Investing in the United States

Floor Speech

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Mr. TONKO. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Cartwright), and thank him for leading us in tonight's discussion on both physical and human infrastructure.

Let me start by extending my comments toward the child tax credit that you made mention of in your last comments. The data now are available from July and August. As we all know, families received their first check in July, and what a bit of welcome relief. And as we look at where those dollars went, 47 percent, from July and August payments--those are the data available currently--47 percent went to put food on the table; 28 percent went toward utilities, including broadband.

So we are talking about kids doing their homework. We are talking about parents having an opportunity to reach the outside world. Middle- income America to have cottage industries up and running. So 75 percent of that tax cut went to food and utilities, and other incidentals absorb the remaining amount of payments. Now, that is a staggering statistic. That should tell us something about the value added of this tax cut.

Madam Speaker, as Representative Cartwright indicated, there is a stark contrast between Republican leadership in the House and Democratic leadership in the House. When the majority was run by the Republicans, they joined the former President in providing a tax cut for the 1 percent of the highest wealth in the country. This reaches across the spectrum of middle-income communities and those looking to ascend to the middle class.

The statistic that I find most heartwarming is that one-half of children living in poverty in our country, one-half of those children, will be lifted out of poverty with this child tax credit. That is a moral standard that we should all embrace.

If you want to really see a comeback in our economy, we support those families, middle-income families, those looking to ascend to the middle income. Those are the families that need the shot in the arm. And it is going to happen by further extending that tax program.

So our heart is with children. Our heart is with those children who need early education, three- and four-year-olds that will be able to have advantages, too. The programs that will provide, not only educational training, but cognitive skill development, cognitive awareness, social awareness that will drive the factors that lead to a productive life.

And so many times education experts will cite the availability of early education as the big factor in determining the outcome of a person's work career and the dollars that individual brings home; so that is very important.

Access to quality childcare. So many families are not rejoining the workforce because they don't have access to healthcare. And if the schools are in this undecided state whether they are going to have virtually learning or in-classroom learning or part of each combined, they need the security of childcare.

So the human fabric, the human infrastructure that is part of the Build Back Better Act introduced and envisioned by this President, President Biden, is tremendously reinforcing to so many families across the country. Powerful information and powerful reinforcements that enable them to dream their version of the American dream.

Now, when we talk about the physical infrastructure, I would be remiss if I didn't equate that to the 20th Congressional District of New York. My district hosts the eastern mouth of the Erie Canal. And the vision for infrastructure in really difficult economic times, by Governor DeWitt Clinton, was to connect the great ocean, the Atlantic, with the Great Lakes.

That inspired not only the development of New York as an entry port, and we now know what a metropolis it is, but it inspired the necklace of communities that were given birth to as mill towns; and then inspired a westward movement. That is infrastructure playing into our economic development into our future. It expanded the turf of this country. It gave so many people the opportunity to insert their skill set, their passion, their abilities into products that fed the quality of life around the world.

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Mr. TONKO. Yes. Not a civil engineer, but mechanical and industrial.

But those engineers are powerful because they make the world spin. And that whole feat, today, if you were to visit the Erie Canal and see the lochs that were developed at a time when modern equipment and machinery wasn't available, it was not only an engineering feat, but a tremendous salute to the workers and the skill and the work ethic that they bore.

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Mr. TONKO. Absolutely.

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Mr. TONKO. Absolutely. And as we invest in rail, we increase ridership if you are getting from A to B in a quicker time period than you would if you were traveling by car. It makes common sense and economic sense. From rail to broadband--I have communities in my district that are unserved or underserved with broadband services.

Today, this is about doctors reading x-rays, children doing their homework, cottage industries launching and staying in business. This is an important bit of modern-day infrastructure. It is akin to the Rural Electrification Act of the 1930s, in the last century.

We have a history that speaks to us boldly about what infrastructure meant. The Rural Electrification Act made America buzz with economic activity; provided economic justice by reaching every corner of this country, which broadband will do.

Let me just mention this, and I will close with this for now. I chair the Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change reporting to the Energy and Commerce Committee. Under our umbrella falls the responsibility for the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The drinking water infrastructure in this Build Back Better effort, and infrastructure in general, is about making certain no children drink out of lead-infested pipes. 10,000 pipes in this country that are feeding and serving homes. There is no way children and families should be drinking water that has lead in it: we know that it is a permanent damage, irreversible; and we know that it is about social and economic justice.

We also provide for more dollars in the SRF, the State Revolving Funds, which 50 capitals across the country receive in terms of the Federal downpayment for water infrastructure. I was in county government back when I started my career, and we had much more of a partnership with Washington.

Today, we are getting on average maybe 4 to 5 percent of all projects that are drinking water-based as a Federal share. Come on, we can do much better than that. If we don't, the issue doesn't go away, and local property taxpayers have to pick up that burden. It is a regressive tax.

So for many, many reasons, we are on board here with a plan that really speaks to the definitive times in which we reside. We now are living in a moment of history where we need to reengage, reengineer our skill sets, our resources, to advance an innovation economy; and to do that, we need a 21st century toolkit and the Build Back Better Act and the infrastructure act, they do it. It is a good downpayment. We are going to still have more work to do.

The President has a vision; it is bold. But we know that leaders in the past, Governor DeWitt Clinton, President Eisenhower, President Franklin Roosevelt, President Teddy Roosevelt with parks, setting aside lands for park development, these were giants in their times.

We have a giant now calling on Congress to help bring the vision into clear view and tether it into the communities across this country.

