Infrastructure Needs of America

Floor Speech

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Tonko, thank you so very much. It is always good to be on the floor with you. Thank you so very much for bringing to our attention once again the history of this Nation, how it was built, the great infrastructure.

There is a report card out on how our infrastructure is today. This was put together by the engineers and others who do this kind of work. I am just going to read through this: aviation--these are our airports--D; bridges, C-plus; dams, D; drinking water, D; energy, D; hazardous waste, D; inland waterways, D; levees, D; ports, C--whoa, that is good; public parks and recreation, C-minus; rails, C-plus; roads, D; schools, D; solid waste, B--I guess we can get rid of our trash, that is good--transit, D; and wastewater, D. So, the entire infrastructure is D.

Do you want to know why? Well, here is the reason why. Short-term we run out of money.

Let's take a look here.

In 2002, we spent $325 billion on nondefense structures, all of these things I just talked about, and that was 2002, at the beginning of the Bush Presidency. And then every year after that--we are now down to about $225 billion.

So $100 billion of investment, annual investment, disappeared, and so now we are running all of these D scores. It is fortunate that we are not asking for--well, I guess we are asking for reelection. We are in trouble.

Just by the way, I got a phone call from my wife, and she said: You know, about the pickup truck, John. I said: What about it? She said: I've got to take it in, the mechanic says the wheels are out of alignment. I said: How much is that going to cost? She said: Somewhere over $100. On average, in San Francisco, $782 is spent on every car every year to repair for the damages of the poor highways in California. I don't think I have New York, Mr. Tonko, but I suspect it is no better there.

Let's talk about the future. Excuse me, I am just stuck. I don't want to get stuck on the past, but it is pretty bad. Let's talk about the future.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. No doubt about that. I am thinking about the Twin Cities. That was another bridge that collapsed more recently. These are real reminders of the necessity of dealing with the reality of transportation.

Fortunately, there is a way to solve the transportation and the infrastructure challenges of this Nation. It has been proposed by President Obama. It is called the GROW AMERICA Act. It specifically is designed to rebuild our crumbling transportation system.

It is a comprehensive plan. It deals with all of the various parts of the transportation and infrastructure system. There is a major piece for our rail. There is a major piece for inner city transit buses and transit within the cities. There is a piece for the ports, bridges, and highways. All of this is encompassed in the GROW AMERICA Act, which the President and Secretary Foxx of the Department of Transportation proposed a few months ago.

The legislation was presented to the House of Representatives, introduced here in the House by Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton about a month and a half ago, and it has simply sat there. The Transportation and Infrastructure Committee of this House has not taken it up, although it should.

We should be holding hearings on this issue, because this is what we need to address: the rail system, the buses, the ports, the bridges, the highways, the freight systems; the movement of men, women, materials, and freight all across this country.

The program is a very robust program, and over 4 years it will bring us almost back to what we were doing in 2002. Because in 4 years, we would be spending at the level of $325 billion a year over that 4-year period of time.

But here is what it means for next year. If we were to pass the GROW AMERICA Act now rather than kicking the can down the road, beginning October 1, 2014, we would have $7.6 billion to fix our highway system. We would have $6.8 billion to improve public transportation: buses, light rail, and intracity rail. We would have $3.4 billion for our rail systems, like what you have here in the Northeast Corridor. Out in California, we have the Capital Corridor, the train system between San Diego and Los Angeles, and so forth. And we would have $1 billion for our freight transportation system, or a total of $18.6 billion more in 2015 to fix our crumbling infrastructure.

This is a very robust investment and it covers all of these programs. Each of these programs are necessary in and of themselves, like the highway system, to fill the potholes so that men and women across the country don't have to, as I must do, take my pickup in for a front wheel realignment. And all of these other systems, like transit, rail, port and freight systems, we would be able to grow those. We would be able to begin to fix our infrastructure system, and we would put people back to work.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. Let's put aside that lawsuit tomorrow and all the foolishness that it is and at least let you and me and whoever cares to join in this talk about substantive issues the American people really want, which is to do our work to put together programs that actually meet the needs of the people.

