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Mr. MANCHIN. Mr. President, we have had a lot of conversation today. We all agree we need infrastructure. On both sides of the aisle we have had a good conversation. I have said before, a road is not a Democratic or Republican road, a bridge is not a Democratic or Republican bridge, nor is a water line or a sewer line. So I rise to address the competing proposals to build infrastructure in this country and to start getting America back to work.
Earlier this week, I attended a ribbon-cutting at the Bluestone Dam in beautiful Hinton, WV. When they started work on that dam, I was the Governor of our great State of West Virginia. I was sitting in my office and said to the Corps colonel: Explain to me what the problem could be.
He said: Maybe the bedrock, and there might be some possibilities with unusual flooding where we could lose that dam, breach that dam.
I asked: What does that mean?
He said: Think of it this way, Governor. We are sitting in your office in the capitol, in Charleston, WV. We would be underwater right now.
So it brought it to reality for me, the extent of the water we are dealing with and the billions and billions of dollars in downstream costs that would be incurred. So we decided we had to fix that. With the help of our Federal Government, we started working on that way back in 2002, and we are going into our third phase of that project.
Roads and bridges are in terrible condition all over the country and in every part of everybody's State. Every Member of the House and every Member of the Senate has a
road or a bridge--all 535 of us--Republicans and Democrats alike have a road or a bridge or a water line or a sewer line in our area that needs repair. As the Presiding Officer from Delaware had noted with the work he did for all the good people of Delaware, there was still an awful lot of repair that was needed.
I believe in infrastructure. In West Virginia, we say: Our economy can't grow if people can't go. With that, you have to be able to be mobile. We also say in West Virginia: You have to drive to survive because we are one of the most rural States in the Nation. Our people drive as far, if not farther, than people in most other States do for their jobs.
With that, we have to make sure they have the ability to get to those good jobs and be able to provide for their family.
I have said before--and it has been heard on the floor over the last few hours--that infrastructure is not a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. It is a commonsense idea.
In 2007, we Governors at that time met in Philadelphia. Knowing the economy was slowing down, we asked: What can we do? We looked back in history and saw President Roosevelt, in the 1930s, basically invested in infrastructure. We had the WPA projects which we see today. A lot of us have used the projects and still are. Tremendous value was returned to this country and the infrastructure of this country through those hard-working people at that time who just needed a helping hand.
President Eisenhower, in the 1950s--after the Korean war, the economy needed a jump-start, and we saw the Interstate Highway System being built for a very mobile society coming off the wars. We are still using that same infrastructure that was put in place then.
This issue is bipartisan because building infrastructure is bipartisan. It solves two problems. It fixes our crumbling roads and bridges, and it creates much needed American jobs. Of all the people in my State applying for unemployment--and it might be true in most every State--construction workers are the biggest group of unemployed people today, with the most skill sets in America. Almost 20 percent of the unemployment is in the construction trades. That is unacceptable in this great country when we have repairs being needed everywhere.
We are going to vote on two proposals today. I know one was just put on quick order, and there is another one we are going to be voting on. One is a Democratic measure, which is our Rebuild America Jobs Act, and the other one is a Republican measure that funds transportation, and it reins in the EPA, for which I have been trying to make sure there is a commonsense approach to how we balance the economy and the environment. In West Virginia, I think we can do it as well if not better than most because we are dealing with those types of challenges.
I believe both these bills will help kick-start the economy and create American jobs--I do--and we all know we need that. I will vote for both of them. One is a Democratic proposal and one is a Republican proposal. But I do believe I was sent here as a West Virginian to help my State.
It is not because they are bad ideas or wrong ideas that they are probably going to fail. They both have good merits to them. But as our good friend from Alabama just said, it is politics of the order. That is what we are dealing with, and we will find reasons, probably, why we can't give our support.
On our jobs bill, there is $60 billion--$50 billion, which I think the Presiding Officer spoke so eloquently on earlier, and $10 billion for an infrastructure bank. I know what an infrastructure bank does in my State. In my State, we have $2 billion of need. We have a $300 million resolving account. It is the same as what we are talking about here. It has helped us tremendously. But everybody comes to the table. We are able to bridge some financing and put projects together that we never could have done, and it is tremendously needed.
With that being said, it probably will not pass because our dear friends on the other side of the aisle, our Republican colleagues, and our friends over in the Republican Party, are going to say: It has a seven-tenths-of-1-percent tax on incomes over $1 million--seven-tenths of 1 percent.
I can vote for that. I support that. But I also recognize that is a problem for them. So in recognizing that, I am willing to reach out and look for other ways to pay for this. I think that is the spirit we should be working in. Are there offsets or credits? I think 73 of us have voted in a bipartisan fashion for an ethanol credit. Isn't that something we could work on? How about the money we are spending in Afghanistan and Iraq and rebuilding those nations' infrastructures? I have said this before: If you help us build a new bridge in West Virginia, we will not blow it up. If you help us build a new school, I guarantee we will not burn it down. We are so proud to say the good people all over this country have helped us in West Virginia, and we like to help other people in other States. We will work together. That is what we should be doing, rebuilding America.
That is what I have asked of everyone: Come together. Let's make sure the infrastructure need we have all over our great country is the first and foremost thing we are working on together because we do agree, as Democrats and Republicans and as Americans, we need it. That is something I think we can come together on.
Let me turn now to the Republican bill, which a few hours ago I was notified will be coming up. This bill is not perfect either. A 2-year extension of transportation spending does not give States the certainty they need. We have usually had a 6-year authorization. I know when I was Governor of West Virginia we did 6 years. We did our 6-year planning of our roads in our State based on the Federal bill, the authorization of the Federal highway bill. With only 2 years, it is hard to get any project completed. Sometimes it is even hard to get it on the drawing board.
That being said, I am a strong supporter of reining in the EPA, which this bill does. I believe we have to set our transportation priorities. Unfortunately, Washington and all of us here seem to have become so dysfunctional that politics--whether it is the party politics or the personal politics--is put before the good of the country. This has to stop.
I heard one of our good Senators from Arizona this morning saying we are down to a 9-percent approval rating. If it was not for our staff and our family, we don't know if we would be within the margin of error. With that being said, we have to come together. We have had disagreements throughout the history of this great country, and we have come together many times on very difficult issues.
This is one I think will challenge all of us to come together as Americans. The people of West Virginia did not send me to Washington to play the blame game. I have said many times, I have never fixed a problem by blaming somebody else for it. I fixed a problem by identifying that we had a problem and then trying to bring all sides together to fix it. That is what we need more of in Washington. I do not think any of us were sent to blame each other. I think we were sent to work together.
Again, I am going to urge all my colleagues and friends on both sides of the aisle to focus on the next generation. We see them every week we come here, our young pages. They are our next generation. We need to be making votes for them, not our next election, which will be in 2012. That election is going to come and go. But if we do not give them the opportunity to have the building tools they need to build a foundation that they can be the greatest next generation this country has ever seen, then I do not know what we are going to say for the future of this country.
I, for one, am not going to vote along those lines, to where it is going to be based on what is good for me, based on what is good for the party I belong to but strictly based on what is good for America and this next generation.
I yield the floor.
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