H.R. 3684

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it is 2 o'clock on a Friday afternoon, and it looks like we are going to grind through this bipartisan infrastructure bill this weekend, as Senator Schumer has ordained, but we have now had a couple of votes--actually, three votes now--to proceed to a bill that hasn't even been written yet in totality, and indeed the reason we were delayed this morning was because some of the text that was written did not comport with the agreement between the negotiating parties.

I have said this from the beginning; that Senator Schumer should not rush a bill to the floor before it is ready. It is simply not a good practice. And we are talking about more than $1 trillion in spending that will affect every man, woman, and child in America. It is more important to get things right than to get it done fast.

For weeks now, the bipartisan group of Senators who have been negotiating this bipartisan infrastructure package have been engaged in intense negotiations with the White House to find common ground. Over the last several days, in particular, colleagues have logged countless hours to nail down specific provisions and how it would be paid for.

I want to commend all of them for their efforts on both sides of the aisle. It has been a long road, but we still have a long road ahead, and I appreciate both sides working in good faith to try to reach an agreement.

Like all my colleagues, I am eager to see the text in the bill to understand the specifics and how it impacts my State, what is included and what is not included. To gain my support, this legislation must accomplish two things: First, it must send sufficient resources to Texas to build and maintain our vast network of infrastructure projects. We are the fastest growing State in the Nation, with 29 million people, and we need to make sure our infrastructure is up to the need. We have the largest network of roadways of any State in the country, with more than 680,000 lane miles. We are also home to more than 55,000 bridges, far more than any other State.

We have water ports along the gulf coast, as the Presiding Officer knows, having lived in Houston, and ports of entry along the border with Mexico and Canada, all of which are critical to our economy, as well as airports, levees, waterways, and countless other infrastructure projects that are vital to our communities across the State.

The pandemic has also highlighted the importance of broadband, including the need to expand access in unserved parts of the State. It is figured that we have about a third of our State without adequate access to broadband, and, of course, that became critical when our children were studying remotely from home or when people attempted to see their doctor using telehealth. Broadband has gone from a convenience to a necessity.

It is going to take a little while to comb through the specifics of this massive bill--I think at last count it was 2,600 pages long--to see if it meets my two criteria. But that is my priority No. 1.

But my second criterion is this bill must include a real plan to pay for these infrastructure investments in a responsible way. We have had to spend a lot of money in the last 18 months. A lot of this money was borrowed money because we were engaged in an emergency, a pandemic. But now our debt to gross domestic product is really roughly to what it was after World War II, and I agree that most of that was necessary, at least the bipartisan bills that we passed. I think there were a total of five last year.

But now is not an emergency when it comes to infrastructure. Now, this is the bread and butter of legislating, and we have got to come up with a responsible way to pay for the money that we intend to spend.

The current draft of the bill, I think, is lacking in adequate pay- fors. Senator Portman, the Senator from Ohio, said that the Congressional Budget Office would not give the writers of the bill credit for some of the money that is in fact real, some of the repurposed money from COVID-19 that was not used for Federal bonuses to State unemployment, which was, at one point, rejected by the Governors because people were being paid more money not to work than to work. So there wasn't a pot of money to offset some of the spending.

But I think there are additional pay-fors that have been overlooked. So I am in the process of drafting amendments to this bill, including new pay-fors, and I hope these amendments will come to a vote on the Senate floor.

I support the efforts of our colleagues on a bipartisan basis to negotiate the current package. I think they have done us a great favor. But the fact of the matter is, the rest of us, the 80 of us who did not participate in those negotiations, have a right and a duty to participate in writing this legislation too. So it would be a terrible mistake for the majority leader to refuse to allow Members on both sides to offer amendments which could pass and could improve the underlying bill.

It goes without saying that this bill did not go through regular order, which is nothing more than saying it didn't go through the normal committee process. But the benefit of going through the normal committee process is that both majority and minority Members get a chance to participate in writing a bill in the committee even before it comes to the floor.

So now that we have a bill that was negotiated and which, I suppose, at some point we will see in the light of day, but one that was negotiated by only a small fraction of Senators, it is even more critical that we have an open amendment process.

As I said earlier, a transportation infrastructure bill ordinarily would go through an arduous process, through, I think, at least three standing committees--through the Banking Committee, through the Commerce Committee, and through the Environment and Public Works Committee. But that did not happen here.

The bipartisan group of Senators did find common ground among themselves, and now it is time for the full Senate to have the opportunity to offer changes that will improve this legislation and allow all Senators a chance to participate in shaping them.

Our friend, Senator Portman, the Senator from Ohio, said the bipartisan group is committed to having a fair process that allows both sides an opportunity to amend the bill. Senator McConnell has also called for a robust, bipartisan floor process. So I would encourage Senator Schumer, the floor leader, to accept amendments from Members of both sides of the aisle to strengthen the legislation and ensure that it meets the needs of our constituents.

There is no question that the roads and bridges across the country are in need of repair. Every year, the American Society of Civil Engineers evaluates the state of our infrastructure and issues a report card to let us know how we are doing.

Well, America is barely passing with a C-minus. Texas is faring slightly better than the rest of the class, with a C. But it is time, as you can tell, for us to invest in our roads and bridges and the ports and waterways that fuel our economy and the broadband that keeps us connected.

I have been disappointed that Senator Schumer has seen fit to try to force us to vote on a bill that does not yet exist in its entirety, but I hope we can now pump the brakes a little bit and take the time and care to evaluate the benefits and the costs of this legislation, and I hope that there will be an amendment process available to both sides of the aisle to ensure that our infrastructure investments are made fairly and they are paid for responsibly.

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