Source: United States Senator for Ohio Rob Portman
October 28, 2021 | Press Releases
WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Senator Portman delivered remarks on the Senate floor to highlight the benefits of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and called on the House of Representatives to pass the historic legislation without further delay.
The bipartisan bill passed the Senate nearly three months ago on a bipartisan vote of 69-30. As Portman noted, this infrastructure legislation will improve competitiveness and not add to the record inflation the economy is currently experiencing. Portman also addressed the Democrats’ reckless tax and spending bill. Today, President Biden revealed the framework for the $1.75 trillion bill, which includes massive new spending and massive tax increases that will add to the already out of control inflation this country is already facing.
A transcript of his remarks can be found below and a video can be found here.
“I’m here on the floor tonight to talk about the growing epidemic of drug addiction and the issue that’s occurring in my home state of Ohio. And really, all the states represented here in this chamber and how we need to redouble our efforts.
“And it’s a heartbreaking story because we were making so much progress prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, underneath the pandemic, we have this epidemic that’s growing. But before I get into that, I must talk first about what’s going on this evening in the U.S. House of Representatives. Almost three months ago, beginning of August, we passed in this chamber bipartisan legislation to finally address our infrastructure shortfalls in this country. Presidents of both parties had been proposing it for many years. Congress had talked about it a lot. But we’d never been able to figure out a way forward.
“And so a group of ten Republicans, ten Democrats got together and said we’re going to grow this from the middle out and figure out how to address our infrastructure challenges and do so in a bipartisan way. We did that. The President of the United States, President Biden, supported our effort, and we were able to get that legislation across the floor here in the United States Senate, not without some challenges and some changes, modifications. But we were able to do it because it was great for America, great for every state represented here because it was repairing roads and bridges, but also our ports, our waterways, our water infrastructure, our infrastructure that’s considered digital, which would be high speed Internet – make sure it is available to all of our citizens.
“So a lot of things that people had talked about for a long time said they were for, but finally, we were able to actually put it into writing and get it done. And it passed this chamber with a big vote, 69 votes. Rarely does something so significant past this chamber with that kind of bipartisan support.
“Unfortunately, it has languished in the House of Representatives for almost three months. Since early August. And the reason it languished over there isn’t because it doesn’t have the votes. It’s really more because people would like to use it as a hostage for something they want even more. And that’s just wrong. And so tonight I urge my House colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike, to put aside the partisanship and focus on the substance of the bill and pass it.
“It’s been held political hostage to something that House Democrats, particularly progressives in the House, want even more. It’s not that they’re opposed to infrastructure. They know this is needed. They know it’s good for their constituents. It’s good for our country. It’s because they want even more to pass a massive new spending bill, called sometimes the Build Back Better bill, sometimes the reconciliation bill, sometimes the $3.5 trillion tax and spend bill. But that is totally separate from infrastructure. But that’s really what they want to pass.
“So they know that a lot of moderate Democrats support the infrastructure bill. They need those moderate Democrats to support the massive tax and spend bill. So in effect, they’ve held it hostage. They have not allowed the infrastructure bill to move unless they get commitments on the bill they really want, which is the tax and spend bill. I think that’s just wrong.
“And so I urge the Speaker of the House and my colleagues in the House to go ahead and vote on that legislation this evening. I know there’s been back and forth all day about what will happen. All I can say is it’s the right thing to do for our country. You think about it, the infrastructure bill is exactly what we need right now. Not only do we have a long–term challenge everybody knows about and we’ve been talking about for literally decades.
“But for the problems we face right now in our economy, it’s very effective. Inflation. Everybody’s concerned about it, and they should be. The cost of gasoline at the pump is up about 42 percent this year compared to last year. Really tough on middle–class families, because although paychecks may have gone up a little bit, inflation has gone up higher. So it’s essentially a tax on so many of our working families in this country. But everything’s up: food, clothing, furniture, everything.
“So inflation is driven in part by the stimulus spending. You remember, back in March, there was a big bill, $1.9 trillion, and many of us said, including some Democrats, including famously Larry Summers who is a former Democratic Secretary of Treasury. He worked for President Obama and in the Clinton administration, he said if you do this massive amount of spending, unprecedented amount of stimulus spending, you will drive up inflation because you’re putting many more dollars into people’s pockets into the economy at a time when the economy is already beginning to improve and it will be chasing fewer and fewer goods and that will raise inflation.
