[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 2]
[House]
[Pages 2555-2559]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    CALIFORNIA WATER INFRASTRUCTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Gallagher). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2017, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I see a couple of my colleagues have 
arrived and would like to speak, so I yield to the gentleman from 
Maryland (Mr. Raskin).


                         Commitment to Civility

  Mr. RASKIN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) for the exemplary act of civility in allowing me and another 
late-arriving colleague to be part of the freshman class presentation 
about our collective commitment to promoting and practicing civility 
both within our class and within the Congress of the United States as 
long as we are here.
  It is a great honor to be part of the freshman class of the 115th 
Congress. I am thrilled to make this commitment to civility--and even 
friendship--across the aisle with whatever Republican colleagues are 
willing to hang out with a liberal constitutional law professor.
  Despite my great passions as a liberal and a progressive, I dedicate 
myself to civility for three reasons, and I think they are all 
consistent with my political values and beliefs:
  First, I am a middle child, and so it is in my nature to try to bring 
people together. If you study the theory of birth order advanced by 
Frank Sulloway in his great book ``Born to Rebel,'' you will find an 
exemplary middle child in Reverend Martin Luther King who believed in 
the power of love for reconciling different views in society, and you 
will find a theory of the effectiveness of nonviolent struggle for 
progress and change, a theory that doesn't try to wish away or blink 
away real conflict that people have but embraces conflict as the 
possibility for uplifting everyone in the process.
  Second, I am from the great State of Maryland, one of the original 
middle States tucked between New England and the South. In Maryland, we 
have a habit of working across party lines for the common good. Many of 
the big bills that I introduced in the Maryland Senate I introduced 
with Republican friends, like my friend Senator David Brinkley. We did 
the medical marijuana program together. He is a fellow cancer survivor 
and felt very strongly about that.
  I did a number of criminal justice reform measures, including 
abolishing mandatory minimum drug sentences, with a Republican 
colleague named Michael Hough in Frederick County, who lives within my 
congressional district.
  I even introduced a bill which succeeded for fiscal transparency in 
government, putting up all government expenditures over $10,000 online 
within 48 hours, with Congressman Alex Mooney from West Virginia, 
although then he was a State senator in Maryland who served with me in 
Annapolis.
  Third, as a law professor, I believe that all of our ideas, passions, 
and feelings about politics are refined, perfected, and improved 
through the process of political dialogue, testing, and questioning.
  So I know that our Republican colleagues make us stronger on the 
Democratic side of the aisle, and I hope that we make them stronger, 
too, that we all grow together and that we are able to improve each 
other's ideas, change each other's minds sometimes, and work on issues 
of common concern like infrastructure, which I think is a pressing 
problem that we can gather consensus around in this body, like the 
environment and the perils of climate change.
  Our greatest Presidents have always called us to civility. George 
Washington invited Americans to place our patriotic love of liberty 
first above partisan and sectional feeling. Thomas Jefferson said that 
we are all Republicans, we are all federalists at a time of great 
division in the country. In his first inaugural address, President 
Lincoln said: ``We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be 
enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds 
of affection.''
  So the bonds of affection might seem like a romantic dream given the 
divisions and polarization in the country today, but I do think that, 
if at least we start with civility and respect, maybe we will be able 
to attain the

[[Page 2556]]

level of recovering the bonds of affection that should unify all of us 
as Americans.
  The word ``party'' comes from the French word ``partie,'' a part, and 
we have got to remember--each of us, all of us--that our party is just 
one small part of the whole, and we are all here to try to advance the 
common good.
  With that, again, I want to thank the Congressman for his very 
gracious offer of the time.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Those are wonderful comments, and I am sure they are 
going to last through the entire 115th Congress because our colleague 
from Kentucky would like to echo many of those.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the State of Kentucky (Mr. 
Comer).
  Mr. COMER. Mr. Speaker, I will be brief.
  Mr. Speaker, I am so glad to join with 55 other of my freshman 
colleagues to pledge the commitment to civility. We all took different 
paths to get here. We are all from different parts of the United 
States. We all have different backgrounds and different stories. But 
one thing we all did to get here in this freshman class is we 
campaigned hard, and we listened to our constituents. Whether our 
constituents were conservative or liberal, whether they lived in the 
city or in small towns, they all shared a frustration about Congress.

