Infrastructure

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, last night, the Senate took a vote on whether to proceed to a debate on infrastructure. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues blocked the Senate from taking this first entirely procedural step.

I understand that the effort to finish the text of the bipartisan bill has progressed since I announced this vote last week. The negotiators have made significant progress, but there are still some outstanding issues. Therefore, at the end of the vote yesterday, I changed my response to a no so that I may move to reconsider the vote at a future time.

My colleagues on both sides of the aisle should be assured, as majority leader, I have every intention of passing both major infrastructure packages, the bipartisan infrastructure framework and a budget resolution with reconciliation instructions, before we leave for the August recess. I laid out that precise schedule at the end of June, and I intend to stick with it.

A new report by the chief economist at Moody's, Mark Zandi, hardly a liberal economist, someone who actually served as an economic adviser to Senator McCain, concluded that both major infrastructure proposals are essential to maximize our economic potential--not just one, both. And, together, they would give a massive boost to the economy, ease inflation pressures, create jobs, increase productivity, and reduce income inequality.

These are incredibly worthy goals, and the Senate is going to keep working on both tracks of infrastructure in order to achieve them.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source