[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7835-7837]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 3, 2017, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty) is 
recognized for the remainder of the hour as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Ms. ESTY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, Mr. 
Garamendi, for our shared commitment to American manufacturing and to 
ensure that, once again, America will be the envy of the world for a 
fantastic infrastructure and transportation system.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne), 
who is my friend and colleague, to continue our discussion on this the 
second day of National Infrastructure Week to talk about the tremendous 
need that we have in this country to do a better job to ensure our 
citizens get to work on time and safely and get home in the same way.

[[Page 7836]]


  Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Speaker, first, let me thank the gentlewoman from 
Connecticut (Ms. Esty) for allowing me this time to engage the American 
people in a subject that is crucial to the economy of this Nation and 
for the citizens that use transportation throughout this country. I 
think Mr. Garamendi really gave us the bang in terms of looking at the 
rail situation. That is an area that I also am going to speak on.
  Let me say that, with every day that passes, the need for Federal 
infrastructure investment grows more and more urgent. Robust and 
reliable infrastructure is the foundation for economic success and 
security. But for too long, the United States has underinvested in our 
infrastructure, and this once vibrant foundation has crumbled.
  Yesterday, in my district, I took a visit with Amtrak to the 107-
year-old Portal Bridge that carries about 450 trains and thousands of 
passengers over the Hackensack River in New Jersey every weekday. It is 
a major bottleneck along the Northeast corridor, the Nation's busiest 
rail line. This rail line goes through New Jersey--well, actually, it 
starts here in Washington and will travel to Boston. So it travels 
through Connecticut as well. But we have a major bottleneck in New 
Jersey.
  This old infrastructure, this 107-year-old bridge, is really outdated 
machinery because this bridge over the river has to spin on a turret 
when there are barges coming through. Normally it gets stuck. The 
replacement of the bridge is a key component of the $23.9 billion 
Gateway program, a comprehensive rail investment program to double rail 
capacity between New Jersey and New York City.
  According to a recent study released by Amtrak, the program could 
generate $3.87 worth of economic benefit for every $1 invested. New 
Jersey and New York have agreed to contribute $750 million towards the 
estimated $1.5 billion costs for the Portal Bridge project. But the 
program will not be able to move forward without Federal investment. 
President Trump's proposal to zero out the New Starts programs 
threatens to derail the overall Gateway program and the Portal Bridge 
project along with it.
  America's infrastructure is failing. Now is the time to build the 
infrastructure that we need to grow our economy, keep America safe, and 
become more competitive. Every dollar of infrastructure investment 
means another $3 of economic growth. America's infrastructure needs 
could be met, and then some, for a fraction of the cost of the 
President's tax plan--which is estimated to increase the deficit by $3 
trillion to $7 trillion over the next decade--while contributing 
immensely to economic growth.
  Mr. Speaker, we see what is happening across this Nation. We have 
seen what has happened when bridges crumble, poor infrastructure and 
tunnels, and it is time for this Nation to invest, once again, in its 
infrastructure if it wants to remain the beacon in the world for 
economic growth.
  I would like to thank the gentlewoman, once again, for allowing me 
this opportunity to talk about a critical topic. If no one hears this 
call, we are doomed in terms of our infrastructure.
  Ms. ESTY of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of National Infrastructure 
Week. I do this proudly as the daughter and granddaughter of civil 
engineers--men who built bridges, roads, airports, and dams all across 
this country and all across the world. However, Mr. Speaker, sadly, 
today I need to recognize that America is not getting a good grade in 
infrastructure. In fact, just this last month, the American Society of 
Civil Engineers gave America's infrastructure a grade of D-plus.
  Now, before we despair, we can be happy it is not as bad as 4 years 
ago when it was a D. But there is no parent in America who will cheer 
when their child comes home and says: I made it all the way from a D to 
a D-plus.
  America can and must do better, and this Congress needs to fulfill 
its duty under the Constitution and under the basic tenets of what a 
government is supposed to do by meeting the needs of the American 
people. There is no better time than now, and there is no better place 
than here, in the people's House, for us to take up this call because, 
at the end of the day, infrastructure is about jobs. It is about 
putting people to work right now replacing those bridges, roads, dams, 
airports, and rails. But, more importantly, it is about getting people 
to work safely and on time tomorrow and getting home in time to see the 
soccer game.
  So we are going to go through, a little bit, some of what these 
grades were. So the composite grade of D-plus is made up of roads, D; 
and bridges, C-plus. Many Americans will remember an August night 10 
years ago in 2007, in the Twin Cities. People were driving across a 
heavily traveled bridge on I-35. The bridge collapsed, sending people 
crashing down into the river. Twenty Americans lost their lives when 
that bridge collapsed.
  In my own State of Connecticut, people remember when the Mianus River 
Bridge collapsed on I-95, the major backbone of the entire Northeast 
corridor. Fortunately, the bridge collapsed in the middle of the night, 
and only three people died. Had it been during the middle of the day, 
that number would have been far higher.
  Mr. Speaker, America should not wait, nor should this Congress wait, 
until bridges collapse or trains derail until we fix our aging 
infrastructure. It is the backbone of what government is supposed to 
do.
  Our roads are congested. In 2014, engineers estimated that congestion 
cost American commuters $160 billion in a single year. For the average 
commuter in an urban area, that was 42 hours of their lives--a full 
workweek. So it is not just dollars and aggravation, it is polluted 
air, and it is broken axles. But it is also time, which for many 
Americans is the most valuable thing we have. We want to see our 
families. We work hard in this country, and we in Congress should be 
working harder to make sure that our hardworking people we represent 
can get home on time to see their families.
  So that is where we are. That is where we are with bridges and roads. 
I had a constituent come up to me in the nearby city of Waterbury last 
week. We were looking at an aging infrastructure intersection. She 
said:

