Keystone XL Pipeline Act -- Continued

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, this amendment recognizes that climate
change is not a hoax, that climate change is a reality, and that we
need to do some things together to begin to plan for and prepare for
the inevitable consequences and impacts on our infrastructure.

As someone who was in local government for a long time before coming
to this body--I was a county executive--I have a sense of what it means
for our States, our municipalities, and our county governments to have
to plan for and deal with the inevitable consequence, the impacts on
our local infrastructure of the coming changes through climate change.

I happen to represent the lowest mean elevation State in America, and
our Governor Jack Markell and his able folks in the Delaware Department
of Natural Resources and Environmental Control have led a grassroots
statewide effort to begin planning for the future impacts of climate
change. Because of the combination of subsidence and sea level rise,
Delaware will see earlier than many States impacts on vital local
infrastructure. So whether it is our sewer systems, our roads, our
water systems or other infrastructure, we need to begin to plan now to
bake resiliency into the future of our community.

Given the unique and important role that the Federal Government plays
in financing infrastructure and in responding to disasters such as
Superstorm Sandy that destroyed a lot of the infrastructure in the
nearby States of New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut, we need to be
mindful of what these costs could be.

The U.S. Department of Defense is already preparing plans to
understand how climate change will impact its infrastructure. My
thinking is that the entire Federal Government should make responsible,
timely, and thoughtful plans to assess and to prepare for prudent
mitigation of the future impacts of climate change on our
infrastructure. So I am hopeful that this will be among the many
amendments that will be taken up, debated, discussed, and passed in the
coming hours and days.

I am grateful that we continue to have an open amendment process and
the opportunity to discuss and debate the issues in front of us, and I
very much look forward to passage of Coons amendment No. 115.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I come to the floor to speak about
President Obama's State of the Union Address last week. It was a speech
that I believe laid out a positive and forceful agenda for
strengthening our middle class and for accelerating our Nation's
economic recovery.

Over the past year, our Nation's economic progress has become
unmistakable and undeniable. In our home State of Delaware, more people
are working. People spend much less time looking for work, and job
growth has been the strongest it has been since the 1990s.

Nationally, we are amidst the longest period of sustained private-
sector job growth on record. Of particular interest to me is that our
manufacturing sector has come back and come back strongly as
manufacturers have created nearly 800,000 jobs in the last 4 years--
jobs that make up the foundation of our 21st century middle class and
our economy.

Our unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level since before
the great recession. Our growing private sector is not just creating
jobs now. They are also laying the foundation for the jobs of the
future. As test scores continue to improve, high school graduation
rates reach record highs, and, as our President said, ``More Americans
finish college than ever before,'' we are laying a path that ensures
that future generations of Americans can thrive as well.

But our work remains unfinished. Although we are right to turn the
page on the crisis here at home, crises do remain real in the lives of
far too many Americans--families I listen to who are struggling to get
into and stay in our middle class. For many in the middle class, wages
have remained stubbornly stagnant as incomes for the wealthy have
continued to grow. At the same time, too many Americans just stopped
looking for work altogether during the recession and haven't begun that
job search again. So we have a lot of work to do together to ensure
that the middle class experiences the benefits of this recovery.

On that note, I appreciated President Obama's call for an agenda that
would do a lot to strengthen our middle class. Although this isn't what
we will hear about on the news, many of these ideas should enjoy
bipartisan support. I wish to spend a few minutes on some of the areas
that I think are ripe for bipartisan cooperation and that would go a
long way toward actually helping middle-class families and our Nation
as a whole.

First, it is no secret to anyone that our country's infrastructure is
badly outdated and in need of repair. From our ports and roads, to our
bridges and railways, we have steadily racked up a national debt of
investment that we will need to pay for. The only question is when and
how we do it. Historically, infrastructure--fixing roads and bridges
and ports and railways--has not been a partisan issue. It is something
that has been a core value of our Federal Government from its very
founding. It is in no small part what the Federal Government was
created to help do.

Last Tuesday the President laid out ideas for thinking more
creatively about how to make these core investments--from improving
efficiency to bringing private capital off the sidelines--and I am
encouraged to hear Republican colleagues discussing infrastructure as
an initiative they can work on with us. So let's get this done. Let's
solve our highway trust fund challenges for good and make the long-term
investments that will put people back to work and strengthen our
Nation's economic backbone.

Second, the President's proposal to expand access to community
colleges is an initiative that I hope will spark a broader discussion
about how to make higher education more accessible and more affordable.
I understand there is real disagreement here about how best to pay for
it or how wide its scope should be, but that is what we can and should
work on together.

We all know that higher education is necessary to ensure Americans
have the skills they will need in the 21st century. We know community
colleges can and should play a central role in achieving that mission.
In manufacturing in particular, community colleges such as Delaware
Tech in my home State play a central role in partnering with local
businesses to create a talent pipeline that sustains a community and
its economy. In Delaware the SEED and Inspire scholarships give
students who are willing to work hard the chance to go to college and
to learn the skills that will help them to contribute to Delaware's
economy after they finish school. We can replicate Delaware's example
across the country and find ways to work together to make community
college and further higher education affordable and accessible. So
let's work on this together.

Lastly, the President laid out some commonsense tax and work
proposals to help give middle-class families more of a realistic leg
up. Expanding the tax credits for families with children and
streamlining childcare support makes sense to me. Making it easier for
middle-class families to save for their kids' college education and to
save for retirement at the same time would go a long way toward helping
families to plan for the long term.

Around the country, too many of our work places lack family and
medical leave policies that appreciate what it really takes to raise a
family and live a healthy life. The President's proposal to work with
States to improve their policies would be a great step and would help
those communities that choose to, to create policies that suit their
own local situations.

Let's work together on these ideas. Let's do something for middle-
class families in our country. With a Republican Congress and a
Democratic White House, we need to come together if we are going to get
anything meaningful done. As President Obama made clear, we have a lot
of important and difficult work to do. Our economy has come a long way
from the great recession, but there is still work to do to strengthen
our middle class. There is still work to do to broaden the opportunity
that has always been at the heart of the American dream. We can move
forward together, and it is my sincere hope that we will rise to that
occasion, that we will seize this opportunity and do the critical work
of building and sustaining our vital middle class.

Thank you, Mr. President.

I yield the floor.

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