                              {time}  1745

  They shared the frustration that Congress was at gridlock and both 
parties fought. Many times, people filed bills, knowing they would 
fail, just so they could get before a TV camera and grandstand and 
blame the other party.
  When I got to Congress, I didn't know what to expect. The first thing 
that we did was attend a retreat. We got to know each other. I left 
that retreat inspired because, Mr. Speaker, I believe that this 
freshman class is committed to trying to work together to accomplish 
things that we agree on.
  There are issues that we will never agree on, but there are issues we 
do agree on. We do agree that we need to create an environment where 
every American has access to a good-paying job. We do agree that we 
need to have a military that protects its citizens. There are so many 
issues that we agree on.
  I pledge to work with this freshman class in the future to try to 
create a working environment in which we can put every American first 
and try to accomplish things to work together.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I welcome Mr. Raskin and others who spoke 
before me as they consumed their Special Order hour in a very unique 
way, which is not often seen here on the floor, and that is a colloquy 
between our Republican freshmen and Democratic freshmen.
  I want to take up issues that I know were covered by many of the 
freshmen as they discussed their hopes and dreams about what we might 
actually be able to accomplish in Congress.
  Let me start with a photo. This is the largest waterfall in 
California, and I dare say the largest waterfall in the entire United 
States. It is not a natural waterfall. It is actually a manmade 
waterfall. With all of this turbulence and enormous churning of water 
below, it is a failure of a manmade spillway in California. This is the 
Oroville Dam that has been much in the news over the last several days.
  As many probably know, California suffered through a 5-year drought. 
As a Representative of the great Sacramento Valley of California, my 
Sacramento Valley and my State of California suffered mightily. That 
drought tore apart communities, seriously injured the economy of 
California, and the health of many businesses.
  So we went from famine to feast, and we are suffering serious 
indigestion as a result of the feast of water that we presently have.
  Oroville Dam was built in the 1960s and completed in 1968. This is 
the spillway presumably capable of carrying well over 150,000 cubic 
feet of water. What you see here is the result of a failure right here 
in the concrete in that spillway, resulting in a massive hole in the 
spillway and this extraordinary churning and erosion over here on this 
side. This went on for some time.
  The operators of the dam, the Department of Water Resources in 
California, said: Well, we are going to have to shut this down and take 
a look at the problem.
  They did. And the problem was, while they were expelling 100,000-
acre-feet of water, there was 200,000-acre-feet of water coming into 
Lake Oroville.
  I am going to take a few moments to explain this and then explain how 
California has successfully dealt with what could have been a serious 
tragedy.
  Oroville Dam is the highest dam in California, some 770 feet high. 
The concrete spillway that I just showed you the picture of the largest 
waterfall in the Nation--not as high as Yosemite Falls, which is over 
1,200 feet--is 700 feet down here to the river. It is 770 feet, 
actually. Right here is where the damage occurred. This is the 
emergency spillway, which was never to be used.
  When this dam was built in the 1960s, they said: Well, we will build 
the regular spillway, but we will put this emergency spillway in here. 
This is a 30-foot-high concrete wall. Below it is the natural Earth and 
dirt of the Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills.
  They shut down the spillway and 200,000 cubic feet of water comes 
into the reservoir. The reservoir rapidly rose to the point of where it 
was going over the top of the emergency spillway. Lo and behold, when 
you run 12,000, 15,000 cubic feet of water per second over the top of 
that spillway, you hit the dirt on this side and it drives down the 
river with incredible erosion.
  This entire area was eroded. But most importantly, the erosion moved 
back towards the base of that 30-foot-high concrete wall, jeopardizing 
the integrity of that 30-foot-high barrier against millions upon 
millions of gallons of water stored in the reservoir.
  All of this occurred on Sunday, 3 days ago. The call went out from 
the Department of Water Resources, Oh, my, we have a potential problem, 
as they observed the potential erosion against the foundation of that 
30-foot-high wall. They said it is possible that that erosion could 
cause a catastrophic failure of the 30-foot-high wall, sending down 
into the river channel a 30-foot tsunami, the result of which would be 
a catastrophe downstream.
  This might be a little hard to observe, but I am going to give it a 
try. Here is the dam right here. Adjacent to the dam is the town of 
Oroville, just downstream from the dam. Then, the Feather River 
continues down through my district, Marysville and Yuba City. This is 
all farm county up here with some significant towns like Gridley in 
this area, and Live Oak further down, which I represent. This area is 
represented by my colleague, Doug LaMalfa, who represents the northern 
San Joaquin Valley.
  The reservoir is here. The spillway is here. There is a 30-foot wall 
of water cascading down the emergency spillway, hitting the river and 
spreading out 30 miles across the Sacramento Valley, all the way to the 
west side of the valley where the Sacramento River is. This red area is 
100 feet deep in 1 hour. The city of Oroville faces a catastrophic 
event: 100 feet of water above the community within 1 hour of the 
breaking of that 30-foot wall on the emergency spillway.
  It spreads out. Over here it is still 10 feet deep, 30 miles away. Of 
course, the water is going to flow down the river also. Two communities 
down here of 150,000 people, within 7 hours, would be facing water that 
would be 10 feet deep.
  That is why they called for an emergency evacuation Sunday afternoon 
around 6 o'clock. Nearly 200,000 people left this area, all the way 
over to the west and all the way down some 30 miles down river, moving 
out to high ground up north to Chico, up into the Sierra foothills, and 
down towards Sacramento.
  The water continued to spill over the emergency spillway. The 
Department of Water Resources, seeing the erosion, reopened the gates 
on the main spillway and sent 100,000 cubic feet of water down the 
spillway, creating an incredible but not lovely waterfall.
  Fortunately, the water flowing into the reservoir very quickly 
diminished,

