Make it in America: Infrastructure

Floor Speech

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I have to catch my breath after listening the last hour to an unbelievable stream of consciousness.

I want to be very specific about some things that we really need to do here in Congress.

Often, we come to the floor in the evening and we talk about the subject of making it in America, rebuilding the American economy brick by brick, road by road, job by job, and putting the manufacturing sector back on its feet.

Today, my colleagues and I want to talk about one part of that Make It in America agenda, and that is not the trade, taxes, energy, labor, education, or research, but rather the infrastructure part of that equation.

Infrastructure is the foundation upon which any economy grows. And the American infrastructure has a problem.

Here is the problem.

The American infrastructure is falling down, falling apart, overused, overworn, and in desperate need of rebuilding. We can do it. America once built the greatest infrastructure in the world. We are falling way, way behind in our own country and we are not even keeping up with other countries, such as China, which is building everything everywhere and laying in place an infrastructure that will carry them into the future.

Here is why we are not keeping up. Here is why we are falling down. Here is why we have potholes. Here is why cars are losing their ability to stay on the road. It is not because the drivers can't drive but because we are not spending the money that we once did. Way back in 2002, we were spending some $325 billion a year. Right now, we are down to somewhere below $250 billion on infrastructure. That is why we see bridges collapsing. That is why we have the transportation snarls and all of the problems in our transportation system.

As they say in the Middle East, just wait. It will get worse. Here in America, we are just 2 months away from this happening. We are going to fall off the transportation bridge. The funding for transportation programs, funded by the Federal Government, will run out of money sometime in August, perhaps in early September, depending on several factors that are simply unknown, but the funding for the maintenance and construction of our roads and bridges by the Federal Government will be over. There will be no more Federal funding available unless this Congress acts.

We have a roadmap. We have a plan. We have a program. President Obama and the Transportation Department, with Secretary Foxx, recently laid out a program called the GROW AMERICA Act. It is a program that would provide $302 billion over the next 4 years, which is money that is desperately needed for rail, buses, ports, the freight system--``buses'' meaning light rail, heavy rail. It is for the transit systems in our cities and the rail systems--Amtrak--bridges and highways. All of this is available. The GROW AMERICA Act is a real proposal. It is one that this Congress should take up. If there are some who have better ideas and better plans, bring them forward. For highways, it is about $199 billion. For bridges and buses, it is about $79 billion and about $10 billion for the freight systems. For the rail, it is another $10 billion to $12 billion.

All of this is possible, but we need to do this. We need to finance it, and this program by the President is fully financed. The $302 billion relies upon the existing excise tax that all of us pay for our gasoline, for our diesel fuel. The President would add another $100 billion or so to fill up the pot so that we would have the $302 billion, which is some 27 percent more than we presently are spending on the transportation system. Where does that extra money come from? It comes from corporate reforms, but that is not the only proposal on how to finance our transportation system.

In a few minutes, I will turn this over to my colleague from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), who will talk about that in some more detail. Also joining us tonight is my colleague from Kansas City, Missouri (Mr. Cleaver), who will be talking about his transportation system in that area.

But this is a real plan--a real proposal--all of the details that we would need on how we could develop the freight programs: where you would connect the ports to the rail systems, how you would provide those intermodal proposals, how we could repair the bridges--the funding for it--over a period of time, and the highways. It is all coordinated around fixing the things that are broken, not necessarily adding but fixing first, fixing what is broken.

For the rail systems, critically important is the intercity rail, which is the Amtrak system here on the east coast. Then this happens to be the Capitol Corridor in my own district, which runs from Roseville, all the way through San Jose and through San Francisco. It is one of the most heavily used rail corridors in the entire system.

One of the things that we also talk about here in the Make It In America is that we spend our tax money on American-made goods. If we are going to spend $302 billion of American taxpayer money, my legislation would increase the Buy American provisions, and I want to give you just one brief example of what it means:

This is the most modern locomotive in the United States, and it is, arguably, one of the most modern electric locomotives in the entire world. It is built in Sacramento. This is money that was made available in the American Recovery Act, the stimulus bill. Written into that bill was a provision that said that money--some $800 million--for Amtrak locomotives had to be spent 100 percent on American-made locomotives. Siemens, the big German manufacturing company, looked at that, and it said: $800 million and 100 percent American made? We could do that. So they took their factory in Sacramento and expanded it, and this is the first locomotive among those that will come off the lines--some 70 or 80 of them--that will be 100 percent American made. This locomotive will soon be operating here on the East Coast Corridor. Eventually, we will get those in Sacramento, but those will be diesel elective.

The final point I want to make before turning this over to my colleague Mr. Blumenauer is this. These were men and women in my district--Fairfield, California--in December of last year, who attended a job fair that I put on in Fairfield. I expected to find a few of my fellow citizens attending that. This job fair took place in December, and the temperature was just below 40 degrees. It was a foggy and rather cold day. More than 1,000 people lined up outside our job fair seeking a job.

Americans want to go to work. Americans want to work. They want those good, middle class jobs that come from building the infrastructure. It is just not the hard hat jobs. These are the technicians, the engineers, the accountants, the secretaries, the people who are working on the software. There are all of those jobs, and these are the men and women who want them.

So our plea today to our colleagues on the Republican side is: Let's go to work. Let's go to work here in the Congress. Let's put forward a transportation bill that avoids that transportation cliff, that allows the American public to go back to work--tens of thousands of jobs. Indeed, 3.5 million Americans will lose their jobs in the coming year if we fail to put together a transportation bill. That 3.5 million plus thousands upon thousands more will be able to go to work if we get this transportation program moving.

The President has given us a program, the GROW AMERICA Act. If there are those with better ideas, they should come forward. We should act upon that legislation, improve upon it and figure out the financing. If the President's notion of ending unnecessary corporate tax loopholes and giveaways isn't the best way, then let's put together a better way.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield back my share of the time and, if possible, turn it over to my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), to manage the remaining portion of this session.

Source