Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Washington.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), a good friend.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. In response to the gentleman that says, it isn't the responsibility of the President to propose an infrastructure plan. He campaigned on infrastructure. He campaigned on it. Then Secretary Chao said the week of May 15, 2017, the $1 trillion infrastructure plan will be out in the next several weeks. Whoops, here we are, 3 years later and a couple of months, no plan. Oh, October 9, Chao again touts the $1 trillion plan that will soon be available. Whoops, that was 2017. Then we had the week of February 12. Trump announced a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan. Actually, this time they did propose something. It was just written out. It wasn't real language or anything. What it did is it said the States will pay for it and the private sector will pay for it, and by the way, we will reduce Federal investment. That was a great plan. That was a great plan. A really good plan. Then we went to the White House, and as other colleagues who were there, the majority leader and others said, we went in, and when he turned to the Speaker and said, Well, how much are you thinking for infrastructure? And she said, Well, Mr. President 1 to $1.3 trillion. And the President said, No. No, not enough. Not enough. 1.9, 1.9. He said, Nope, nope, nope. Two is better, $2 trillion. He agreed to $2 trillion. He agreed to roads, bridges, highways, transit, rail, wastewater, drinking water, and broadband. All those things are in this bill funded at nearly the level because he was proposing a 10-year figure for $2 trillion that he asked for. And then again over the last few weeks they are on the verge of issuing an infrastructure plan. And I have heard a couple of Republicans say it is not up to a President to propose, and it is not up to a President to figure out how to pay for it. Dwight David Eisenhower; anybody remember him? Federal-Aid Highway Program. Remember that? User fees, Dwight David Eisenhower's initiative. He was a Republican President. He took initiative. And then, you know, JFK brought transit into the mix. And both of those things just happened on June 29 and June 30. For Ike it was 64 years ago, and for JFK, it was 59 years ago when we started making major investments in public transit. And I heard the gentleman say, Well, who is ever going to use transit? Or they might not use it again because of COVID. Well, if we don't get a vaccine and things don't get back to regular, yes, they may not be using transit. But we are not going to have much of an economy because a lot of the economic activity in this country is generated in our urban areas. But I represent a mixed district. I have two relatively small cities and a very large rural area. There is a lot of stuff in this bill that is way better than the FAST Act for rural America. We have $1 billion for off-highway bridges. There are 47,000 bridges on the National Highway System that need repair and replacement, but there are a heck of a lot of bridges that are not on the national system. And a lot of those 47,000 are in rural areas. And the electrification is for the interstate system. And some of it will go into urban areas, but it is going to be for the interstate. And there are a lot of people in rural America who are dependent upon the interstate. And some day they might want to be driving an electric car, who knows? But they don't want to have range anxiety maybe. So to say this just benefits urban America is an inanity. And beyond that, we have put additional money into rural transit in this bill. I have rural transit, suburban transit, and, yes, the major urban areas, we are going to reinvest there. And, you know, if you think it is foolish to reinvest there and you think we are never going to be using transit again, then you are looking at a very grim future for the United States of America and the world. I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to inquire as to the amount of time remaining.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to section 2 of House Resolution 1028, I offer amendments en bloc.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this en bloc amendment, which provides for the consideration of 45 amendments filed by Members. The amendments contained in this en bloc touch upon various areas of highways and transit policy in the base bill, including: Strengthening data collections by States under the racial profiling grant program carried out by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration; Improving the use of grant funds for education and enforcement activities regarding cyclist and pedestrian safety. We have seen an alarming uptick in that. We do have significant funds in the base bill to provide for safer and more opportunities for pedestrian, cycling, and alternate modes, access to shopping, groceries, work, and schools, something that was substantially eliminated in the FAST Act, and the legislation before that, MAP-21. It adds charging speed and minimization of future upgrade costs and considerations for electric vehicle charging infrastructure grants; including environmental and environmental justice organizations on the list of relevant stakeholders and considering plans for renewable or zero-emission energy sources for charging and fueling infrastructure when making awards under the electric vehicle charging grant program; Requiring the Department of Transportation to consult with the Environmental Protection Agency on the awarding of community Climate Innovation Grants and ensure public comment in the determination of the types of projects that most significantly reduce carbon pollution; Adding additional environmental considerations to the goals of the National Highway Freight Program, ensuring that the impacts of railway, highway bottlenecks are considered under the program; Expanding the role of historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions in the Department of Transportation research; Authorizing new research programs to expand transportation access for low income, minority, and other underserved communities; Ensuring that projects submitted to the FTA Capital Investment Grants program can use ridership data collected before the COVID-19 outbreak, that makes sense, and projections based on that data; and Ensuring that projects carried out under the national surface transportation system funding pilot includes privacy protections for participants. These are just some of the highlights of the amendments included. