Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, today's bill is nothing more than a Trojan horse. It is a facade to lure everyone into opening a door for Speaker Pelosi's real priority, a $3.5 trillion or more tax-and-spend plan.

This is unfortunate, because like infrastructure bills of the past, a bipartisan process was very possible.

The Senate's infrastructure bill includes some good provisions for improving our infrastructure, but the process leading up to today and the lack of input from the House should have everyone concerned.

We are establishing a terrible precedent when we take away the ability of chairs and ranking members to write or influence a bill of this magnitude.

Today's debate structure tells the real story. In what world is 1 hour of debate on a $1.2 trillion package sufficient?

Not a single member in this Chamber, on either side of the aisle, has had any input whatsoever in this bill as it was being negotiated in the Senate because Speaker Pelosi's partisan path boxed the House out of the entire process.

House Republicans were eager to work on infrastructure, especially on a bipartisan, long-term highway bill for programs that expire just a few days from now.

In fact, my Republican colleagues and I introduced the STARTER Act and made and outlined priorities we had hoped to address through a bipartisan process.

The STARTER Act proposed record levels of investment in our roads and bridges and, more importantly, made commonsense changes to improve the project delivery process, including reforming the outdated NEPA process.

However, we were very clear that any package that got too large, too expensive, or too costly would get no Republican support.

But instead of working across the aisle to develop a bipartisan House bill that could be conferenced with the Senate, the Speaker hijacked the process to hold infrastructure hostage for the $3.5 trillion or more socialist spending spree the progressives want to ram through using budget reconciliation.

Under their plan, the American people will bear the brunt of this unfettered spending.

Inflation has gone up in every single month of this administration, and it is having the biggest impact on low-income and middle-class families.

Gas prices are up by more than 42 percent from last year. Bacon is up 17 percent. Beef is up 12 percent. Eggs are up 10 percent. The list goes on and on.

Meanwhile, wage growth is lagging, which means paychecks are stretched thinner, making it that much harder for families to put dinner on the table and pay their bills.

The President promised not to raise taxes on the lower and middle classes, but Americans know full well that inflation is taxation. This hidden tax is hitting families' checkbooks very hard.

But instead of slamming the brakes on this reckless spending, the majority is racing towards more and doubling down on their spending spree.

For example, over the last year, transit has already received five times the funding it typically gets in one year, and people aren't even using it. Despite that fact, transit stands to get even more in this bill and through reconciliation.

Worse still, this duplicative spending represents another broken promise by the President, who agreed not to use reconciliation to revisit funding already addressed in the infrastructure bill.

All in all, these numbers are downright frightening. They scare me, and I know they scare the farmers and the small business owners. They scare hardworking constituents across my district who know they will pay for it in higher taxes and higher prices due to inflation.

A recent poll showed that 6 out of 10 Americans support pumping the brakes on the $3.5 trillion or more spending package that is coming on the heels of today's bill. I truly hope the growing skepticism amongst congressional Democrats about that package is enough to bring it to a halt.

But the fact remains that the infrastructure bill we are debating today is not the real priority for the Speaker and the progressives in the majority.

This has been a horribly managed process from the outset, and there was never a legitimate effort to work with Republicans to find common ground on these historically bipartisan issues.

I have supported all three highway bills that have been signed into law during my time in Congress, under both Republican and Democrat Presidents. It might be a surprise to some, but those were all led by Republican chairmen in the House.

Regardless, I never thought I would see the House simply take up a major infrastructure bill from the other body and just vote on it with no input, especially when so many Members of the majority, including the chairman himself, expressed displeasure with this piece of legislation.

It begs the question: What is the real motivation here for the majority to pass this bill?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. GRAVES of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source