[[Page 2557]]

from a couple hundred thousand acre-feet on Saturday and early Sunday 
to around 40,000 acre-feet toward Sunday evening and on into Monday. So 
the mathematics began to work in favor of the communities and in favor 
of the entire region.
  Slowly, the level of the lake began to recede and eventually the 
water no longer flowed over the top of that emergency spillway. 
Nonetheless, you still had 30 feet of water behind that spillway and 
you had the integrity of the spillway in question.
  They continued to reduce the water level in the lake and, marshalling 
resources up here, began to find a solution to the problem. When the 
sun came up Monday morning, the engineers went out and said: Oh, my.
  There were four specific areas of serious erosion against the base 
and the foundation of that 30-foot wall with 30 feet of water still 
behind it. They decided to take emergency action to bring in by 
helicopter 100,000-pound bags of rock to stack in those four eroded 
areas.
  Downstream, the communities of Marysville, Yuba City, Gridley, Live 
Oak, and other small communities were literally ghost towns. People 
were sheltering in various churches, fairgrounds to the north, 
fairgrounds to the west, east, and south. Nearly 200,000 people had 
moved out.
  As this water receded and the emergency response began to take hold, 
people looked at this situation and said: Maybe this was the great 
would have, could have, and should have--would have, could have, should 
have.
  Maybe when the dam was built, a concrete apron should have been built 
on the downside of that emergency spillway.
  Maybe in 2005, when this entire project went back for re-licensing by 
the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the call by the environmental 
community to concrete the down slope should have been taken into 
account and should have been done in 2006, 2007, but they decided it 
wasn't necessary or it was too expensive or whatever reasons, and so it 
was not done.
  It will be done now. The cost of repair to the main spillway and to 
the emergency spillway will probably be over $200 million.
  So the question arises for all of us: Do we want to wait until there 
is a disaster to take cautionary steps to put it back together, or do 
we want to get ahead of these potential disasters?
  It is a question for all of us here. It is a question for the 
Congress and the Senate and the President. It is called infrastructure.
  You heard some of our colleagues earlier on from the freshman class 
talk about their desire for infrastructure improvements. Here is a 
prime example. Unfortunately, not the only example, but I want to share 
with you what actually is happening down river by the communities of 
Marysville and Sutter County.
  There are 70 miles of river downstream from this point that has been 
in the process of significant levee improvement. Some $700 million has 
been spent over the last 5 to 6 years by the community, by the State of 
California, and by the Federal Government to bring the levee on the 
west side of the Feather River to a 200-year status. It is nearly 
completed, but not completely completed. There is another piece to be 
done even as this flood event takes place.
  But a community stepped forward. It is called SBFCA. The Sutter Butte 
Flood Control Agency has undertaken that work--good for them--in the 
city of Marysville, which is a community surrounded on all sides by 20-
, 30-foot-high levees. The Feather River and the Yuba River come 
together at that point at Marysville, a community that has seen 
catastrophic flooding in the past.

