Chaos in America's Infrastructure System

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, this is chaos week in Washington, and there are a lot of things going on. Most people want to talk about Benghazi or--I don't know--maybe the Speaker, the next Speaker or the last Speaker. However, what I would like to talk about today is chaos in America's infrastructure system.

Early this morning on my way to the airport in Sacramento I was driving up Interstate 5, the highway that connects Mexico and Canada and Oregon and Washington and California. I hit a huge pothole and then another pothole. It turns out that the entire right lane was a series of potholes for the 9 miles that I traveled to get to the airport. That is not unusual, but that is the story of America's infrastructure.

Everybody here on the floor wants to talk about how our great Nation is the world's most vibrant economy, the place where intellectual infrastructure takes place, but it certainly is not the place where physical infrastructure takes place. We rank 16th among the developed nations in the world on our infrastructure.

Travel to China. High-speed rail is going every which way. They have new airports. I remember the comment of our Vice President when he flew into LaGuardia in New York City. It wasn't very complimentary.

We have a need to build the infrastructure of this Nation because it is upon the infrastructure that the economy grows. It is upon the highways that we travel and move the goods and services. It is upon the transit system that more than 45 percent of Americans depend on for their transportation.

We have got problems. I was reminded of Apollo 13 and that very famous quote coming back from space: ``Houston, we've had a problem here.'' Yep. America, we have got problems.

That is a picture of the bridge on Interstate 5 in Washington State. Just a little bit north of this bridge is the Canadian border. This bridge collapsed about 3 years ago. There are 63,500 bridges in America that are deficient, and over the last decade we have seen Americans die on bridges that have collapsed. We have got a problem.

Among other things, given all the chaos here in Washington, we have got a problem with infrastructure. The House of Representatives is going to take up an infrastructure bill this week in committee. We will talk about that a little later.

First I want to go through some of the other problems besides bridges and highways. Oh, by the way, it would take $780 billion to bring our highways up to adequate standards. That is a lot of money. Or maybe it is not. That is about three-quarters of what we have spent in Afghanistan over the last 14 years. I guess we make decisions here about where we spend money.

Forty-two percent of our highways are in inadequate condition, and congestion abounds in 42 percent of the urban highways. Yep, we have got problems, but we can solve them. We will see whether the House of Representatives and the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is willing to solve the problems this week when we take up the infrastructure bill here in the House of Representatives.

I would like to have my colleague from California, Representative Janice Hahn, address one of our other problems. It is a problem that she is particularly aware of. She represents the greatest port in America, the Port of Los Angeles, and its neighboring port, the Port of Long Beach.

Representative Hahn.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Representative Hahn, your leadership on the port issues is well known. You head up the PORTS Caucus here in the House of Representatives. You are constantly badgering all of us about the necessity of the ports being expanded.

We know the Eastern ports are facing the challenge of providing access for the Panamax ships, bigger ships being able to go through the Panama Canal. As you have told us so many times, we need to improve the infrastructure on the West Coast for the efficiency so that we can keep those Panamax ships on the West Coast.

The freight issue that you talked about so eloquently here is absolutely on. It is the major part of the American transportation economy. We look at roads, we look at railroads, but the notion of combining this into a comprehensive strategy in which we talk about the movement of goods, the freight movement.

Your leadership is very, very important. I thank you so very much for joining us. I know that you have a tight schedule for the evening, but you broke away to bring us the very, very important message.

I want to continue on here really with the ports. The American Society of Civil Engineers does a report card on the American infrastructure. We would fail. We would have to go back to remedial classes if their report card was somehow the way in which we would judge the work of the United States Congress because, with regard to ports, as we just discussed, it is a C, even though progress has been made.

To meet the needs of the ports, we are going to have to spend an additional $46 billion over and above what is already programmed. We are going to have to spend $748 billion in the future in order to meet the needs of the highways, and that just gets us out of the D rating provided by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

For transit, it is also a D. As I said earlier, some one-half of American households depend upon transit because they don't have a car, and 45 percent of the urban passengers cannot get the services that they need from transit.