This is the President's proposal. I know the President has said if it has his name on it, it isn't going anywhere. So take his name off of it and let's just call it an American act.

What is it?

It is a 4-year program. It is 4 years of transportation infrastructure funding. As you said, it is holistic. It includes many different elements, including planning and research, as you just described. It is $302 billion over the 4 years, which is a substantial increase over what we are presently doing. It is fully paid for and does not increase the deficit.

I love my charts. I hope the rest of you like them as much as I do. If you don't, I am going to show them anyway.

What happens when we invest a dollar in infrastructure is we actually grow the economy by $1.57. So for every dollar we invest, we get economic growth. We increase the economy in this case by another 57 cents beyond the dollar that we have already spent. And as you just said, you are laying in place the foundation. You have made the capital investment that will endure for years to come.

Anyway, in 4 years, this GROW AMERICA Act is $302 billion over the 4-year period. For transportation, the highway system has $199 billion. That is a 22 percent increase over what we are currently spending. In the area of transit systems, it is $72 billion over the 4-year period. That also is an increase. There is research, which we have talked about.

The multimodal, this I really like. You talked about the transit hubs, and that is an important piece, but the multimodal freight system is the ports, the trains, and the highways all coming together.

I know you have major projects in New York. You may want to talk about those.

These are the hubs for which our economy grows because it is the export as well as the import from overseas. It is the rail system that then takes those containers of that cargo and puts it on the rails to go across the country--whether it is BNSF, or UP on the west coast, or the CSX rail system on the east coast--and the trucks, and they all come together in a hub. So there is actually $10 billion for those rail hubs. For the rail system itself to improve the Nation's rails, it is $19 billion over the 4 years.

Then there are the special innovative programs that local governments want to do like the TIGER grants. These are local programs. That is $5 billion.

It is a substantial growth in what we have been spending over the previous years, and you will remember the chart that shows the decline in spending. It is an opportunity for us to pick it up and push it forward at a much higher level, employing people, growing the economy in the process, and laying down the foundation--the concrete, the steel, the bridges, the rails--upon which the economy will grow.

I know you have examples of this. Please, Mr. Tonko.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. We can do it.

It is interesting that we spend a lot of time talking on the floor here in the Chamber about government regulation and red tape and all of that. In the GROW AMERICA Act, there are major reforms to speed up projects, to move projects faster--to get the concrete poured, to get the bridge built, to get the airport up and running.

Those reforms are very, very important. They, along with the overall bill, are languishing for lack of a hearing, for lack of action. We really have the opportunity to not only put the projects in place, but to put them in place faster with the reforms that are called for in the GROW AMERICA Act.

I was starting to talk about the TIGER programs. This is an opportunity for our local county, city, State to put forward innovative projects. For example, the systems that you were talking about, the transit hubs, those can be proposed. They can be graded based upon their utility, on their usefulness.

Those are then grant programs--public, local, State, together with the Federal Government. This is a substantial increase. I know these are very popular in California. We keep lining them up, but there hasn't been sufficient money. In the GROW AMERICA Act, there is a significant increase. Some $5 billion would be available for these innovative transportation projects.

What is there not to like in this? It is fully paid for--interesting. It is fully paid for in two ways--one, on the existing excise tax on gasoline and diesel. It is not increased, but is still the same. Then the balance--that is, the increase--is to be paid for by closing tax loopholes on corporations.

It is interesting that today, as the President was talking about this and also talking about closing tax loopholes on corporations that are offshoring American jobs, The Wall Street Journal--that rather famous and quite good newspaper--carried on its front page, ``The Race to Cut Taxes Fuels Urge to Merge,'' a cute headline.

Then, in The New York Times, another headline on the very same subject reads, ``Drug Firms Make Haste to Elude Taxes.''