                              {time}  1800

  That community, too, together with the State of California and the 
Federal Government, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Yuba County Water 
Agency have been in the process of rebuilding and enhancing the levees 
around that community. These are positive examples.
  Further down, the State of California has put together a flood 
control program for the entire Central Valley, from Mt. Shasta on the 
north all the way to the Tehachapi Mountains on the south, an 
extraordinary 600-, almost 700-mile stretch of the most fertile land in 
the world and major communities like Sacramento, with millions of 
people at risk of flooding. Different communities putting together 
their own flood control programs, reaching out to the Federal 
Government over the years, providing Federal assistance together with 
the State assistance to control the flooding that has been historic in 
California.
  We need to continue this. We are not nearly finished yet in 
California. We are going to spend the $200 million here, and this will 
be concrete in the years ahead, and this main flood control system will 
be rebuilt.
  But this problem is not just floods. We have seen the flood of 
Katrina in Mississippi where we discovered that, oh, my, the levees 
really could not handle a major hurricane. I will share a story of my 
own. When I was deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior, we 
were studying major storms, what would happen in a period of climate 
change, would we see stronger hurricanes. This was in the mid-1990s 
when I was there as number two in the Department of the Interior. We 
anticipated a major hurricane coming across from Cuba into the Gulf 
area and hitting New Orleans. We were so concerned about this that 
Secretary Babbitt said: John, I want you to go down to New Orleans. I 
want you to talk to the local officials down there.
  I remember sitting in the editorial office of the newspaper, The 
Times-Picayune, sitting there telling them, showing them the map and 
saying: Here is what we believe could happen, and we, the Federal 
Government, together with the community, need to enhance your levees.
  A decade or so later, I was sitting in California. I looked at the 
television set, and I said: Oh, my God, it is precisely what we 
predicted in the mid-1990s, and it came to pass. These are the lessons 
of history.
  Here is another lesson of history. This is the Interstate 5 Bridge, 
the last bridge before you get from the United States to Canada. 
Interstate 5 goes from the Mexican border all the way through 
California, through Oregon, Washington, and then into Vancouver, 
British Columbia. This is a bridge that collapsed.
  How many other bridges have we seen collapse? We have seen the bridge 
collapse in Minnesota, and people died. We have seen rail bridges 
collapse. In California this last week, the main Union Pacific Railroad 
going north and south between Sacramento--well, all of northern 
California--way down to southern California over the Tehachapis, the 
Union Pacific Railroad Bridge just south of Sacramento collapsed. The 
rail cars, at least a day ago, were still sitting there in the water as 
they were busily trying to repair that rail bridge. A good third of all 
the bridges in the United States do not meet safety standards and are 
subject to collapse, and in some cases deadly collapse.
  As we go through all of this, we need to be aware of the 
extraordinary need that our Nation has for infrastructure improvements. 
I think some of us remember the comments of our former Vice President 
Biden when he landed in LaGuardia, New York, and made a comment about 
that facility. I won't repeat it here because I am sure my New York 
friends might find that to be somewhat degrading. But it was a comment 
that was well deserved about the quality of that airport. The 
unfortunate part is that that is repeated in airport after airport 
around the United States: inadequate, old, not up to standards, and 
very poor in providing the efficient transportation that we require.
  We can go on and on. We can talk about the highway system. The 
Department of Transportation estimates that we need over $836 billion 
just to maintain and bring up to standards the American highway system, 
both highways and bridges.
  The public transportation system has a $90 billion backlog for public 
transit