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for offering these amendments to improve the highway and transit portion of INVEST in America Act, I urge adoption of the amendment. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining on each side.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, as I pointed out at the beginning of this long debate, what we had was a disagreement in principle. And you can't compromise on principles. We just heard an impassioned speech from Mr. Graves from Louisiana about how we should just throw up our hands on fossil fuel reduction in the United States because China is building coal plants. Well, we used to be a world leader on these things until Donald Trump occupied the White House and we walked away from science and we walked away from the Paris accord, and that gave leeway to these others countries to just say, Well, look at the United States, why should we comply with any of these strictures? As I mentioned to him, we can deal with those things through our trade policy, and we should. I had hoped to debate withdrawal from the WTO. At this point it has been precluded by the Rules Committee, but I am hoping to bring it up later this year. We need to talk about our dependence upon China. We need to talk about their abuses of the environment, their abuses of labor, their abuses of stealing intellectual property, and all the other things that they do over there. And we need to deal with them in a meaningful way through trade policy, and we can do that. We could deal with their fossil fuel pollution there, too. So that's one point. The other would be that this bill is huge and transformative, and we need it. The Republican alternative, offered in committee, had zero funding for rail. None. It had baseline for transit. Today, transit in America has a $106 billion backlog to bring it up to a state of good repair. $106 billion. Now, the good news is if we do that work, with us closing the final loopholes and we buy America, it is going to create one heck of a lot of manufacturing jobs here in the United States. High tech jobs for new transit vehicles, everything. And then for highways they did baseline plus 10 percent. We talked about the scorecard of the American Society of Civil Engineers. We have 47,000 bridges on the national highway system that need substantial repair or replacement. That is about a $200 billion bill. I tried to get Obama to do that in his Recovery Act, and instead he did Larry Summers' stupid tax cuts too small to notice at twice the price tag. So we have let that go. 47,000 bridges. 40 percent of the national highway system has to be rebuilt, not just overlaid. And then transit. That is a huge bill. Huge. And you can't get there with a baseline in transit and a 10 percent increase in highways. And, by the way, we are about $100 billion short--over $100 billion short with the user fee. As I pointed out, the last time the user fee was increased we had a Democratic President, a Democratic House, and a guy with a lot of guts named Bud Shuster on the other side of the aisle, who was the senior Republican on the committee. He ruled Newt Gingrich. He voted 60-some- odd Republicans with us to increase the user fee. That was 1993. The Federal gas tax hasn't been indexed or increased in any way since 1993. And the people say, Oh, it is politically toxic. Well, 36 States--36 States--have raised their gas taxes and user fees and registration fees to pay for the projects because people are tired of congestion. They are tired of potholes blowing out their tires. They are tired of crummy transit that breaks down. They want better rail. And people will--if you know that is where the money is going, they will pay for it. But here in Washington, D.C., there is a fear, a fear, that if we were to raise the user fee, oh, my God, we are all going to lose our elections. I propose that we just index it and bond it. Today we can borrow money for 1.3 percent, virtually nothing. We can do this 5-year bill, borrow all the money we need for this bill, and say, We are going to pay interest only. We will pay it out of the existing gas tax revenues. And at the end of 5 years when we have recovered from the pandemic, when we have rebuilt America's infrastructure, and we are looking to the future, then we will put in place a new system, and it will be vehicle miles traveled when we are ready to go there, but first we have to run a national pilot program and get the information we need to get there. Mr. Speaker, I recommend my colleagues to vote for a 21st century transformative infrastructure bill that deals meaningfully with climate change, which I believe in, and I believe everybody on this side of the aisle believes in. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, our Nation is simultaneously confronted with multiple crises. COVID, we have passed four bills in this House to deal with COVID directly in terms of medical care, potential for vaccines, treatments, and mitigation of the incredible economic harm. The fourth bill is still lingering with an uncertain future in the Senate. Then the murder of George Floyd brought a long-simmering crisis to a head for our Nation. Last week this House passed the Justice in Policing Act to deal with systemic racism in policing. This bill deals with another crisis. Denied by the President and denied by most in his party is the existential threat of climate change to the world as we know it, to our Nation, to our coastal areas, to our inland areas, to everything, our crops, our future, our children's future and our grandkids' future. So before us today is a long overdue transportation, comprehensive, 21st century--the first 21st century--transportation bill that moves beyond the Eisenhower era and just reauthorizing the same old