[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 8747]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             INFRASTRUCTURE

  Mr. SCHUMER. Now, Mr. President, there are many subjects in this very 
quickly changing world in which we live. The next subject is 
infrastructure.
  Today, President Trump will continue his infrastructure week in 
talking about inland waterways. I would like to repeat that Democrats 
welcome a discussion about these issues. Democrats have argued in favor 
of a large infrastructure package to address our crumbling roads and 
bridges, our levees, our dams, our ports, and our locks for a long 
time. While we disagreed with President Trump on a great many things 
during the campaign, I think many of my colleagues thought that when 
Mr. Trump was elected, we could find some common ground on the topic of 
infrastructure.
  Needless to say, so far, the President's actions on infrastructure 
have been a disappointment. In 6 months, the President has not given 
any real details about his infrastructure plan. The most he has done is 
endorse an off-the-shelf plan to privatize air traffic control. In 
fact, he actually cut infrastructure spending in his budget by over 
$200 billion. Now, during what they have termed ``infrastructure 
week,'' the White House has only proposed to privatize much of our 
infrastructure.
  Today, I expect more of the same--bold promises, few details. What 
details we do hear will likely be about how large financiers should 
decide where and how to build American infrastructure. That has never 
happened before. The approach will not address the very broad 
infrastructure needs we have. Financiers will not pay to finance 
infrastructure projects from which they cannot make a buck. It is their 
right to seek a profit--that is what businesses do and are supposed to 
do--but there is no such thing as a free lunch. They are going to need 
to get recompense when they lay out money. That kind of approach will 
not fix our water sewer systems. It will not expand rural broadband. It 
will not fix our energy grid. It will do one thing--lead to Trump tolls 
from one end of America to the other.
  After the election, we stood ready to work with the President on a 
real bill, provided it would not be just tax breaks for private 
financiers or roll back labor and environmental protections. We even 
wrote a detailed blueprint on how to spend $1 trillion. That was the 
President's number. It would create 13 to 15 million jobs. It would 
rebuild our infrastructure--large parts of it--from one end of America 
to the other. It would not leave out rural areas that will never 
benefit from any kind of private financing, as Senators Barrasso and 
Moran have made clear.
  We sent it to the White House and never heard a peep. I have talked 
to the President several times on the phone and said that I want to 
work with him on infrastructure--no response. Now we have their plan 
without any consultation from Democrats. Even with talk that they 
should do this on reconciliation, there has been no Democratic support 
or votes or input. Just as their doing things by reconciliation is 
tying the Republican Party in knots on healthcare, it does not bode too 
well for them on tax reform. It will mess up infrastructure as well.
  So I hope the President drops his go-at-it-alone infrastructure push 
and instead decides to sit down and talk to Democrats about the issue. 
We agree wholeheartedly on the problem and its magnitude. Let's sit 
down and start talking about what solutions actually make sense. Let's 
not have a few financiers who whisper into the President's ear 
determine our infrastructure policy--because it will be a flop.

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