Rebuild America Jobs Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank and commend my distinguished colleague from Michigan for those very eloquent remarks on behalf of an act that I too rise to support. I thank the Presiding Officer for his very eloquent and persuasive comments earlier in this debate on the Rebuild America Jobs Act and the need for this Nation to focus on the increasing trend in inequality and a very troubling absence of focus on the compelling obligation we have to rebuild America at this point in our history, to rebuild our roads and bridges and ports and airports and schools.

The Rebuild America Jobs Act would provide $50 billion very directly to rebuilding our roads and bridges and railroads and airports, and that is a pressing need for America, but equally as pressing and important are the people hurting and struggling all across the country. People are struggling to find jobs, to stay in their homes, to keep their families together, and those struggles ought to be heard and seen in this Chamber, on this floor, at this moment in our history. They are Americans who played by the rules and who are now out of work, out of support, and soon, sadly, out of hope.

For much of our time recently, we have been mired in the politics of deficit and debt, and that is not to say those subjects are unimportant. I believe in fiscal responsibility. I believe in cutting our debt, restraining spending, and cutting the deficit. But deficit cutting cannot be used as an excuse to gut the social safety net we have labored hard to create over 75 years. It cannot be used to ignore the needs of people struggling to find work. It cannot be used as a reason to neglect our critical infrastructure in this country and the sad and serious defects we now find in it.

One powerful and proven means to cut the deficit and the debt is to create jobs and enable economic recovery. What matters most to the American people now is jobs, work, employment, going back to work, back to good jobs, earning a living for the sake of not only their economic well-being but their respect and self-worth, their dignity. More is at stake here than simply a paycheck. It is the social fabric of our communities, our country, our families. That is why it ought to be a priority. Right now, investing in infrastructure in those roads and bridges and ports and airports is one of the most immediate job creators available.

The Congressional Budget Office has found that returning to full employment would reduce the deficit by 25 percent. That is way more than the politically charged and severely damaging cuts offered by many of my colleagues across the aisle. Thankfully, we have a plan to put us on the path to full employment, and it is called the Rebuild America Jobs Act. This bill would put America back to work immediately by rebuilding our ailing infrastructure.

There is no question about the need. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently rated America's infrastructure and they gave us a D. According to the nonpartisan organization Transportation For America, Fairfield County in my home State of Connecticut has the fourth highest number of motorists using structurally deficient bridges among all the metropolitan areas nationwide. That is an indictment not of Connecticut but of our Nation, and so is the fact that over 9 percent of Connecticut's bridges are considered structurally deficient. Nationwide, in fact, the numbers are even worse. One in four of our Nation's bridges is either structurally deficient or obsolete. No one wants another tragedy such as the one we experienced in Connecticut. It is called the Mianus River Bridge collapse. It killed three people. It paralyzed the roadways in and around the bridge for months.

It cost millions of dollars. It led to litigation that spanned years. The bridge's collapse almost 30 years ago prompted a major infrastructure effort in Connecticut focusing on repair and reconstruction to make our bridges and roads more safe and secure. We need not await the kinds of tragedies we saw 30 years ago in Connecticut and more recently in other States involving bridge collapses and other tragedies that show the deficiencies and unacceptable defects in these roads and bridges.

The need is clear. At a time when civil engineers across the country are calling for vast improvements in our national infrastructure, the measure before this body would accomplish exactly that goal. It would provide aid for States to be spent at their discretion and flexibility as to the projects but not as to the purpose. The purpose would be roads, bridges, airports, railroads.

This bill would invest $50 billion in upgrading and repairing 150,000 miles of road, laying or maintaining 4,000 miles of train tracks, and restoring 150 miles of runways at our Nation's airports. It would also provide seed money--and this purpose is important--for a national infrastructure bank that will attract private sector capital to fund a broad range of nationally significant projects, going beyond the ones that would be immediately supported by the $50 billion in this measure. That national infrastructure bank would be capitalized at $10 billion, but it would attract money from private investors to do far more than would be enabled by the initial seed money.

This is a bipartisan measure, long supported by Senators Kerry and Hutchison. I am proud to have joined them as a cosponsor, and I thank them for their leadership. I thank Members on the House side, including my colleague, Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, for supporting this measure over the years.

A national infrastructure bank would leverage private capital and public capital to fund a broad range of nationally significant infrastructure projects all around the country--in Connecticut and elsewhere. These funds would provide an immediate boost for our economy. It is estimated, in fact, that for every $1 spent on these roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects, our gross domestic product would be increased by about $1.59--for every $1, an increase of $1.59 in gross domestic product. We are talking about investment. We are talking about investment in America's future, in Connecticut's present as well as its future, because people in Connecticut would go back to work, back to jobs, back to livelihoods that give them dignity and self-respect.

With so many people out of work and a dire need for that kind of investment, common sense says we ought to pass this bill, we ought to do it now, without delay, and we ought to do it on a bipartisan basis. There is nothing Republican or Democratic about investment in roads or bridges or airports or railroads to make them safer, more secure, more efficient.

I ask my colleagues, regardless of party, to stand with us and millions of Americans who are out of work, to come together and find a way to pass the Rebuild America Jobs Act. Let's pass this bill now. Let's do it together, without any more delay. People are continuing to struggle and seek work, and this bill is the right thing for America. It is the right thing for Connecticut. Let's do it now.

Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.

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