programs all the time. It also deals with the incredibly deteriorated infrastructure in this country. There is bipartisan agreement that it needs investment. But the last bill we did in the House was status quo funding. We need to invest much more to begin to deal with that crisis. This bill also deals with the other crises. It deals with COVID in terms of we are going to need an economic recovery. This is going to look a lot more like--it already does--the Great Depression, and we are going to need to put people back to work. We are going to need millions of good-paying jobs. These aren't just construction jobs, they are design, they are engineering, they are small businesses, and they are manufacturing. There is a host of people--everybody will be touched by this bill, and the investments will provide returns many, many times over. It also targets the largest single contributor to CO2 pollution in this country. Now, Mr. Speaker, if you don't believe in climate change and you don't believe CO2 is the problem, then you don't want to deal with it in a transportation bill. In fact, an alternative was offered by my Republican colleagues in committee where we considered 300 amendments. They had one that was a substitute. It wouldn't reduce carbon pollution by 1 ounce. There is no crisis, there is no climate change. Donald Trump said so, and you can't cross the guy. So we wove the climate change provisions throughout this bill. They complained: Well, it is not bipartisan. But we have a disagreement in principle, and you can't compromise on principle. We are going to deal with the largest source of carbon pollution in the United States of America here and now, today, this week. We are starting. We have delayed too long. We are already at dangerous levels. It also is going to deal with systemic racism and discrimination in the parts of the bill that deal with education, housing, and access to transportation, but in one particular provision that is critical to the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the disadvantaged business enterprise program. The committee has for years accumulated evidence and testimony attesting to systemic discrimination faced by women and minorities in their attempts to establish, grow, and operate businesses all across the country. The challenges are daunting. Discrimination affects minority and women entrepreneurs at every stage of the process from access to investment, to credit, to biased treatment from customers, suppliers, and regulators, to acute vulnerability to sudden economic downturns as we have seen with the COVID crisis. Unfortunately, even with the existing DBE program, discrimination still haunts us in the market to construct and maintain our Federal transportation system. We have documented this in testimony, and today we have and will provide mounds of statistical evidence documenting this. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a list of 30 cities. Disparity Study Reports Submitted to the Congressional Record During General Debate on H.R. 2, Submitted on the House Floor June 30, 2020 (The full text of each report is held on file electronically with the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.) Texas Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2019, Colette Holt & Associates, 2019. City of Columbus Disparity Study, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., July 2019. 2018 Disparity Study City of Virginia Beach, BBC Research & Consulting, January, 2019. City of Tacoma Disparity Study, Final Report, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2018. Metro Nashville Tennessee Disparity Study Final Report, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2018. Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, Volumes 1-3, Prepared for the State of Maryland, NERA Economic Consulting, June 25, 2018. City of New York Disparity Study, MGT Consulting Group, May 2018. 2017 Minnesota Joint Disparity Study--Minnesota Department of Transportation Draft Report, Keen Independent Research, January, 2018. 2017 Disparity Study LA Metro, prepared for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro), BBC Research & Consulting, January, 2018. Washington State Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2017, Colette Holt & Associates, 2017. 2017 Disparity Study City of Charlotte, BBC Research & Consulting, November 7, 2017. State of New York 2016 MWBE Disparity Study Final Report, Volume 1, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., June 2017. Disparity Study, Idaho Department of Transportation, BBC Research and Consulting, May 4, 2017. Caltrans 2016 Disparity Study, prepared for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), BBC Research & Consulting, April 28, 2017. San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Disparity Study, Volumes 1-2, Miller3 Consulting Inc., January 12, 2017. KCATA Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Availability Study 2016, prepared for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, Kansas City, MO, Colette Holt and Associates, 2016. Disparity Study, prepared for the Georgia Department of Transportation, Griffin and Strong, P.C., August, 2016. 2016 Availability and Disparity Study, prepared for the State of Montana Department of Transportation in cooperation with the US Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, Keen Independent Research, July, 2016. Oregon Department of Transportation 2016 Availability and Disparity Study, Keen Independent Research, June, 2016. City of Philadelphia Fiscal Year 2015 Annual Disparity Study, Econsult Solutions, June 8, 2016. Disparity Study for Corpus Christi and CCRTA: Analysis of the Availability of Minority- and Women-Owned Businesses and Their Utilization By the Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority, Corpus Christi Regional Transportation Authority, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi-South Texas Economic Development Center, March, 2016. 