So right here in these two national newspapers are examples of the kinds of tax avoidance games that are being played by American corporations to avoid paying their fair share of the American taxes.

The President, in the GROW AMERICA Act said stop it, stop these kinds of tax loopholes, tax breaks, that American companies are taking to avoid paying their share of the burden of transportation. He wants to close these loopholes, and here are two that clearly ought to be closed immediately.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. We certainly can do it. We certainly ought to do it. Our predecessors have done it. There are 435 of us here in the House of Representatives, and the question is: Are we willing to do it?

It can be done. This plan, GROW AMERICA, is fully paid for. Yes, some corporations that are skipping out on their taxes would have to participate, and they should. They ought not be tax dodgers.

This is a very interesting plan put forward by our colleague John Delaney, a Representative from Maryland, that would take those profits that these corporations have stored overseas--profits that they have not paid taxes on in America--to repatriate, to bring that money back to America.

His program would generate, over a period of 10 years, $720 billion to be used in public-private partnerships to build our infrastructure. There are many, many ideas about how this could be paid for. The President has laid out a plan not to raise the gasoline and the diesel tax, but rather to bring about some tax fairness, and corporations would be required to pay their fair share--all of it good.

I suspect we have maybe another 5 minutes or so, but I want to bring up one of our favorite subjects. I am going to put this up.

Here we are with the GROW AMERICA Act and all of the things that could be done. This is back to Make It In America. I love this photo. It is one of my favorites.

I know, often, you travel on the train from New York down to Washington, D.C.--or back--right about now. This locomotive, which is the most advanced electric locomotive in America, made in America, was paid for by a Make It In America strategy.

Part of the transportation program--the American Recovery Act--back in 2008 said that they put aside about $700-plus billion for Amtrak all across the Nation to be used for improving the Amtrak system.

They said that that money would be used to build locomotives, and they said 100 percent American-made. Siemens, a German company, said, oh, $700 billion for locomotives made in America, we are a German company, we can build those in America.

So in Sacramento, California, in the infrastructure program, Siemens has built a 100 percent American-made locomotive, and it is going to be operating very soon on the Northeast corridor.

This is a good thing. This is how we can rebuild the American middle class. This is how we can create jobs, using our infrastructure investments to build jobs in America.

It is a fundamental piece of our Make It In America strategy of rebuilding our manufacturing sector where you do have good, solid middle class jobs, where a family can earn a living without both husband and wife having to work all the time or maybe two or three jobs.

We are talking about the American Dream being restored, and the infrastructure is a fundamental piece of that--not just because it moves the economy, not just because it is foundational to economic growth, but because it is American middle class jobs.

It is the hardhats. It is the welder putting together the new locomotive. It is the engineer designing the system. It is the accountant. It is the secretary handling the paperwork. It is America building each future.

The President has laid out a good plan. Is there some way better to do it? Put your ideas on the table, my colleagues, put your ideas on the table.

How can you do better than this GROW AMERICA Act? Let's get about doing it. This is our future. This is America's opportunity, and it is fully paid for, doesn't increase the deficit. In fact, it will grow the economy and provide us with those middle class jobs.

I know, Mr. Tonko, you have been at this for your entire career, as have I, and to be here in Congress, at this moment, when we had an opportunity, we missed it today. We missed the opportunity today to grow the American economy, and instead, we kicked the can down the road. Better than nothing, but not good enough--nothing to be proud of.

Mr. Tonko, a few seconds--I don't know how much time we have.

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Mr. GARAMENDI. It is time to close. We can build America. We can build our infrastructure. The President has laid out a worthy plan, comprehensive, and all of the elements of the infrastructure that we must do. It is fully paid for. It is a good starting point.

Maybe there is a better way of doing it, but we cannot get it done with short-term, kick the can down the road bills, such as was passed today, but that is better than not doing anything.

This is the American future, and the question for all of us, 435: Why did we come here? Did we come here just to pass the time, or did we come here to really build America?

We are going to Make It In America. We are Americans, and we will make it.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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