[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Pages 8655-8656]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             INFRASTRUCTURE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, first I want to talk about 
infrastructure. This week, the administration is laying out a few 
``proposals'' on infrastructure. So far, it has been a major 
disappointment. President Trump pitched a trillion-dollar 
infrastructure plan in his campaign and continued to mention it in the 
days after the election. We Democrats welcomed the idea.
  One of my first conversations with the President after he was elected 
was about infrastructure.
  I said: You called for a trillion-dollar infrastructure program.
  He said to me: At least that.
  I said: Sounds good to me. Let's work on it.
  We have made overtures to the White House saying we would be willing 
to work with the President on infrastructure. I said it to the 
President directly several times. Democrats have been pushing for new 
money for infrastructure for a very long time. We even put out our own 
proposal, a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, hoping it would spark 
a discussion.
  We Democrats continue to welcome a serious and constructive dialogue 
on this issue, but unfortunately the President continues to disappoint. 
We sent our plan several months ago, and we have heard nothing for 
those months. Now the President seems to be intent on pushing forward 
an infrastructure plan on his own, one with few details, that is mostly 
private sector driven--that means tolls--and with minimum investment, 
and that would ignore a huge section of our infrastructure. The 
President doesn't seem to be talking to anyone but a few people in his 
inner circle. Some of them are financiers. Of course, they have been 
financing private sector infrastructure for a long time, but that is 
not the way we have worked in America since Henry Clay, a former--not 
quite a Republican. We didn't have any then, but he was a Whig--the 
predecessor party--and he came up with this idea of internal 
improvements. I remind my dear friend, the majority leader, Mr. Clay 
was from Kentucky.
  Internal improvements were supposed to connect what was then the east 
coast with the far West--Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio--with roads over 
Appalachia, and ever since, we have had bipartisan support on the 
Federal Government building infrastructure and putting in the dollars 
for it but not from President Trump, at least thus far.
  The President's plan is a recipe for Trump tolls from one end of 
America to the other. That is not what the American people are crying 
out for. They don't want more tolls. They want us to rebuild our 
crumbling water systems, bridges, schools, roads, broadband, not 
finance new tollroads.
  Unfortunately, the President surrounds himself with bankers and 
financiers. These are folks who used to work at investment banks. They 
look at infrastructure as an investment to be made by corporations in 
the private sector, but infrastructure has never been a business 
investment.
  Infrastructure has been something the government has invested in for 
decades and even centuries because the benefits of infrastructure have 
great--what the economists call externalities. The benefits for having 
a good highway is not just for the people who use the highway, but if a 
factory locates nearby because it can get its goods there more 
frequently and quickly, that is a benefit. A road itself might not 
generate short-term profits, but a factory might locate nearby and 
bring jobs and economic vibrancy to an area. The private sector might 
not build high-speed internet all the way out to the house at the end 
of the road if there isn't a profit there, but our rural people are as 
entitled to high-speed internet as our people in urban areas and, I 
might add, there are large parts of my city, New York City, where that 
last mile isn't done because there are poorer residents and it is less 
profitable.
  That is why there has always been the role of government to stimulate 
infrastructure investment, to provide support for necessary maintenance 
and construction which the private sector would ignore. To connect that 
house at the end of the road to high-speed internet so children living 
in it can learn, thrive, and benefit in a global economy benefits 
America, even if someone isn't making a huge profit immediately from 
the building of that broadband. It is the same with the highway, the 
same with the bridge, the same with water and sewer, the same with the 
school with internet.
  The bottom line is, if the President wants to sit down with 
Democrats, of course we want to do it, but if he continues to take this 
path with a plan cooked up by Wall Street advisers, it will not succeed 
or it will result in such a small measure that it will not be 
effective.
  Again, I say to the President--there is talk, I read in the 
newspapers--they want to do this by reconciliation, no Democratic 
votes, just 52 Republican votes in the Senate. The same problem they 
had with healthcare, the same problem they are having with tax reform, 
will repeat itself with infrastructure if you don't do it in a 
bipartisan way.
  Our colleagues constantly remind us that ObamaCare didn't work 
because it was done by one party, but now they are letting Trump lead 
them to do the same thing on just about every major issue. It is a 
formula for failure President Trump is advocating. He hasn't been down 
here in Washington that long. It is up to our Republican colleagues to 
teach him that working in a bipartisan way is the only way you can 
really get things done.
  So my view is, we need bipartisanship, but the President might not 
get--just remember that many Republicans are very negative, initially 
at least, with a private sector-driven infrastructure bill because they 
represent rural areas.
  Here is what a Republican Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Barrasso--fine 
man--said: ``Funding solutions that involve public-private partnerships 
do not work for rural areas.''
  My friend, the Republican Senator from West Virginia, has said: ``As 
a person who represents an almost all-rural State . . . I'm concerned 
about how we are going to be able to incent the private dollars to go 
to the less-populated, less-economically developed areas of our 
country, because the investments are just as important.''
  The bottom line is this, an investment bank infrastructure plan like 
the one the President is proposing is a sure loser in Congress. A 
Goldman Sachs infrastructure plan just will not work, except for a few. 
It would turn over a public good to the whims of private finance, who 
will not build infrastructure where America needs it. They will build 
it where they can make a buck, and that means tolls paid by working 
Americans and middle-class Americans. That means rural areas will not 
get the support they need. That means any project that can't generate 
user fees or taxes--like repairing our schools or water sewer systems--
will not get done.
  There is no free lunch. When the private sector wants to finance 
infrastructure, they naturally--that is our free enterprise system--
want to get repaid, but who is going to repay them? The average 
American: the truckdriver who is scratching out a living, the salesman 
or saleswoman who is scratching out a living, the family who is going 
on vacation and has to stop every 30 miles for another big toll, the 
small business that depends on roads to get the goods to and from that 
business location.
  If the President truly wants to rebuild our Nation's infrastructure, 
he