It goes on and on and on. Bridges, a C-plus. As I said earlier, 63,500 bridges are inadequate. For the rail system, part of what Congresswoman Hahn was talking about, the railroads have invested over $75 billion of their own money improving their systems, but the intermodal programs that are so necessary require that those rails connect to the highways, to the trucking industry, and that hasn't been done. So the rails actually receive a C-plus ranking.

We have got work to do here. We have got some very, very serious problems. Let me just put this up because there are solutions available to us.

If we take a look at the problem, in this case, the global assessment of the United States is 16th for transportation infrastructure. The solution? Invest. For every dollar that we invest, the economy grows by $3.54. So when you put a dollar in, suddenly you get the economy moving. People go to work.

For every billion dollars that we invest in roads and bridges, we are going to create 21,671 jobs. Those are people that are getting good, high-quality, high-paying, middle-income jobs. Guess what. They are going to pay taxes. So you invest a dollar and you get back $3.54 of economic activity. And you get tax growth, not new taxes, but new people paying taxes.

That is what we want. We want people to go to work. We want jobs in America. We find that, if we invest in infrastructure, we have got the opportunity to create jobs, to increase the tax base, and grow the economy.

Now, on the negative side, underinvesting in infrastructure costs America over 900,000 jobs, including 97,000 jobs in manufacturing. These things go together. We have fortunately had over the years a buy-America requirement in the infrastructure financing for highways and bridges and the rest and for transit, that your tax dollars, my tax dollars, all of our tax dollars, are required to be used to buy American-made goods, equipment, services, buses, and the like.

Unfortunately, it is only 50 percent. So a transit agency can take your tax money and spend 50 percent of that tax money on buying a bus or a train from China, and the other 50 percent presumably would have to be spent on American-made services and goods.

Not good enough. I think it ought to be 99 percent. Why not use our tax money to buy American?

So these are the opportunities and the problems that we have available to us, and that is the large outsourcing that I just talked about.

And the solution? Make It In America. I have talked about that for 5 years here on the floor. Build the American economy with Make It In America laws and regulations. Use our tax money to buy American-made goods and equipment.

Here is what it means. Let me give you a couple of examples of the good news and the bad news. Here is why Make It In America strategies are important.

The bad news is California, my home State, where we had to rebuild the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, spanning from Oakland to the peninsula, San Francisco. It fell down during the '89 earthquake, and then we decided we had to rebuild it.

Well, you know, it takes a long time to figure out how to build it and what it is going to look like. It took forever. However, it was a multibillion-dollar project; and someone decided that it would be cheaper to buy Chinese steel than American steel, so they contracted with a Chinese steel company. The result was 3,000 jobs in China, a brand-new steel mill to manufacture the most high-quality steel. And what the Chinese sent to America was deficient. The welds were insufficient. There were problems in the quality of the steel.

The result was, at least part of that problem was, some $3.5 billion overrun. That is the bad news. California really screwed up. We say, ``Make it in America.''

Guess what happened on the other side of the continent? New York needed to rebuild a new bridge, the New York Tappan Zee Bridge. It was made with United States manufactured steel; total cost, $3.9 billion, 7,728 American jobs because they undertook a buy America requirement, and they bought it in America; on time, under budget. The Tappan Zee Bridge, good; the San Francisco Bay Bridge, bad.

Make it in America, buy American, that ought to be our policy.

I want to move on to where we are this week. On October 29, the United States Congress will engage in its favorite game: kicking the can down the road.

We will take up a transportation and infrastructure bill in the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee this week. Good for us. Several months late, not in time for next week's deadline. So we will kick the can down the road. We will give ourselves another couple of months to ponder how we can address the needs of America's infrastructure.

I want to suggest to you there is a way we can do it. I put this chart up to challenge all of us. This chart displays the opportunity as well as the potential for the missed opportunity.

There are three new infrastructure pieces of legislation that are floating around the United States Capitol. But before we go to those three, I want to call your attention to where we are today.

