what is happening at the border; I would put an issue like
what is going on with our financial situation, with this huge new debt
we have and the deficit spending every year. But there are so many
issues: healthcare issues, issues that have to do with, you know, how
you deal not just with the immigration on the border but people who are
here. Shouldn't we be able to find some bipartisan consensus on these
things, and isn't that what the American people expect us to do, where
you have got big challenges, whether they are domestic or
international, shouldn't we figure out a way, even though we have
differences of opinion, to find that common ground and to move forward
rather than to be stuck in a partisan gridlock situation?
Today, at the signing ceremony, the President spoke a little about
that and said that he supported bipartisan efforts to move the country
forward.
But by the same token, he also was saying he supports this
reconciliation process that is strictly partisan and would be jamming
our Congress, again, without a single Republican supporting it and
doing policy that we think is wrongheaded, given where we are with our
economy, particularly with regard to inflation and the need to come out
of this pandemic with a stronger economy, more people working, and
concern that tax increases will make that difficult.
So, again, I would like to congratulate everyone who was involved in
this infrastructure process. It was a big group up here in the Senate,
but the group of five and five--the five Democrats and five
Republicans--who kind of led the negotiation, included my colleague
Kyrsten Sinema, who led the Democratic side. She did a terrific job.
She was very persistent. For those of you who know her and have watched
her, that won't surprise you. But she ensured that we kept on track,
and sometimes you get off track because we had a lot of different
issues we had to deal with. And it took us, again, a few months to get
there, but she was very helpful in terms of moving us forward and
getting to a resolution.
Ultimately, all 10 Members agreed: We are going to resolve this
thing. We are going to come to a solution, even if it means not getting
everything we want. And nobody gets everything they want in life,
right? In your family, in your business, and in Congress, it is pretty
much the same thing, and it is pretty simple, which is you can't get
everything you want, but you can get most of what you want, and in this
case, you can do something great for the American people.
The other eight of those colleagues were Susan Collins, Mitt Romney,
Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner,
Jon Tester, and so many others who were also involved and helpful. But
those were some of the colleagues who were part of this G-10 process.
A couple Members that I would like to mention tonight and thank them
are, again, Senator McConnell for his help giving us the space to be
able to work this out and then ultimately supporting it and lending his
critical support to something that is good for the country, good for
Kentucky.
Also, Kevin Cramer, on our side of the aisle, was very helpful to us
in bringing together our group of 22 Republicans and Democrats and then
Shelley Moore Capito. Shelley Moore Capito is the top Republican on the
committee that deals with a lot of these issues, including the surface
transportation legislation, and she was very helpful, along with the
chair of that group, Tom Carper, to get us where we are. They actually
met with the White House, Shelley Moore Capito and a group of her
members, and that gave us a foundation for some of the ideas that we
had but also the committee work we respected.
One of the things that I have seen time and time again in the last
couple weeks is that it is a $1.2 trillion bill on infrastructure. In a
way, it is and in a way it isn't. So just to explain that, briefly,
Congress, you know, every year has a process where we appropriate
funding. We also every 5 years, typically, do a transportation bill,
the Surface Transportation Act. That 1.2 includes that. So the amount
on top of what Congress would have otherwise spent, based on what the
committees had done on a bipartisan basis, is roughly $542 billion. So
it is really a $542 billion bill of new spending, not 1.2 trillion.
That may make some of my Republican colleagues feel a little better
about supporting it because they are concerned about our debt and
deficit, as am I.
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By the way, we came up with ways to pay for that, including actually
repurposing some of the funding that had gone out to COVID that had not
been used, but it is really more of a $542 billion in new spending--
still historic levels and, again, provides enough funding to do all the
wonderful things I talked about in terms of making our infrastructure
work better for all of us.
Second is, I have heard a lot over the last couple weeks particularly
about President Biden's signing his bill, the Biden infrastructure
bill. He negotiated with us, and I appreciate that. His legislation, as
I said, was very different. It had the tax increases. It had spending
on a lot of human infrastructure, and I appreciate that he was willing
to say to the Democratic side of the aisle: OK. That is what I want,
but I am willing to work with you guys on a bipartisan basis. So he did
do that, but he also, again, gave us space to work that out here in the
Senate between ourselves, and that is the reality.
And so when we came together with legislation, we were sitting down
with his people, including a guy named Steve Ricchetti, his Deputy
Chief of Staff, and the National Economic Council head, a guy named
Brian Deese, and we negotiated with them on some of the issues.
But this really came out of, again, a true bipartisan process. It is
not really anybody's bill. It is America's bill because representatives
from every part of the country were involved, and those elected
representatives made decisions that were in the interest of their
constituents but also our entire country. That is why, in the end, I
think this legislation represents not just a victory for the American
people, which it does, but in a way, a victory for common sense and
bipartisanship that this place badly needed.
I hope it is a template for things to come, and I hope that when
someone goes out on a limb and says: I am going to support this
legislation because it is in the interest of the American people, that
that person is rewarded rather than attacked.
And in the House I have seen some of this with some of my Republican
colleagues who supported it; that people are upset on a partisan basis
because they think it somehow gives too much credit to Democrats if
this were to pass.
I mean, I suppose if you took that attitude, nothing would pass
because it is either a Democratic or Republican bill, and this other
side would block it. We need to get into a different mindset, where we
are thinking, ``What is good for the country?''
And, interestingly, when you look at what the polling data is saying
about this bill, it is very popular. Initially, the numbers were, you
know, 87 percent approval rating, Republicans, Democrats, Independents,
everyone. One I saw yesterday was 65 percent because it has gotten,
again, some--it has gotten into more of the partisan back-and-forth,
with Republicans saying that somehow because President Biden is in the
Presidency, and he was involved with this, it is his bill. It is not
his bill. It is all of ours--the bill--but, still, 65 percent approval
rating is pretty rare for any major piece of legislation.
And so the American people get it. They want us to move forward.
There are partisans on both sides, of course, who would prefer only
that it moves forward if it is their way; in other words, we should
block everything. But the vast majority of the American people
understand that we have got to more forward and ensuring that you have
adequate infrastructure to compete with countries like China,
infrastructure changes that will improve our economy's efficiency,
therefore, our productivity; therefore, increased economic growth;
therefore, bringing more revenue in. Who could be against that?
There are differences of opinion on how exactly you ought to spend
the money. I get that, but I do think this is going to be over time--5
years, 10 years, 15 years from now--something people will look back and
say: Aha. This project which could never have been done, now has been
accomplished and makes my life easier, makes my community work better.
That is what this bill is going to be about.
And my hope is that, again, it will be a template for other projects
in the future, where we say: Let's figure out a way--despite our
differences--to figure out some common ground and move forward on these
challenges that our country faces and on issues that people really care
about to be able to make their lives better. Ultimately, that should be
our job.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
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