Rebuild America Jobs Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, today I want to discuss the jobs bill we are currently debating and how important it is that we pass this right away.

I also want to respond to the minority leader's remarks this morning in which he tried to deny the bipartisan nature of this proposal and, instead, sought to divert this Chamber toward a hodgepodge of bills taken up by the House.

All across the country, and in our State of New York, from Poughkeepsie to Buffalo, there are roads, bridges, and sewer systems in need of serious repair. In each of these places, there are thousands of middle-class families desperately looking for work.

In the construction trades--the backbone of the middle class in many of our communities, in New York and around the country--there is 25, 30, 40 percent unemployment. That is true for many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. We all know that in previous recessions, 60 percent of the new jobs were in construction. That is because they lower interest rates and build more housing. There is no more lower interest rates because, when the recession began, they were already very low and, of course, there is a surplus of housing now in America.

This week, by voting to pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act, the Senate can get thousands of Americans off the unemployment line and back into the workforce. Because they get paid good salaries, the money they get flows into the economy and creates a multiplier effect that creates other jobs. These are good, solid, high-skilled American jobs--jobs we need.

Investing in our roads, bridges, and sewer systems could not be more urgent. More than one in four of our Nation's bridges is either structurally deficient or obsolete. I put out a list of those in New York State and it was astounding, in every part of our State.

We all know that, as we get closer to winter, our deteriorating roads will place a heavy burden on commuters and local taxpayers. Our local towns, villages, counties, and cities cannot afford the infrastructure work that is needed right now because of tight budgets and budget cutbacks at the Federal, State, and local levels. As this past weekend's storm made clear, investing in our crumbling sewer systems has never been more essential. All up and down the Northeast, old sewer systems have given way to serious flooding.

We can make a downpayment on these priorities by passing this bill, and we should do so in a bipartisan manner.

When I travel across New York State, two of the first things people bring up to me are jobs and fixing our infrastructure. This bill does both. It doesn't matter whether the people are Democratic, Republican, Independent, from upstate or downstate, men or women, liberal or conservative, they all say the same thing, and we see this reflected in public opinion. A recent CNN poll showed nearly three-quarters of Americans support additional Federal investments in our infrastructure. Yes, they are worried about the deficit and our long-term fiscal health, but they know we can't cut our seed corn--infrastructure projects that create jobs and help America grow economically.

Here is the best part of this bill. It invests in projects that create jobs, but it is fully paid for by asking the wealthiest among us--those who have incomes of over $1 million--to pay a fraction more in taxes. They pay that not on their entire income but just on the part that is above $1 million. So if a millionaire--someone worth a lot of money--has an income of $1.1 million, they only pay the small .7-percent increase on the $100,000 that is over 1 million. Their first million doesn't change. The tax policy doesn't change.

Over the last decade, the middle class has taken a punch in the gut. The cost of sending kids to college has gone way up, the job market is tougher and tougher, and middle-class incomes are declining while costs to the middle class are rising. As a middle-class family sits around the dinner table Friday night trying to figure out how to pay all those bills and provide a great life for their future and for their children, it is very hard for them. However, the very wealthy--the very wealthy--have done very well over the last decade.

A lot of those wealthy people live in our State of New York. We say: God bless them. They started successful businesses and have done well over the last decade. So to pay for this bill, we are just asking them to pay a sliver more--.7 percent more of each $1 they earn over $1 million. This is a situation where they can't say: We are afraid the money will be wasted, because it goes to infrastructure--directly to infrastructure. The way this is set up, there is no politics in the process. It is the most needed projects that get the work.

Let me cite a fact. I know many of my colleagues joined with me and Senators Brown of Ohio, Stabenow, and Casey in saying China has to play fair, and we are all worried China will get ahead of us economically. But right now China is spending four times as much on infrastructure as the United States--four times as much. That is not four times as much per capita, that is four times as much period.

Here is the real kicker: According to a recent survey of 1,400 business leaders in 142 countries, the United States ranks No. 24 in overall infrastructure quality. Is that a shame? We are behind countries such as Barbados and Oman. We also rank No. 20 in roads behind the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, and Namibia; No. 22 in ports behind Malaysia, Bahrain, and Panama; and No. 31 in air transportation infrastructure behind Chile, Thailand, Malaysia, and Malta.

How can it be that these great United States that we dearly love, and which always was at the top in creating roads and bridges and tunnels and great water systems--the third water tunnel in New York is being built right now, and it is an engineering wonder, though the planning for it started in the 1950s, I believe--is now ranked No. 31 in transportation, 22 in ports, 20 in roads behind countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Portugal, Malaysia, Thailand, and Chile? If that isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is. We can't afford to let our global competitors get the edge.

So this bill builds back infrastructure, creates good-paying jobs that will send a shot into the arm of an economy that desperately needs it, and pays for it only by taxing the income over $1 million of those who are very wealthy and have done very well in our society.