Highway funding, this is today's highway funding. We are spending somewhere around $264 billion on highways, $64.2 billion on transit. The entire amount over a 6-year period of time--this is 6 years--is $319 billion. This does not include the rail system.

So $319 billion is what we are spending today over a 6-year period of time. I have already said how inadequate that is. I won't go back through that again.

Now, the administration proposed but, frankly, never pushed, never put any weight behind it and, I think, copped out on what is, in my view, a very, very good bill, a comprehensive bill that included rail transit--again, not included here. It was a bill that had $449 billion, not including the rail, over a 6-year period, compared to the $319 billion that we are spending today. That amounts to, what, $120 billion a year more--actually, $130 billion a year more.
That is good. That is what we need. I misquoted that. It is $130 billion over 6 years. That is the kind of money that we need to build the infrastructure.

Highways, $317 billion, over 6 years, compared to where we are today, $246 billion. Significant increase, enough to fix the potholes on I-5. Transit, $114.6 billion over 6 years, compared to today, $64 billion over 6 years. The entire sum, $449 billion, compared to $319 billion over 6 years.

That is the kind of progress that we can and must make if we want to move from 16th among the world's economies, developed economies, to get back up into the top five. That is what we need to do.

Now, once again, this does not include the rail transit. If you add the rail transit in, these numbers are a little bigger. That is the kind of effort.

The United States Senate, what did they decide to do in their bill called the Senate DRIVE Act? $276 billion compared to $246 billion over 6 years; $74.9 billion for transit, compared to $64 billion. That is good. That is $10 billion. Better, but not enough. We actually need over $114 billion or $115 billion.

The entire sum on the Senate side, not including rail, is $361 billion compared to $319 billion. Better, but not enough. Not sufficient to build the infrastructure that this economy and this society need to move out of 16th place back into the top tier of five.

Now, where is the House of Representatives?

This week, we are going to take up a bill that is less than the Senate bill and just a little, teeny, tiny bit better than what we are doing today. So if you are happy with what we are doing today, you will love the House bill. But if you don't want potholes, if you want to deal with congestion, if you want to deal with ports and freight, if you want to move from a D to a B or an A, you don't do it with the House bill.

I understand, this is a starting point. This is the beginning of negotiations. But why in the world would you begin negotiations at the bottom when you need to get to the top? It beats me. I don't get it.

We have got to build the American infrastructure. It is how we move our economy. It is how we move people

back to work in good, middle-class jobs. It is how your tax money should be spent.

And how can we raise the revenue for this?

Well, we don't need to increase the gasoline or the diesel tax. Keep it the same, no increase. People can argue that it should or should not be increased, but you don't need to.

This proposal, the GROW AMERICA Act, the additional $100-plus billion dollars over 6 years to build our infrastructure, is fully paid for by keeping the gasoline and the diesel tax at the level it is today and going after the hidden profits of the United States corporations that have skipped out on their responsibility to this country.

They are hiding their profits overseas. We need to go after those profits and say: You owe it to America; bring that money back and pay your just taxes. That is how this is paid for, fully paid for.

How much? About $120 billion over 6 years, enough to get the job done.

American corporations won't be allowed to run away from their responsibility to their country. They will pay their fair share, here in America. No more tax dodges overseas, folks.

So, where are we? The question for the Congress of the United States is: Are we going to go with what we have today, just a little bit more, just keeping up with inflation? Is that good enough for America to be number one? No, it is not.

Can we do better without burdening the truckers, without burdening the commuters? We can, if we are willing to step up to the American corporations, the big and the powerful, and say: Pay your fair share.

Oh, by the way, their fair share is 14 percent, which is less than one-half of the corporate tax rate.

We will see what happens. The House of Representatives, the men and women that you have elected, are going to make some decisions. We will make a decision about Speaker eventually. That will get taken care of eventually. We will make some decisions about a few other things. But the infrastructure issue of this Nation is fundamental to economic growth.

I hope we make the right decision. I hope we make the decision to grow this economy, to make it in America, spend your tax dollars here at home, and give you the roads, the transit system, the ports, the freight movement, the airports that you need and America needs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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