Infrastructure

Floor Speech

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Mr. MARSHALL. Madam President, simply stated, President Biden's so- called infrastructure plan helps China and hurts hard-working Americans. Let me say it again. This bill helps China and hurts hard- working Americans. Less than 5 percent--that is how much of this $2 trillion infrastructure proposal actually goes toward building roads and bridges in the United States. Instead, this partisan proposal is loaded with Green New Deal pet projects and an abundance of spending that stretches far beyond recognition of what hard-working Americans define as infrastructure.

This is not the first time we have seen Democratic attempts to redefine the traditional meaning of words. In recent weeks, the White House has also moved to change how people perceive bipartisanship in Congress. No longer do our colleagues across the aisle need to secure Republican votes in order to successfully pass a so-called ``bipartisan'' bill. One obscure poll with cleverly worded questions that helps to garner bipartisan support from the respondents will do the trick. It is a manipulation of words that would allow President Biden to try to ram through this radical agenda and sell it to the American people as fulfilling his campaign promise of unity.

President Lincoln once said: ``You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.''

The American people won't be duped by Washington doublespeak. I hosted five townhalls this past weekend, and Kansans have their eyes open to what is in this bill. Kansans understand that while this bill provides $115 billion for roads and bridges, more than half of over $2 trillion is devoted to green energy projects and the elimination of fossil fuels.

Among these green provisions is $170 billion for electric car chargers and tax incentives for purchasing electric cars. It also calls for electrifying one-fifth of the Nation's school buses and all 650,000 of the U.S. Postal Service's delivery trucks, which will result in driving up costs to Americans.

When unveiling this infrastructure plan, President Biden mentioned China six times as he attempted to sell it as a way to compete with China. However, this rapid jump to electric vehicles does the opposite and will benefit China more than many hard-working Americans. That is because China leads the world in manufacturing 80 percent of the materials needed for batteries and will continue to do so. Of the 136 lithium-ion battery plants in the pipeline between now and 2029, 101 are based in China.

China mines 64 percent of the world's silicon and makes 80 percent of the world's polysilicon with coal-generated electricity--the key component to solar panels. This bill will serve as a boon for China while decimating our domestic oil and gas industry, which helped us achieve our long-held goal of energy independence in 2019.

This bill will harm our general economic output by taking $2 trillion out of the private sector. We should really be calling this package the ``grab your wallet bill'' or ``raise your taxes bill.''

The legislation calls for the largest corporate tax increase in decades and will put the tax burden on American companies toward the top of the developed world list. This will make American companies less competitive in the global market. It is a recipe to kill the economy at a time when our Nation is still recovering from COVID. It will also negatively impact our economy in the long-term.

According to projections from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, as a result of this partisan legislation, overall GDP will be decreased 0.9 percent lower in 2031 and 0.8 percent lower in 2050. Hourly wages would be down by 0.7 percent in 2031 and 0.8 percent in 2050.

Perhaps what is most disappointing is that this bill demonstrates that gone are the days when infrastructure packages were an opportunity to build bipartisan bridges. Thanks to Republicans' control of the Senate and reaching across the aisle, the two most recent bills governing spending on roads and bridges both passed with overwhelming bipartisanship support before they were signed into law.

So in case there is still an opportunity for bipartisanship, let me tell you what I am for. I am for a package that, No. 1, reaches across the aisle and rebuilds our aging roads and bridges; next, incentivizes innovation, invests in future generations, ensures high-speed internet for all Americans, and reforms our permitting process so that when we say ``shovel-ready,'' we really mean shovel-ready, as opposed to going through years of permitting and driving up the cost of the project.

Look, pre-COVID, we had the strongest economy in my lifetime, thanks to Republican-led policies put in place over the last 4 years. Lower taxes and deregulation resulted in historically low unemployment rates, as well as energy independence and affordable energy costs. We need to get back to these policies and not continue the onslaught of harmful redtape, proposed tax increases, and unprecedented spending sprees.

The future of our children and grandchildren depends on it.

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