How can anyone vote against something such as this? One could think maybe the only reason is because some people don't want the economy to grow and prosper. I hate to think that, but infrastructure has always been a bipartisan issue in this body, and it should continue to be.

Let me respond directly to the minority leader's comments this morning. He derided the proposal on the floor as something that had already been tried, something that had no chance of passing, and something that was not bipartisan.

First, already been tried? Oh, yes. Is the minority leader saying because we built the Erie Canal or built the highway system in the 1950s we shouldn't do any more infrastructure? That makes no sense. That just makes no sense. Every study shows the infrastructure part of the stimulus bill created lots of jobs and left us with better infrastructure.

The minority leader then said, as I mentioned, not just that it had been tried already but that it was not bipartisan. We know the need for infrastructure is a bipartisan priority. Just because the minority leader may be imposing a top-down strategy that bars anyone on his side from voting for any proposal offered by the President to improve the economy doesn't mean these proposals aren't bipartisan.

Just yesterday, the former Republican Senator from Ohio, a fiscal conservative if there ever was one--Senator Voinovich--was quoted as saying he believed the need to repair our roads and bridges was so great he thought President Obama should be raising the gas tax to fund those investments. I don't know if I agree with him on that specific solution, but isn't it remarkable, a Republican Senator calling for revenue increases to pay for infrastructure investment?

That is what we do in this bill. Let me say once again that Senator Voinovich is no longer in the Senate, so he is free to pretty much do as he wants. But I would hope other Senators who are in the Senate would join in that call because I believe they know in their heart it is the right thing to do.

The only difference between what we propose and what Senator Voinovich proposes is that instead of asking middle-class Americans to pay more at the pump, we ask those who have an income above $1 million to pay their fair share and to help put construction workers back on the job. That seems like the right set of priorities to me.

So the minority leader is clearly wrong when he says this concept isn't bipartisan.

Another former Senator--Chuck Hagel from Nebraska--has been a leader in calling for an infrastructure bank, which also is in this bill. Senator Hagel sponsored one of the first pieces of legislation creating an infrastructure bank and has continued to call for it since leaving the Senate.

So there are lots of Republicans out in the country who support this measure, and the polling shows a large number of Republicans who support the kind of proposal we have on the floor--building infrastructure and having those who make over $1 million pay for it so we don't increase the deficit. This is a bipartisan proposal.

So let's not hear from the minority leader or anybody else that the proposal on the floor isn't bipartisan. Just this morning, the top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee was quoted discussing the progress he and the chairwoman of that committee are making on a 2-year surface transportation bill. This is great news. I am glad to hear they are close to advancing that bill. But if one believes infrastructure is enough of a priority that they can support a long-term highway bill, why would they object to speeding up some of that investment now so we can put more Americans to work quickly?

This bill is bipartisan for sure. The minority leader has a political strategy to block all our President's initiatives to improve the economy. What does the minority leader call for instead? He has called for the Senate to take up a hodgepodge of bills sent over by House Republicans that, even when taken together, don't do enough to tackle the jobs problem.

Who would believe this hodgepodge of bills will do more for jobs than the traditional way we get out of recessions--infrastructure building? Most of the ideas cited by the minority leader have next to nothing to do with jobs at all. Many of these ideas belong more on a lobbyist's wish list rather than any serious jobs agenda.

It is a stretch to call many of these bipartisan. Many of these bills are items Republicans would be seeking to pass even if we were in a boom and had full employment. Many are just ideological priorities dressed up as job solutions.

It is laughable for the House leadership to act as though these proposals would address the jobs crisis when they are sitting on real solutions such as the China currency bill. The Speaker and the majority leader over in the House say they want to do something about jobs. They say they are worried about the two Houses not working together. We had a large bipartisan majority--65 votes--saying we are going to force China to play fair on currency because their failure to do so causes millions of jobs--good manufacturing jobs, primarily, though not exclusively--to leave this country. There is nothing more Congress could do that would lift our manufacturing sector than to confront China's unfair trade practices. But Speaker Boehner and Majority Leader Cantor sit on that bill and then tell us to take up this hodgepodge of items. The China currency bill passed with a bipartisan supermajority in the Senate. Yet the House leadership continues to sit on the sidelines as China takes advantage of us. The China currency bill is languishing in the House for no good reason.

I suggest Speaker Boehner heed the will of his Chamber and put that bill on the floor and that the minority leader in the Senate would be well served to stop pretending these pieces of the President's jobs bill are not bipartisan just because he is withholding his support in service to a strategy that, perhaps, outlines his No. 1 goal: the defeat of the President.

It is time to stop the games and accomplish something that can make a real dent in the jobs crisis. I say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Pass this bill, rebuild our ailing and aging infrastructure, create jobs, and make sure what we do here does not increase the deficit by having those whose income exceeds $1 million pay a small, little increase to pay for it.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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