The President's Budget

Floor Speech

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Mr. COSTA. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California for the good work that she does on behalf of her constituents, and I appreciate the opportunity to make comments that are important investments that we should be making in our infrastructure for all Americans.

The President, when he ran for office, talked about his willingness to invest in America's infrastructure. Sadly, we have seen little follow-through on behalf of the administration to do just that.

America was built over decades and generations on Americans willing to invest in our infrastructure. Clearly, today, we are living off the investments our parents and grandparents made a generation or two ago.

In California, but throughout the country, that includes fixing our aging water systems, our transportation systems, and investing in our school sites. In my home in the San Joaquin Valley, the development of water over the last 100 years has allowed deserts to bloom.

A reliable water supply is a foundation for any economy. Farmers need water to feed the world. We say, ``where water flows, food grows,'' and life becomes increasingly difficult when we have literally hundreds and thousands of Californians and elsewhere around the country in which communities that are small, that are not incorporated, cannot meet or comply with clean drinking water standards either by the State or by the Federal Government. That is just wrong.

The richest country in the world, and yet we have communities that don't meet clean drinking water standards?

We know that many of these water systems were built decades ago. California now has doubled its population. We need to invest.

Madam Speaker, this last week, I introduced legislation for critical water infrastructure in parts of my district, the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, the Delta-Mendota Canal that has lost 15 to 20 percent of its capacity.

The California Aqueduct that not only brings water from the north to the San Joaquin Valley but to Los Angeles as a critical supply of those water needs for Los Angelenos, these canals supply water to tens of millions of people, and also to the Santa Clara Valley Water, the home of what? Silicon Valley.

The legislation that I introduced, the Conveyance Capacity Correction Act, will provide $400 million to fund these needed repairs. This is just one piece of legislation to address the many tools in our water toolbox in California's aging water system, but we need to invest now in our water infrastructure.

We also need to invest now in our transportation system. The roads that were built in California and the highways, the inner city and transit systems and our air transportation have really, post-World War II, been the reason why California has become the Golden State. And we, again, are living off those investments our parents made. We need to make the same kinds of investments.

When the President talks about $1 trillion of investment across America, that is wonderful, and our Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has sought where those needs should be felt. But to do that, you have to put up real money to match local, State dollars with Federal money.

We haven't really provided any new Federal sources of funding since the 1990s; and it is absolutely essential if we are going to have this sort of 21st century system of transportation that is intermodal, that is interconnected, that will be provided for people for work, for pleasure, and for a host of purposes to get from point A to point B, to ensure that they can do it safely, in a way that makes the quality of life absolutely better.

So those are the challenges we face. We are working to put an infrastructure package together that will fund our roads and highways, our transit systems, our inner-city rail systems that include high- speed rail.

We are building high-speed rail in California, and I have introduced legislation that will provide money for fast trains throughout the country, as well as in California. We are under construction now.

But that is one part of an overall connected system that makes sure that our air transportation, that our inner-city transportation and our roads and highways are connected as we see in Europe and in other parts of the world. That is the challenge.

Madam Speaker, I think, if we can come together in a bipartisan fashion as we have done traditionally, we can overcome these challenges and invest in ways that do what? Provide good-paying jobs; because when you invest in the infrastructure--whether it is our water, our transportation, our schools--we are investing in Americans, and those create the good-paying jobs that raise all boats for working people. And, really, that is what we are talking about here when we talk about investing: investing for working people, for all Americans.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Orange County for all of her good work. Freedom of Religion

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