2015-16 Ohio Public Authorities Disparity Study, prepared for the Ohio Department of Transportation, BBC Research & Consulting, April, 2016. Ilinois State Toll Highway Authority Disparity Study-- Construction and Construction Related Services 2015, Colette Holt & Associates, 2015. Pace Suburban Bus Disparity Study 2015, Colette Holt & Associates, 2015. Arizona Department of Transportation Disparity Study Report, Keen Independent Research, July 28, 2015. North Carolina Department of Transportation Disparity Study 2014, Colette Holt & Associates, 2014. Business Market Availability and Disparity Study, prepared for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Mason Tillman Associates, Ltd., June, 2014. Nevada Department of Transportation Disparity Study Final Report, Keen Independent Research, December 6, 2013. City and County of Denver Minority/Women Owned/ Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, MGT of America, July 29, 2013. Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Disparity Study, Volumes I-III, prepared for the Maryland Department of Transportation, NERA Economic Consulting, July 5, 2013.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. To the gentlewoman's amendment, I appreciate Members advocating strongly for either their State or their region. The problem that was discovered with this amendment, after further investigation, is it would have rewarded a smaller number of States to the detriment of 37 other States and the territories. What has happened is that some States have built out their Appalachian Development Highway System. They, under this amendment, could turn that money back to DOT, then DOT would give that to other Appalachian States. So far, so good. That would be okay with me. But it goes one step further. All those States that have finished and turned the money in, they get additional funds. That means that a minority of the Appalachian States that have already finished the system would get additional funding to the detriment of all the 37 other States and the territories in the United States of America. The way it works now, they would be drawing on TFHI money. Now, when there is excess TFHI money, there is something called the August redistribution. Last year, the State of Kansas got a 16.5 percent increase because of the August redistribution. Under this amendment, nada, zero. Texas got 16 percent. Under this amendment, zero. Connecticut got 14.5 percent. Under this amendment, nothing. Missouri, 13 percent; nothing. Louisiana, 12 percent redistribution; nothing. Illinois, 11; nothing. Colorado, 10; nothing. Oklahoma, 10; nothing. The problem is it was a little bit of double-dipping. This was, actually, cleverly authored at the auspices of Mitch McConnell in the Senate. An exchange of funds from one Appalachian State to the other to finish the highway system, that is fine with me. But we are not going to then give them credit and give them other Federal funds for that money to benefit that region to the detriment of all the other States. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Iowa (Ms. Finkenauer), who is a wonderful addition to the committee, doing fabulous work and representing a very rural district, for the most part.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, just in response to the gentleman, he had a duplicative amendment on resilience. There is $6.25 billion for predisaster mitigation resilience in this bill. But again, building in resilience is only dealing with the effects of climate change, not reducing climate change. He said: Oh, we should just throw up our hands because the Chinese are polluting the hell out of things. Oh, that is a great attitude. The U.S. used to be a leader on these policies until Trump came to the White House and said it is a hoax, and that sort of unleashed China and other countries. He said the U.S. is out of the Paris Agreement. That unleashed China and these other countries. But we can deal with it. We can deal with it in our trade policy. We can put a huge tax on imports that are contributing to fossil fuel pollution. We can deal with this, and we should deal with this as a nation, but we need to show leadership again in this area. Then he talked about there is nothing for electricity in this bill-- and he can come down later for the debate on the E&C section. There is a massive investment on renewables, a massive investment in transmission in this bill. So that is not quite accurate. And the user fee, guess what? We have been in a shortfall on the user fee for about two decades. The last time we increased the user fee was when we had a Republican over there with guts named Bud Shuster, who stood up to Newt Gingrich and joined with the majority of Democrats and raised the Federal gas tax. It hasn't been raised since 1993, 27 years. And when they did the FAST Act, what did they do? They made up phony things. They said: Oh, we are going to take money from the Federal Reserve that doesn't exist, that is, $26 billion. Oh, we are going to have private tax collection that is going to make money--except it has been tried twice under Republican Presidents and it loses money. And they came up with all of these phony pay-fors, and they say it was paid for by user fees. No, it was paid for out of the general fund. It ran a $90 billion deficit, paid for out of the general fund. We borrowed the money. It is an investment. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. DelBene).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1028, I call up the bill (H.R. 2) to authorize funds for Federal-aid highways, highway safety programs, and transit programs, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Kaptur).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), a leader on transportation issues.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Kelly).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Neal).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Garcia).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Mucarsel-Powell), who is also a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, again, I rise in support of this en bloc amendment. I have no further speakers, and I have no further comments. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from New Hampshire (Mr. Pappas), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rose).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus), a member of the committee.