       I came over here just to tell you that I hit such a big 
     pothole last week. I have got a couple-hundred-dollar repair 
     bill for my car, and I don't have the money to pay for it. 
     You have got to tell those people in Washington we need to 
     fix things so I don't have to worry about a pothole ruining 
     my car and making me unable to pay my bills.

  Mr. Speaker, too many of our bridges are structurally deficient--
almost 4 in 10 of our bridges. Thirty-nine percent are 50 years old or 
older. That is the structural lifespan of a bridge--50 years. I drive 
across some of those every single day, and nearly 10 percent of the 
Nation's bridges are graded structurally deficient. Just to say, they 
are really not safe.
  It is not just bridges and roads that are in dire need of repairs. We 
also have our rail system. We saw from my colleague, Mr. Payne, that 
rail systems are a problem. Our transit systems are in desperate need 
of upgrade. Passenger rail, we don't even have a full estimate of what 
that would take to bring it up to speed. We have passenger rail that 
runs through Connecticut; 100,000 people commute every single day. The 
commute right now from New Haven, Connecticut, to New York City is as 
long as it was 100 years ago. Surely America can do better. It is not 
just passenger rail and freight rail.
  We should say a good word about freight rail here. Freight rail is 
the reason we are up from a D-plus to a D. Freight has moved up to a B, 
so we can be glad about freight's grade this past year.
  We also have airports. Now, I don't know how many of you have been 
through airports recently. If you have, you might even be surprised 
they are up to a D and not lower than that. American airports are 
congested. Many of them are aging and are in need of significant work. 
Congestion at airports is growing. Twenty-four of the top 30 airports 
in the U.S. are experiencing the ``Thanksgiving-peak traffic volume'' 
once a week. That used to be

[[Page 7837]]

a term that was used once a year. American airports across the country 
are serving 2 million passengers a year.
  I can tell you about a recent time I landed in LaGuardia Airport in 
New York. It used to be considered one of the Nation's shining 
examples. People came and arrived in LaGuardia and were amazed and 
impressed with this great country.