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Mr. TONKO. Worker training, worker retraining, apprenticeship programs, skills development, childcare, so that families can comfortably go to work and know that their children are in good stead. We have many households that are headed by single-parent moms. We have many households that have both members of the household, couples, having full-time jobs.

It is a different economy. These are different times. We need to adjust. We need to invest in America and into her people, and that is what this measure is about.

I am also involved with the offshore wind industry. And making certain that my district, hundreds of miles away from any offshore wind project, is going to have many jobs because we are going to be building foundations. We are going to be building tower components. We are going to be building the ancillary pieces that are a part of it. We may be building some of the turbine blades that are then installed in the offshore capacity along the eastern network where everyone is going to prosper from this. And we are going to clean the environment, which is a demand of the generations behind us and those yet to be born.

They have the right to demand clean air; to have made clean the air they breathe; and make safe the water they drink. It is a mission that is justified, and we need to be part of that justification.

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Mr. TONKO. Will the gentleman yield?

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Mr. TONKO. Representative Cartwright mentioned, Madam Speaker, the strength of manufacturing and growing our manufacturing jobs. The pandemic alerted us to a supply chain crisis. The Build Back Better Act speaks to addressing the shortages that we had for manufacturing. Supply shortages. That is critical.

We also combined the efforts for manufacturing to be more profitable and provide more jobs by addressing retrofitting manufacturing, so it is energy-smarter as an outcome.

Now, we know we have a very robust plan, a goal that is very robust by the year 2050 to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. If we are going to achieve that, we have to reach to every sector of the economy in order to attain those goals; so we need to look to manufacturing.

Retrofitting manufacturing, making certain it is energy-smart, making certain it can compete in a global marketplace with all the tools at their fingertips is an important standard that is established in the Build Back Better Act.

So the President says we are at an inflection point. I couldn't agree more. We are now in a focus mode where we are going to determine the best outcomes by combining legislation and resources that will speak to the most forceful, sharpest competitive edge for our business community, for our manufacturing base to address our supply chain, to hold down energy costs, reduce costs, reduce the tax burden on households, and provide a vision that will get us to where we need to be.

It is about time that we had this sort of leadership; not just reducing programs, cutting down government, not seeing the effectiveness of sound government. Now we have a leader who understands the public-private partnership--business working with government--to address the needs of those businesses, their workers, worker training, and having the resources to be robustly competitive so that we grow a more fair, more just, more robust, and a more sustainable economy. It is a powerful opportunity.

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Mr. TONKO. Madam Speaker, I will also cite the fact that some of the greatest looking institutional buildings in our districts are from the FDR era: libraries that speak significantly to the cityscapes, institutional settings, schools that really laid out an image of importance to children of how great education is. We have been taught by generations before us that there should be a commitment to people across this country, especially children, to invest in our tomorrows.

How dare we just pass by and cut everything and not help build?

We are hurting ourselves by not investing in those resources that will get us to a stronger economy, research money that will be part of the $555 billion that is part of the investment in climate change, the response to climate change. It is much stronger than that, but there in the Build Back Better Act is the opportunity to advance that effort.

Now, that will include a number of jobs in the trades, installing a lot of the renewable energy and innovative concepts, retrofitting manufacturing and the like. But then there are going to be the white collar jobs as engineers and planners go to work on investing in the newness of discovery. That will come with many people working in labs and research centers who will get us to a stronger outcome.

Where there is no vision, the people shall perish. We learn that when we open our Book. That should speak to us. It is important for us to have a boldness of vision that will take an investment but certainly render lucrative dividends for the people in this moment and those generations that will follow us.

Let them look 100 years from now at this moment and say they got it; they invested; they received great assets from those before them; and they saw that they had to do likewise and contribute to the tomorrows that that group will enjoy 100 years out and beyond.

This is our moment to really shine.

The gentleman talked about the fact that this effort is paid for. That is a good balance that we bring into the House. We tell people that we balanced it so that there is a payment mechanism for all that we choose to do. That was not the case with the huge tax cut of 2016. They expected a trickle-down and that it would pay for itself.

What did we see happening to the deficit? It bloated from that tax cut.

Then, Madam Speaker, you will hear debate on this floor about raising the debt ceiling so that America can pay her bills. What was their message? They want this money so they can spend more.

No, we are paying the dollars off that you incurred as bills when you were President and you were the Republican leadership in this House. That is paying for bills that came from the last several years. This payment mechanism will make certain we go forward with an investment in America that is paid for and that will reach the great many of us, the great middle-income community.

The strength of America lies in her middle class, and the strength of the middle class lies in union jobs, which is part of this package. Thanks to our partners in unionized labor, union labor, they have worked with us to develop a blueprint for a sounder tomorrow.

Let's get aboard. Let's get this done. Let's go forward and show people that America is strong and that she is at her best when she embraces that pioneer spirit that I saw when I mentioned the Erie Canal. There has always been that pioneer spirit within us. It is part of our DNA.

How dare we deny it as we come together in this crucial moment where we are asked to come up with a response to a global economy, where it is not the U.S. running the entire economy of the world, where we have to compete and compete effectively, and where we give the people of this country the dignity of work where they can earn a great and fair check so they can support their families, pay for the roof over their head, set some money aside, and enable their children to enjoy that future set-aside?

That is what this is about. This is speaking to America, her families, and those in need. It will result in a stronger and healthier workforce and one that has a sense of hope. If we can deliver the commodity of hope to the doorsteps of Americans, we will have achieved.

So, Madam Speaker, I thank President Biden; I thank the leadership in the House; and I thank Representative Cartwright for leading us this evening in this great discussion.

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