[[Page 2558]]

for the state of good repair. This isn't expansion. This is just to 
have good repair for what we need in our transit systems.
  We can go on and on. Bridges, $20 billion. As I said, one in three of 
the bridges in the Nation--it is actually one in four--are structurally 
deficient and functionally obsolete. Sixty-five percent of our Nation's 
roads are in less than good condition. Our rail and bus transit systems 
face a $90 billion backlog, as I just said.
  The 59 busiest ports in the United States only operate at 35 percent 
of capacity because the channels are filled with silt, and modern ships 
are unable to enter those ports.
  The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, has identified a need 
for $32 billion for improvement of our airports. It goes on and on and 
on.
  America does not want to face this kind of devastation, with the 
failure of dams. I don't have the exact number of dams in the United 
States--I think there are some 83,000--but a good percentage of those 
dams are structurally deficient from many different ways. Obviously, 
Oroville Dam was one of them. It didn't have a sufficient spillway to 
handle the extraordinary flows of the river.
  Another one central to California's water system is the San Luis 
Reservoir, a 2-million-acre-foot reservoir south of Sacramento, east of 
San Jose, that is central to the water supply of California, both for 
southern California, for the San Joaquin Valley, the farmers there, as 
well as for Los Angeles. The Oroville Dam is the key dam for the 
California water system, which supplies water to Silicon Valley, to the 
San Joaquin Valley, as well as to Los Angeles.
  We have work to do all across this Nation, and we can do it. There is 
a lot of talk going on about the infrastructure program. Our new 
President has suggested a trillion dollar infrastructure program, 
somehow financed with private investment. Now, I don't know how that 
would work in repairing a dam such as Oroville or San Luis. I am not 
sure how a private investor would fit into that, but undoubtedly there 
are models in which there can be public-private partnerships. But that 
will not suffice.
  There are programs that have been suggested by my colleague here in 
the House, by Mr. DeFazio. Mr. DeFazio has what he calls ``a penny for 
progress.'' It is a program that would provide nearly a trillion 
dollars of infrastructure investment for highways over a 10-year 
period. We would borrow the money, and then pay it off with a one-penny 
increase in the excise tax for gasoline and fuel as it would keep pace 
with inflation. A novel idea, one that probably would work if we could 
find the votes for it.
  Over on the Senate side, the Senate minority leader, Mr. Schumer, has 
introduced a $1 trillion package of all types of investment in 
infrastructure, and it is a project that deserves our attention. It is 
a project that would provide significant money for highways. In his 
proposal, he would create 15 million jobs over the next 10 years for 
investment in many different kinds of infrastructure.
  He has something that I have talked about here on the floor now for 7 
years. We call it Make It In America, Buy America, use our tax money to 
buy American-made products, bring our manufacturing back. If you are 
going to use rebar to rebuild that spillway, then use American steel. 
If you are going to put a pump in this dam to drain some facility, buy 
an American pump. After all, it is our taxpayers' money. It is my 
money. It is your money. Use the Buy America principle.
  He has a couple of other principles that I think are very important. 
He wants protections for American workers, and this is both life and 
health and safety protections but also wage protection, the Davis-Bacon 
and the prevailing wage programs, all of which I think pull up the 
bottom with good working wages for men and women in the construction 
industry. Also, make sure that there is an opportunity for minority- 
and women-owned businesses, and of course the environmental protection. 
These are kind of the principles of his program, which I happen to 
think are appropriate.
  So what would he spend the money on? He would suggest that we spend 
$210 billion repairing the roads and bridges. Now, remember, that is 
about one-quarter of what the Department of Transportation said is 
needed for the backlog, but, nonetheless, that is a good start. For 
roads and bridges, $210 billion over the 10-year period. That is 1.3 
million new jobs.
  He would also want to spend $110 billion for new water and sewer 
systems. Not bad when you talk about places like Flint, Michigan, and 
the contaminated water in their water supply. In our own Central Valley 
of California, we have numerous communities that have inadequate water 
and, in many cases, water that is contaminated with various chemicals, 
both natural and from the business environment.
  Senator Schumer suggests that we spend $180 billion to expand and 
replace our rail and bus systems. That is more than just the transit 
programs. I suppose that is to make sure that the Union Pacific bridges 
don't collapse.
  He would also have $200 billion for vital infrastructure projects. 
These would be the most critical, the high-priority projects across the 
Nation. I would suggest to the Senator, Mr. Speaker, that the Senator 
might consider rebuilding the spillways on the Oroville Dam.
  He would also invest $75 billion on American schools so that our 
schools are new and modern and meet the needs of our students, another 
$70 billion on the ports. Remember, I was talking about this earlier, 
about the ports that are inadequate. This feeds back to what Mr. 
DeFazio has suggested, that we have the harbor maintenance fund. These 
are fees that are collected on every good that arrives or every 
container that arrives at our ports, and that money be spent on the 
ports, both in the water as well as on the dock.
  That money, unfortunately, is not spent just there. It winds up in 
the Treasury for who knows what purpose. So we would bring that money 
back to spend on our ports, modernizing them. Keep in mind that Panama, 
the new Panama Canal, has been expanded, bigger ships, deeper draft, so 
we need to dredge these ports, we need to build the wharves, the docks 
that can handle them.
  Senator Schumer would also recommend that $100 billion be spent in 
energy infrastructure to meet the needs of a modern energy system that 
is not dependent upon coal and oil but, rather, renewable sources of 
all kinds. And broadband, which is exceedingly important. In my 
district, which stretches 200 miles up the Sacramento Valley, broadband 
is not available. So these are infrastructure investments that I would 
think all of us should agree on, that we need to build a modern 
infrastructure for a modern economy and a growing economy, and along 
the way create as many as 13 million jobs to do that, a project that 
would go forward over the 10-year period ahead of us.
  So we have got the President suggesting a trillion dollar program, 
public-private partnerships, of which I suspect there are some right 
there, we have got Mr. DeFazio with a financing program for highways 
and transit systems and ports, and we have Senator Schumer on the other 
side with a trillion dollar program that would deal with virtually 
every part of the infrastructure, from broadband communications to 
ports, highways, bridges, and the like.
  So we have, I think, an opportunity here in this Congress to address 
a critical need for America's future, not only for the safety of 
Americans so that all Americans can avoid the kind of catastrophe that 
California came very, very close to having on Sunday, with the collapse 
of a 30-foot dam on Lake Oroville, creating not this, but something 
that would be several times bigger than this cascading down the river 
and inundating communities to the depth of 100 feet or more.
  It doesn't have to happen. We should never be penny-wise and pound-
foolish. We should never delay these infrastructure investments because 
we know that bridges will collapse, and along with it the 
transportation system.

