[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 207 (Wednesday, December 1, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H6846-H6847]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800

  What they did was they invested in American infrastructure: American 
water systems and sewer systems, and maybe above all and most 
recognizable, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, something that 
absolutely made a revolutionary change in this country.
  It made it so much easier to get around this country. It made it so 
much quicker and cheaper and easier for American companies to get their 
manufactured goods to market. It made American companies more 
competitive abroad, this investment in American infrastructure that the 
Greatest Generation made.
  And then after that, nothing. Nothing. For 50, 60, 70 years, nothing. 
We acted in this country like a bunch of spoiled, rotten children, 
entitled little kids. The things that our parents did for us, the 
sacrifices that our parents and grandparents made for us were taken for 
granted.
  We figured that we didn't have to make those sacrifices for our 
children and their grandchildren, that we didn't have to continue to 
update and renew and maintain and develop that portfolio of assets that 
was our American infrastructure that was handed down to us by that 
Greatest Generation.
  We didn't think we had to beef up public transit or passenger rail or 
roads and bridges or drinking water and wastewater systems. We didn't 
think we had to do those things because we took them for granted. We 
took them for granted generation after generation until this year, when 
Democrats in the House delivered--what?--the bipartisan Infrastructure 
Investment and Jobs Act that was signed into law.
  This past week, I want to tell you, House Democrats celebrated those 
jobs with more than 100 events across the country.
  In Georgia, Representative Carolyn Bourdeaux visited a local electric 
vehicle manufacturer called SK Battery to celebrate investments in 
local jobs.
  In Illinois, Congresswoman Cheri Bustos visited a VA clinic where new 
investments in broadband will improve telehealth services for our 
American veterans.
  In Massachusetts, Representative Jake Auchincloss sat down with the 
Massachusetts AFL-CIO to talk about good-paying union jobs coming to 
his district from this infrastructure law.
  In California, Congressman   Jim Costa met with local water districts 
to talk about much-needed water infrastructure updates in California's 
Central Valley, where so many of our crops get grown.
  In upstate New York, we had a couple of Congressmen talking about 
infrastructure. Congressman Brian Higgins, out of Buffalo, visited 
infrastructure projects in his home city, the queen city of Buffalo. 
And we had Congressman  Joe Morelle from Rochester, also in upstate New 
York, talking about how the infrastructure law will help that town of 
Rochester, New York, remove lead pipes.
  We all remember what happened in Flint, Michigan, where 100-year-old 
lead pipes poisoned little kids, gave them brain damage. Why? Well, 
because of a lot of things, but one of them was that we hadn't updated 
the water infrastructure in 100 years in Flint, Michigan.
   Joe Morelle was talking about that when he visited the Plug Power 
Gigafactory to tout the investments the law will make in clean hydrogen 
hubs and clean hydrogen manufacturing. He was talking about that, and 
he was talking about removing the lead pipes in Rochester so that these 
things don't happen again.
  In southern California, Congressman   Mike Levin joined a Republican 
mayor from his California district to talk about how updates to 
infrastructure will help local drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians.
  In New Mexico, Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernandez visited Zuni High 
School to discuss how the infrastructure law will improve access to 
broadband for students, and she toured the Navajo-Gallup water supply 
project with Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez.
  In north Texas, Congressman Colin Allred held a teletownhall with 
folks in his district to talk about all the ways the law will help meet 
local transportation needs.
  In northern Ohio, Representative Marcy Kaptur joined a summit about 
infrastructure to talk about how this law will help with flooding, with 
irrigation, and pollution remediation.
  Also in California, Congresswoman Doris Matsui visited local levees 
in California that will be improved because of this infrastructure 
bill.
  Every single one of these projects represents jobs and economic 
growth for our local communities. It represents investment in America. 
It represents belief in our country, belief in ourselves, that we can 
make the best of what we can do for the economy; that we can create 
jobs; that we can make it in America; we can manufacture goods in this 
country; that we can compete with any other company in the world as 
long as we provide the necessary infrastructure advantages that other 
countries are already doing.
  And don't think for one minute that China is not investing in its 
infrastructure to make its companies compete with us, that Russia is 
not doing it, that the European Union nations aren't doing it. They are 
all doing it. What would ever make us think that we don't have to 
compete with those companies from countries abroad? You know we do.
  Look at the cargo ships lined up outside the ports off of southern 
California. They are full of manufactured goods coming to this country 
for import. It is one thing to look at a piece of paper and look at the 
trade imbalance that America has suffered for years upon years. It is 
another thing to look at the pictures and the video of those container 
ships out in the harbors. Every one of those container ships, it takes 
7,000 tractor-trailers to unload them, they are so full of goods coming 
to this country.
  Why we can't make those goods in this country, a lot of it has to do 
with our suffering, with our falling behind in our infrastructure. Our 
companies need this. This is something we need to do to keep American 
companies competitive. It is a jungle out there.
  In a global world market, what would ever make us think we don't have 
to compete with these foreign companies? That is what this bipartisan 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act does.

