Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I have been listening to this debate in my office on television. Virtually, in other words, I have been watching. I thought everybody would be interested to know I didn't have a T-shirt on, and I wasn't in a golf cart. I was in my office. But it was virtual, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, there is an aspersion on this bill for dealing with climate change. We are here in the midst of a pandemic. It is a terrible scourge on our country and on our people and on our economy. And our President called it a hoax. Our President has also called climate change a hoax. Mr. Speaker, if we are put to sleep by the assertion of the challenge being a hoax, we will not act.

We acted very late on this pandemic. This bill seeks not to act too late for the pandemic that we call climate change that all the scientists, the overwhelming majority of scientists, say will have a catastrophic effect on our global environment and the support of life itself.

And so, yes, this bill deals a lot with climate change because we have a vision of trying to solve the problem before it becomes the pandemic that kills 125,000 people in America, and, of course, according to science, that will be in the millions not the 125,000s.

And there has been a lot of discussion, Mr. Speaker, about this is not bipartisan. In the 2016 election we had a lot of bipartisanship in terms of infrastructure. We said we needed infrastructure. The President said we needed infrastructure. Republicans said we needed infrastructure. Democrats said we needed infrastructure.

Mr. Speaker, in 2019 Mr. DeFazio, Mr. Neal, myself and others went down to the White House, including the Speaker, and we sat with the President of the United States who said he wanted to put $1 trillion into infrastructure. I heard Mr. DeFazio say it earlier; we said $1 trillion.

He said, Oh, no, that is not enough. We need $2 trillion.

Now that is from the President of the United States that then sent an infrastructure bill down here for $200 billion, one-tenth of what he said was needed. The engineers say, of course, $4\1/2\ trillion is needed to fix our infrastructure.

And we said to the President, Mr. President, we will try to support you. We will work together in a bipartisan fashion. Now, tell us how we ought to pay for this.

Frankly, I was sitting not too far from the director of the National Economic Council, Mr. Kudlow. Mr. Kudlow sort of looked down and shook his head, not wanting the President to come up with how he was going pay for $2 trillion.

Mr. DeFazio, you saw that.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Neal looked across the table and said to the President, Mr. President, you tell us how you think we ought to pay for this, and we will work with you. That was bipartisanship.

We went down there some weeks later--frankly, later than we had planned, but it was later--and we were there to hear the President tell us how we were going to pay for a $2 trillion investment. And he frankly made up some spurious reason that Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, had criticized him--and very frankly, we would never have any discussions if he didn't want to talk to people who criticize him because we criticize him all the time. But he returns the favor; he criticizes us all the time. So we would never talk, we would never have any bipartisan discussions--and he walked out on us. There was no markup. There was no discussion. There was no what are your ideas. He walked out on us.

So, yes, we are here with a bill less than the President says is necessary. But we are here to do what he said we needed to do and what we said we needed to do, and we all said it in a bipartisan fashion.

Mr. Speaker, 10 years ago I first launched the House Democrats Make It In America plan for jobs and opportunity, and from the very start, investing in infrastructure has been a key component of that agenda.

Over the years, we have adapted that plan to meet changing needs and new challenges. Democrats ran on jobs, higher wages, making healthcare more accessible and less expensive, and investing in infrastructure. And we picked up 40 seats. We have 63 new Members of the Congress of the United States, so apparently our message resonated in 2018. In my view, it is resonating now.

We were handed an overwhelming mandate to use our House majority to pass a big and bold infrastructure package that will help create good jobs and spur economic growth. That is what the President promised in 2016.

I will wait for a minute if somebody wants to tell me what they thought of the bill that the President sent us to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure.

There is silence in the Chamber, Mr. Speaker, because the President hasn't sent a bill to do that. He hasn't sent a bill to fulfill his promise. Don't blame it on us. He hasn't sent us a bill and so many more of what he promised the American people.

But that is what this legislation will do. Will it do it exactly as the President wanted to do? We don't know because he hasn't told us exactly.

The Moving America Forward Act is the product of years of work by multiple committees with input from many Members, including a lot of our freshmen Members.

I thank Chairman DeFazio. I thank Chairman Pallone. I thank Chairman Neal. I thank all of those who worked with us, including Ms. Waters and Mr. Scott.

They came together to craft an infrastructure package that will truly move America forward.

This bill lays out House Democrats' proposals for the kind of big and bold investments in infrastructure that everyone agrees we need to move America forward.

It would--and I know it has been discussed, but just briefly-- authorize new highway, rail, transit, and airport projects. We need them.

Fund clean drinking water and clean energy: If anybody thinks that Flint was a unique happenstance in America, they are wrong. We need substantial investment, in every city and every rural area in this country, on water.

Extend key clean energy tax provisions by 5 years: Now, if you want dirty energy only--and I am an all-of-the-above needs to be used, certainly, in my lifetime.

Invests in new hospital infrastructure, public schools, and affordable housing: We have seen how they are stretched.

I am also proud that the Moving America Forward Act brings back one of the most popular programs, which was, unfortunately, allowed to lapse under the Republican-controlled Congress of 2011. State and local governments issued more than $181 billion in Build America bonds to support nearly 2,300 local infrastructure projects, I dare say in almost every district represented by anybody in this body. We are bringing them back.

Moving America forward with major investments in infrastructure is part of the Democrats' plan to help businesses and workers in our country Make It In America.

The American Society of Civil Engineers that I spoke of just a little while ago gave our country's infrastructure a D-plus and estimated that we need trillions of dollars by 2025 to keep pace with our needs, and that was before the COVID-19 epidemic hit.

This bill is about competing in the 21st century with our competitors all over the world. They are investing in infrastructure. Now, the pandemic's economic impacts make it even more necessary that we invest in infrastructure projects that will help put Americans back to work and get our economy back on track and moving forward.

Infrastructure, Mr. Speaker, is an area where Democrats and Republicans have been largely in agreement. I regret this is not a bipartisan bill, but no one is surprised. The last Congress that the Republicans were in charge of was the most closed Congress in history, and by that, I mean the most closed rules, no amendments, no participation. They passed a tax bill that was $1.5 trillion--no contact with Democrats.

So, don't cry crocodile tears that you are not included when you haven't included us and, more importantly, the Senate doesn't include the Democratic Party.

It is a shame. We ought to get back to more bipartisanship. I agree with that. But I remind you of the meeting with the President: Mr. President, we will support you. We will work with you. We will try to get the job done. We will try to help you carry out your promise to America.

And the President walked out.

Let's move America forward together. Together, let us help our people Make It In America.

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