                              {time}  2000

  One of the last times I was in LaGuardia Airport, I was greeted by a 
blue plastic tarp duct-taped to the ceiling inside the terminal, 
funneled down into a 30-gallon trash can to collect the water that was 
leaking through the terminal. That is not the way a great country 
greets its own citizens, or any others, to one of the world's great 
cities.
  In addition to the work we need to do on our airports, we have our 
water infrastructure. This is our clean water system, and it is also 
our wastewater system. According to the most recent Clean Watersheds 
Needs Survey, the EPA reports that the total wastewater and storm water 
treatment capital needs in the next 25 years is $271 billion; yet the 
Federal Government has been contributing less and less to that growing 
need to make sure that our rivers and streams and waterways are clean.
  All of America saw, last year, what happened when one single 
community, Flint, Michigan, failed to add a single corrosion-prevention 
agent to its clean water and ended up literally poisoning its children 
with lead.
  It is time for America to do better. There are costs when we don't 
invest in this country. I like to think of it more or less like the 
roof on America's house.
  Now, many of you may know it is pretty exciting when you put an 
addition on your house, but it is not exciting to replace your roof; 
but if you don't replace your roof and it keeps leaking, ultimately, 
you lose the entire house. The ceiling collapses. That is where we are 
as a country right now. We have stopped fixing America's roof. We have 
stopped it in bridges and roads. We have stopped in it airports and 
rail. It is time for us to get going.
  I will tell you that I am encouraged by reports coming from the new 
administration about making a serious commitment to invest in America's 
infrastructure, but there are some things that we need to keep in mind 
when we are talking about American infrastructure. One is to remember 
that it used to be called by another name. It used to be called public 
works.
  There is a reason it was public works. There is a reason it wasn't 
private works. So I think it is certainly appropriate that we look to 
do public-private partnerships, to leverage the power of private 
investors to fix some of our aging infrastructure, and to build some 
new infrastructure.
  But we should make no mistake: This country became great, it was 
transformed by the Interstate Highway System, literally linking America 
from end to end. But we cannot expect, nor should we think, that the 
basic public infrastructure of America is going to be able to be 
outsourced to financiers in New York City. If that were the case, they 
would have already done it. These are basic public works where we need 
real dollar investments, and I can assure the administration there are 
many of us in Congress who are ready to move forward with that.
  When we are talking about infrastructure, there is another piece I 
like to remind people we need, because part of infrastructure is moving 
goods and services, getting people to work and back, getting things to 
markets and things they want to buy and put on the table. But the 21st 
century is going to be built on information, and information is what is 
moving most in this society and creating much of the value.
  So if we need information, that means we need energy and we need 
internet everywhere. So in addition to infrastructure and 
transportation, we need to have infostructure. We need to have 
reliable, cybersecure, sustainable energy systems across America, and 
we need to have internet available for every single American to 
participate in this exciting new economy. So we have infrastructure, we 
have infostructure, and we have public works.
  Mr. Speaker, the roof of America's house is leaking. The time is now 
for this body, the people's House, to come together to work on real 
transportation and infrastructure bills. We have dozens of them that 
are available in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and 
other committees.
  But the time has passed; the time has passed for us to wait, to pass 
the buck, to delay fixing the roof because the leaks are getting worse. 
The American people are suffering. When it is your family that is on 
the bridge that is structurally deficient, you would want, if your 
family crosses that bridge every day, you would want to make sure that 
it gets fixed and not wait until it falls down.
  This is the sort of basic function government used to do without a 
question. It is what used to happen in this Chamber because people 
didn't care whether there was a D or an R after their name. Bridges and 
roads don't have D's or R's after their names. They are not affiliated 
with political parties, nor should they be. It is time for us to do our 
jobs and set aside whatever partisan bickering there may be in other 
venues.
  On this, on bridges and roads, rail systems and dams, water 
infrastructure and infostructure, I ask my colleagues to please join 
me--join all of us--and make this, National Infrastructure Week, the 
start of the 115th Congress' commitment to do right by the American 
people, to make these investments, to do the sort of compromise and 
negotiation that this body is supposed to be doing to meet the needs of 
the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

                          ____________________