[[Page 2559]]



                              {time}  1815

  We know that dams are in jeopardy. We know that our highways are 
filled with potholes. We know that many of our airports are ancient 
and, in many cases, decrepit and certainly not up to modern safety 
standards and certainly passenger convenience. We know that our ports 
need to be dredged and new wharfs and docks built. We know that we need 
to have intermodal systems so that we can efficiently move cargo from 
the ports to the trucks, to the trains, and across the country.
  We know the needs. The question for all of us is: Are we ready to 
meet those needs?
  I would suggest to you that we can. We can do creative financing, as 
Mr. DeFazio has suggested. There is a role for public-private 
partnerships in all of this, as the President has suggested. There is 
also a place in all of this for us to make choices about how we spend 
the taxpayers' money.
  This is one that I want to bring to the attention of Americans. We 
are in the process of making a choice to spend $1 trillion over the 
next 20 years or so to rebuild our entire nuclear arsenal. All of it. 
All of our nuclear bombs, all of the ICBMs in the silos in the upper 
Midwest, new submarines with new intercontinental missiles with new 
bombs on top of those missiles, new stealth bombers such as the new B-
21, new cruise missiles with new bombs. All of these things. New, fast, 
stealthy, unobservable, extraordinarily dangerous because the rules of 
the old Cold War or the old nuclear standoff don't apply.
  One trillion dollars for what purpose?
  We need to ask that question and we need to make choices. There are 
many other choices that we will be making here. Choices about building 
a $30 billion wall rather than repairing the bridges, in this case to 
Canada. Choices about nuclear weapons.
  Our job--your representatives here in Congress--is to make choices 
that are wise, choices that protect you, choices that give all of us an 
opportunity to have good, well-paying jobs, a modern infrastructure on 
which the private sector can then grow and prosper, and men and women 
can earn a good middle class living.
  Or we can make choices on things that really do not provide any of 
those benefits. It is about choices. It is about being prepared for 
tomorrow. It is about avoiding collapsed bridges and reservoirs that 
might fail and send a cascade of water down upon the communities.
  So I ask my colleagues to consider, to ponder the needs of your 
communities, and to make choices that are wise, that look to the 
future, and build a solid foundation that won't fail when that 30 feet 
of water presses up against that foundation. Choices. I hope and I pray 
we make wise choices.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________