[[Page 8656]]

has to approach this issue in a bipartisan way. There are several 
Republicans who don't want the Federal Government to spend any more 
money on infrastructure, but the majority of Senators of both parties 
probably do. The President needs to sit down with Democrats and work 
something out if he wants to get something done. He hasn't sat down 
with Democrats. He doesn't seem to want to. There are even reports that 
the President is considering doing infrastructure on reconciliation. 
That means just Republican votes, a huge mistake.
  Republicans have been tied in a knot here in Washington. The 
President has been tied here in a knot in Washington because he insists 
on going at it alone.
  Look at the entire Trump administration agenda. President Trump ran 
against both the Democratic and Republican establishments--a populist, 
if you will, but he has thrown his lot, since he has become President, 
with hard-right conservatives and is now pursuing an agenda entirely 
through the partisan process Republicans once decried--healthcare, 
reconciliation; taxes, the same. Now infrastructure? The one area where 
we kept the President out of it, the appropriations process worked 
swimmingly well. Leader McConnell and I, Senators Cochran and Leahy, 
and the House Members got together in a bipartisan way and we worked it 
out. We each thought we had some victories. It worked, but I had to 
stand at this desk and tell our Republican colleagues to keep the 
President out of it because it will bullocks everything up. 
Fortunately, they did. Maybe we can do that again.
  I would say to the President: Mr. President, you can spend your 
entire first-term agenda trying to jam through partisan bills. That 
would be a shame because America needs to get moving again. On 
infrastructure, this is an issue where we really have some common 
ground. That is why Senate Democrats put forward a trillion-dollar 
infrastructure plan that would create millions of jobs and actually fix 
our crumbling roads and bridges, invest in every corner of America, 
with particular attention to rural America.
  We stand ready and willing to work with the President on that plan or 
something similar that actually achieves what he promised on the 
campaign trail.

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