[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 199 (Tuesday, November 16, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S8220]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill

  Mr. President, on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, I told them: I 
am going to leave this floor and race to Washington and hope that there 
aren't any State troopers nearby because I need to get to Washington to 
go to the signing at the White House of the infrastructure bill.
  This is the Nation's biggest commitment to infrastructure since the 
Interstate Highway System initiative in the Eisenhower administration. 
It will employ hundreds of thousands of people and raise the platform 
for economic success for decades.
  The Presiding Officer was in local government just like I was, and if 
you are in local government, you care about infrastructure. When I was 
a mayor, I had a transit system, I had roads, I had bike trails, I had 
an airport, I had an Amtrak station, and I had a port on the James 
River, which is connected to the Chesapeake Bay. There is a lot of 
oceangoing and freight going out of our port. I had all of that. If you 
are in local government, you care about infrastructure. That is why it 
was exciting to see so many mayors and local officials at the White 
House yesterday when the bill was being signed.
  I was proud to cheer on my colleagues who worked on that bill, and I 
thank all of them. I am especially proud that a provision that I had 
with Senator Wicker, of Mississippi--to enable our historically Black 
colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions to be 
involved in training the workforce and creating the innovations that we 
will need to make this infrastructure investment--was included in the 
bill.
  I want to give a special thanks to my Virginia colleague, Mark 
Warner, who, I think, was sort of an unsung hero in the negotiations 
around the infrastructure bill.
  The impact of the bill is going to be felt in Virginia for 
generations: billions for roads and bridges, ports and dredging, 
airports, rail to trails, railroad, climate resiliency, broadband, 
energy grid modernization, waste and wastewater infrastructure. The 
infrastructure bill contains a significant investment for Chesapeake 
Bay cleanup--that really matters to us--and a significant investment in 
the Appalachian Regional Commission. That really matters to southern 
and western Virginia, the parts of our State that are in Appalachia.
  Allocating these dollars to States in smart ways will allow them to 
prioritize the use of the funds in our cities, counties, and towns in a 
way that will ensure that each State gets to tackle the most important 
priorities, because the Virginia solution wouldn't be the California 
solution or the New Hampshire solution. Every State can use these funds 
to fund the projects that are the most important there. Virginia is 
going to receive a minimum of $100 million for affordable broadband, at 
least $7.6 billion for roads and bridges, and at least $2.7 billion for 
transit, among other sizable investments.
  As I explained this to my Virginia Association of Counties yesterday 
morning, they were overjoyed because they all had--and the Presiding 
Officer remembers this--their local capital improvement projects lists, 
with projects that had been bumping along for years, and there were 
never enough dollars to really advance them. Now the dollars will be 
there to get the projects done and cross them off the lists.