“And that’s exactly what has happened, which is bad for everybody, particularly again, lower and middle–income families that are seeing this hidden tax really on everything they buy. And, again, taking away the power of their slight increase in wages that we’ve seen. In fact, when you look at the data, it looks like wages have actually gone down in the past year. They’ve gone down because after inflation, wages are worth less. So that’s where we are right now.
“And the infrastructure bill is actually counter inflationary. Why do I say that? Because it doesn’t invest in the way that the tax and spend bill invest is not about stimulus. It’s about longer–term investments in hard capital assets. So the economists look at that, including conservative economists at the American Enterprise Institute. Including Doug Holtz-Eakin, who’s a former CBO director here and a more conservative economist. And they say this actually will be counterinflationary because you’re investing long–term in these capital assets, creating jobs, making our economy more efficient, making it more productive. And therefore, in this instance now where we have this high inflation, it’s a good thing to do.
“Number two, we’ve had a lot of natural disasters in this country, particularly in the last year. One out of every three Americans, apparently, lives in an area that has been subject to one of these natural disasters. It’s the Hurricanes, it’s the floods, it’s the wildfires. It’s something that is affecting our country in a major way right now. We hear about it virtually every week.
“This legislation, the infrastructure bill, actually has provisions for resiliency to mitigate the damage from these natural disasters. So it is a well-timed bill in that sense as well. There’s an historic commitment to ensuring that we’re not just talking about climate change and natural disasters, but actually putting in place things that will protect communities from these natural disasters, whether it’s forest fires, whether it’s hurricanes, whether it’s tornadoes or other natural disasters. That’s in this legislation, the infrastructure bill.
“And finally, what’s one of the biggest issues we face right now in terms of our economy? The supply chain crisis, go to a store in your community as many of you have and you’ll see that the shelves are a lot barer than they used to be. And there’s not much on the shelves because we got this supply chain problem, kind of a bottleneck. Well, this legislation helps in that regard because it provides funding for infrastructure, including our ports. Our ports of entry, our land ports, but also our sea ports that are now in a situation where they are jammed with more and more container ships, and yet they can’t process them quickly enough.
“So what the experts tell me is that the $2 billion in the infrastructure bill will help to improve those facilities, improve their operation, improve the intermodal connection – in other words, the truck connections, the train connections to our ports and help move along this supply chain issue that we’re currently facing. The legislation helps with regard to freight rail. It helps with regard to our waterways, which carry a lot of freight in our country. So it’s something that would be helpful in all three of these areas – inflation, natural disasters, and also our supply chain issues.
“At the same time, again, it’s just needed because our infrastructure has fallen behind, particularly falling behind other countries. And therefore making our economy more efficient, more productive is a good thing. Again, that’s why it got 69 votes here in the United States Senate and why we need to pass it. “It is totally different from the tax and spend reconciliation bill. Which is massive new spending, massive tax increases, which will add to inflation.
“At a time when we have such high debts and deficits, it will add to our record level of debt and deficits. Its large tax increases will hurt our economy at a time when we cannot afford it. We just got the numbers in from the economic growth in the last quarter. They just came in today, 0.5 percent growth. Very disappointing. Well below expectations. So we know economic growth is slowing. We know inflation is rising. We know that this is not the time for us to put forward this kind of legislation because it will aggravate the inflationary pressures, but it also causes us at the time of debt and deficits to see big increases in spending and finally, again, at a time when our economy is unfortunately not performing the way we would like to see it. It’s slowing down. The worst economic quarter we have had since 2000. We need to be sure we’re not adding new taxes to our economy at this time. So the timing is bad.
“By the way, the infrastructure bill has no new tax increases. The infrastructure bill is not about immediate spending. It’s about long-term spending over five, 10, 15 years for capital assets. Again, counter inflationary. So they are very different proposals, aren’t they? I call on my colleagues in the house tonight to pass this legislation, get the infrastructure bill done. Don’t hold it hostage to something else. That’s not how we operate. Do the right thing for your constituents and for our country.”
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