Providing for Consideration of H.R. 2898, Western Water and American Food Security Act of 2015, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3038, HIghway and Transportation Funding Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Let me thank my friend from Florida (Mr. Hastings) and congratulate Mr. DeFazio and Mr. Blumenauer on all their work on trying to modernize our national infrastructure. They know what every American out there knows, which is that we have an embarrassing state of affairs when it comes to our roads, our bridges, and our transitways.
It is not just them. We also know from the American Society of Civil Engineers, who are the nonpartisan pros, that they have concluded we have failing infrastructure. They gave our infrastructure system a grade of D-plus, a grade we should all be embarrassed by. But what is even worse is this Congress should get a grade of F for its refusal to actually do something about it.
So we are about to see an expiration of the authorization in a few weeks. Funding will dry out in a few weeks. And so what is the proposal from our Republican colleagues? Let's do 5 more months, through December, at a level they know is inadequate to help modernize our infrastructure. That is their proposal.
As my colleagues have said, we have been here before, and we are tired of Band-Aids. Who can plan to modernize their infrastructure with just a 5-month time period?
These are major investments our States are making, major investments we are making on behalf of our country, and to not have any kind of certainty that the funds are going to be there after the end of December is something that is embarrassing for a country like the United States of America.
So we are proposing today to do the 6-year plan. Mr. DeFazio has put that forward. The President has put forward the 6-year plan, the Grow America plan, to modernize our infrastructure and grow more jobs in the process, and we fund the first 2-year installment. How do we fund it? We fund through a mechanism that I will bet you virtually every American will support, which is to close these pernicious tax loopholes that are allowing American companies simply to move their mailing address overseas in order to dodge their obligations to the American people.
These companies are not moving their employees. They are not moving their management. They are not moving their factories or anything else. They are just changing their mailing address by acquiring a small overseas company. It is called inversion. By doing that, they are escaping their responsibilities to their own country.
That is why my colleague called them Benedict Arnold corporations, because they are still benefiting from everything this country has to offer--educating their employees, the infrastructure that we do have, and all the other support structures they get--but they don't want to pay for it. And when they don't pay for it, guess who pays for it. The American people. Their taxes go up, or we have to borrow more on our credit card to pay for it.
So what we are saying is let's stop these inversions. Let's use that $41 billion to fund the first 2-year installment of a robust infrastructure plan. And we can do it now.
We have introduced the bill, H.R. 3064, introduced by Mr. DeFazio, myself, Mr. Israel, Mr. Levin, Ms. Holmes Norton. The next vote we have, the next vote we cast, will allow this body to take up that legislation.
So we don't have to kick the can down the road for just 5 months with all that uncertainty. We can vote to do a robust 6-year plan, have a modernized infrastructure, and pay for it by shutting down these loopholes that corporations are abusing.
Let's take that money that is right now going into the pockets of people who are dodging our tax laws and invest in infrastructure. Let's get the job done today, not 5 months from now or a year from now. Let's get it done today.
I urge my colleagues to support this legislation and defeat the previous question so we can take it up.
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