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Mr. DELANEY. I will do that.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing us this time this evening.
And I want to thank my good friend and colleague from California for organizing our discussion here this evening and his work on Make It In America. It's important work, and it's work we, as a Congress, should be focused on.
I think my colleague from California knows that I'm very passionate about the infrastructure investments that we need to be making as a country. I, quite frankly, believe it's our number one domestic economic policy challenge and opportunity, and I say that for three reasons:
First, it is the easiest way to get Americans back to work with jobs that have a good standard of living, which should be one of our main focuses as a Congress.
Second, making a smart and significant investment in our infrastructure, in our road and transportation infrastructure, in our logistics, in our communications and in our energy and water infrastructure, making a smart and significant investment in this infrastructure will improve the overall competitiveness of the United States, which is the number one thing we should be focused on when we think about our future in the context of a global and technology-enabled world.
The third reason I favor infrastructure investments is because they pencil out; in other words, the data overwhelmingly suggests that an investment in infrastructure has a very, very good payback to the economy.
Just to put the infrastructure situation in this country in context, I want to cite a recent report done by the American Society of Civil Engineers; and they do a survey of our infrastructure every 2 years. The report recently came out and they provided us a grade. They actually grade each component of our infrastructure. Our cumulative grade as a country--and remember, this is the wealthiest, most successful country in the history of the world. Our cumulative grade for our infrastructure was a D-plus. And the civil engineers estimate that we
have to make an investment of at least $2 trillion to $3 trillion to bring our infrastructure up to a grade that we deem successful--$2 trillion to $3 trillion.
In addition, there's an argument that the existing investments we make in infrastructure, even if they were to be increased, the programs that we have, the very, very important infrastructure programs we have as a country, like investing or making sure the highway trust fund is funded at the level that's appropriate and consistent with historical averages, even if we were to make these investments, which I clearly believe we should and I know my colleague from California believes we should, there's still a very strong argument, or the data would suggest, that we will continue to accumulate an infrastructure gap. In other words, the amount that we need to invest in our infrastructure to make us competitive will continue to grow. And so this is a very, very significant problem.
And to put this problem in further context, we need to remember that infrastructure is services and investments for the common good. They're public services, and they're historically made by governments, the Federal Government, the State governments and local governments.
And we all know that governments are under fiscal pressure right now. Both our Federal Government and our local governments are under pressure. So we need, as we think about investing in our infrastructure, to not just be funding the existing programs that we have up to the levels that they deserve to be funded at--and that should be a main priority of this Congress--but we also need to be thinking about new and creative and fiscally sensitive and sustainable ways of investing in our infrastructure across the long term.
Our infrastructure problem is a multidimensional problem, meaning there's lots of reasons we have this problem, so we need numerous tools to solve the problem. And one of those tools, I think, exists in legislation that's been filed that we led--it was filed several weeks ago in the Congress--that right now has 18 Republican and 18 Democratic cosponsors, so it's truly bipartisan legislation. We also have 25 groups that have supported the legislation, outside groups representing both parties typically in the terms of their orientation.
The Partnership to Build America Act creates the American infrastructure fund, which is designed to be a large-scale infrastructure financing capability that can finance many of the projects my colleague from California will talk about tonight, Mr. Speaker. But what's important about the American infrastructure fund is it's funded without any appropriations from the government. Instead, it's funded by providing corporations with an incentive to invest.
Under the Partnership to Build America Act, the American infrastructure fund is capitalized with $50 billion of capital. The capital comes from the fund selling bonds that are not guaranteed by the Federal Government. They are long-term, 50-year, and they pay a 1 percent interest rate, so they're very attractive, low-cost capital that, if put into the American infrastructure fund, will allow it to provide $750 billion of loan guarantees to local governments and direct loans, if necessary, to local governments--$750 billion of funding capacity.
Over a 50-year life, we expect that money to turn two to three times, and so that could be up to $2 trillion of financing without any appropriations from the Federal Government. The $50 billion that capitalizes the American infrastructure fund comes from selling these bonds not guaranteed by the Federal Government, 50-year bonds, 1 percent interest.
As an incentive to get companies to buy these bonds, we're proposing that they get a tax break on their ability to repatriate their overseas earnings.
We've all talked about the issue we have with our Tax Code and how it's created a situation where U.S. corporations are accumulating significant amounts of cash overseas. Under the American infrastructure fund, they have a way of bringing back up to 10 percent of that capital in a way that we know will create American jobs by investing in our infrastructure.
So we put forth the American infrastructure fund as a solution to the problems that my colleague from California is discussing, as an innovative financing solution to deal with the infrastructure problems that this country has, and to do it in a way that's additive to the existing programs that exist and can be done in a way that is fiscally responsible in light of the fiscal pressures that the country has.
So this is some of the work that we've been doing in our office to advance that important work that my friend from California is talking about this evening.
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Mr. DELANEY. Yes, I knew you would enjoy that feature of the legislation.
But in all seriousness, we have good bipartisan support. I have 20 of my Republican colleagues on the bill with 20 Democratic colleagues; 18 are on it officially right now. We have received very constructive feedback from all of my colleagues. They have all worked to make the legislation better. We are looking forward to continue to build good bipartisan support. I think we both know that when the private sector and government work well together on economic challenges we get very good economic outcomes.
I want to thank you for giving me this time.
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