Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

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

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 Oregon (Ms. Bonamici), a good friend.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. I always enjoy working with her. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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 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, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Malinowski), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Lamb), who is a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time remains on both sides.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), the majority whip.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time each side has remaining.

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

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

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), a soft-spoken Member of Congress.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Trone).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters), who is the chair of the Financial Services Committee and who has a major section of the bill before us.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.