[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 5]
[House]
[Page 6749]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




               IT IS TIME TO INVEST IN OUR INFRASTRUCTURE

  (Mr. HIGGINS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute.)
  Mr. HIGGINS. Mr. Speaker, every year, our economy loses $33 billion 
to air traffic delays, $121 billion to highway congestion, and $200 
billion to freight bottlenecks. Unless we increase spending on 
waterways, America will lose $270 billion in exports over the next 5 
years.
  According to the Chamber of Commerce, our declining infrastructure 
costs $1 trillion a year in lost economic growth. Ignoring these facts 
is economically irrational and governmentally negligent, but that is 
exactly what Congress has done.
  We just spent $50 billion on our roads and bridges and transit, and 
only 8 percent, or $46 billion, in 2009 economic stimulus went to 
infrastructure; yet we spent over $150 billion rebuilding the 
infrastructure of Iraq and Afghanistan.
  The American Society of Civil Engineers has identified an enormous 
deficit between the projected spending and what is needed to bring our 
infrastructure to a state of good repair.
  Today, I introduced the Nation Building Here at Home Act to close 
this gap. It is time for Congress to make the investments we need and 
reject the pathetically weak policies that we can no longer afford.

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