  It is widely talked about how there are 13 Republicans who voted for 
the bill. That is why we call it bipartisan. It means both Democrat and 
Republican.
  Some people say, wow, what a wonder, how did you get 13 Republicans 
to vote for investing in America? Well, that is not the wonder. The 
wonder is what happened to the 200 Republicans who voted ``no'' on 
investing in America's infrastructure and updating what the Greatest 
Generation passed down to us in making America as strong as ever. We 
can make it. What happened to these people that they voted ``no'' on 
that?
  These are the people who touted infrastructure week after 
infrastructure week after infrastructure week, and what did they do? 
They did nothing. It took the Biden administration to come along and a 
Democratic-controlled House to pass the thing. That is exactly what we 
did, and what a wonderful afternoon on the south lawn of the White 
House, where we all gathered, Democrats and Republicans who supported 
that bill. It got signed into law.
  You know who I was sitting near? I was sitting near the CEO of Amtrak 
and the president of Amtrak and the

[[Page H6847]]

chairman of the board of Amtrak, and I talked a lot about the way other 
places in this country will benefit from the bipartisan Infrastructure 
Investment and Jobs Act, but I haven't mentioned what will happen in 
northeastern Pennsylvania because it has to do with Amtrak.
  We have been struggling in northeastern Pennsylvania without train 
service for the last 51 years. It has been since the early 1970s since 
a passenger train rolled into Scranton, Pennsylvania. We have been 
without train service for that long. If you don't think that hurts an 
area, you are wrong.
  Here's how we know. We got Amtrak interested in investigating a New 
York City to Scranton, across the top of New Jersey, across the 
Delaware River, into southern Monroe County at the Delaware Water Gap, 
through Stroudsburg, up through Mount Pocono, past Tobyhanna, and up 
into Lackawanna County and Scranton, Pennsylvania. We got them 
interested in looking at that route, and they did.
  You know what they found, Madam Speaker? They found that this is 
exactly the kind of route that Amtrak ought to be investing in. What we 
did was we showed them what we have to offer in northeastern 
Pennsylvania. We showed them all of the recreational opportunities 
there are, we showed them the wonderful hardworking workforce that we 
have, the people that have the kind of work ethic and pride in their 
work that goes an awful long way toward creating successful 
manufacturing companies.
  We showed these things to people coming in from out of the area, and 
the Amtrak executives looked at this, and they said yes, this is the 
kind of line that makes sense. They examined it, and their specialists 
looked into it, and they worked out the economic activity increase that 
would result from such a new line.
  Three trains a day going back and forth between Scranton and along 
that line I discussed to New York City will result, according to 
Amtrak's economic analysis, in $87 million a year in additional 
economic activity each and every year those three trains are operating 
between New York City and Scranton. $87 million a year in economic 
activity.
  They are not just pulling those figures out of the air, Madam 
Speaker. They know what they are talking about at Amtrak because they 
have done it before, and they have seen it happen. They put in about an 
80-mile stretch from Boston northbound, and they saw it happen. They 
saw why it happens, because people want to do development along the 
rail lines. Along those rail lines they have seen it time and time 
again, things pop up, factories pop up, office parks pop up, 
residential developments pop up. All of this means jobs, jobs, jobs, 
and more jobs.
  What we are interested in in northeastern Pennsylvania is not just a 
pretty ride through the countryside on a train. What we are interested 
in is the jobs, because $87 million a year in economic activity is an 
awful lot of jobs.
  These are just some examples, Madam Speaker, of what it means to have 
this infrastructure bill get passed into law and signed by the 
President. These are things that will happen. Maybe the greatest thing 
is that we look toward the future with that law. It is not just old-
fashioned infrastructure.
  I mentioned before, the investment in broadband internet for every 
place in America, it is a model we have seen before. The government has 
done this before. Under the Roosevelt administration it was called the 
Rural Electrification Act, and the idea was there were some places in 
America that did not have electricity and should have electricity. 
Imagine living in a town that nobody can turn on an electric light at 
night. It was shocking and shameful, that kind of inequality in access 
to new technology.
  But we beat that. The Roosevelt administration pushed through the 
Rural Electrification Act, and every nook and cranny and every holler 
and every place that was off the beaten path ended up with electric 
service, and it was a wonderful thing. All of those people who could 
have been left behind were not. They were brought along.

                              {time}  1815

  It is the same thing with our investment in rural internet access. 
When I say ``rural,'' that is largely the type of place that is left 
behind. There are some urban areas that are internet starved, you might 
say, but by and large, it is mostly rural places that will benefit from 
this massive investment in broadband internet.
  Why is it important? Because it is the same thing. If you don't have 
broadband internet in these rural places, these rural places get left 
behind modern life every bit as much as they would have gotten left 
behind 80 years ago without electricity.
  It means that kids studying in school aren't left behind because they 
have access to the internet, and their parents don't have to drive them 
to a local fast-food place so they can sit in the parking lot and get 
online that way. That is ridiculous.
  Every place in America ought to have broadband internet.
  Now, about 65 percent of achieving that goal is done through the 
bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and about 35 
percent, finishing the job, is in the Build Back Better Act. We can do 
such a thing for our children and our grandchildren, but it is more 
than that, Madam Speaker, it is also for our businesses.
  Our businesses depend on the internet as much as anybody else, as 
much as kids in school. They need to have access to quick 
communications. If you have places that don't have that access, you 
know what that means. That means new businesses will not spring up in 
those places. Those places will be bypassed. They will be left behind. 
Why would a business want to start up a new enterprise in a place that 
does not have access to broadband internet?
  It really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure these things out. 
If we want to give these kinds of economic advantages to this country, 
and we want to be inclusive of every place in this country, no matter 
who they are or who they worship or how they vote, it doesn't matter. 
We have to come together as a country and realize that we are all in 
this together, and we need to provide broadband internet to every place 
in America every bit as much as we did that for basic electricity at 
the time we did that.
  Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to tell you that we passed the 
bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and that it was on 
the South Lawn of the White House that President Biden signed it into 
law. It is something that will redound to the benefit of our children 
and our grandchildren, and their children and their grandchildren. 
These are investments that will pay and pay generation after 
generation, and they will create millions and millions of jobs.
  We have already created 5.6 million jobs this year, but it doesn't 
stop there. We are just getting started. Madam Speaker, the Democrats 
have delivered this Congress. I couldn't be prouder.
  Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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