Providing for Consideration of H.R. 5303, Water Resources Development Act of 2016; Providing for Consideration of Motions to Suspend the Rules; and Waiving a Requirement of Clause 6(a) of Rule XIII...
Floor Speech
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, I want to first commend the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for what he has done on this bill. It would take the wisdom of Solomon to get all the competing interests and all the competing views perfectly happy on this bill.
What I think the gentleman has done in the Rules Committee is to recognize that this is a bill that cannot wait. It is a bill whose time has come. He has absolutely the courage of his convictions. He has got a whole lot of heart and a whole lot of soul, and he has worked with other Members to say this is a bill as best constructed as we can get it and we have got to move.
The question on the underlying bill that I think Ranking Member DeFazio and Chairman Shuster have worked so hard on is one that is complex in nature but incredibly simple in what it produces. It produces a couple of things that, I think, are worth consideration.
First, it produces something that has everything to do with what Mr. Woodall was just talking about on the way that our budget used to be configured. There used to be a budget in the United States that was built around what are we going to do, what are we going to invest in our country to make our country more competitive. We have gone on to an entitlement budget that both the Republican and Democratic side would say doesn't work for a lot of folks out there and is a financial train wreck.
I thought it was fascinating, in fact, that Mario Draghi, who is the head of the European Central Bank, said in Brussels yesterday that it is ``not enough for delivering real and sustainable growth in the long term'' if we continue down this road of low interest rates. In fact, he said a continued path of low interest rates has harmful side effects.
I think we have seen that with a lot of retirees out there. A lot of folks who have pension plans that are depending on what comes next in financial markets are being hurt with this financial engineering. What he said, in short, was to be competitive in the world economy, you cannot continue to rest on this notion of financial engineering as a way to get you there.
So what this bill is ultimately about, as Mr. Woodall was just pointing out, we have got to move from the European Central Bank's financial engineering as the way in which we are supposedly competitive as an economy and go back to the basics, back to the basics of where we are on tax policy, back to the basics of where we are on regulatory policy, back to the basics on spending, taxes.
Go down the list, but among the things on that list is this notion of investing in infrastructure. It is important not only in terms of making our economy more competitive; it is also important if you care about the debt and deficit. The only way we can close that gap is not spending restraint, but also by growing the economy; and that this is, in fact, a linchpin to growing the economy and, therefore, it cannot wait.
I think he also recognizes what Thomas Friedman talks about in this so-called flat world that we live in; that it is an increasingly competitive world. I thought it was interesting that Hillary Clinton mentioned last night in the debate that 95 percent of the folks in the world live out there and 5 percent live in the United States, and we have got to trade with them. And disproportionately, the way in which we trade, almost 90 percent of what we buy in markets around this country got here by container.
So we have got to go about this business of upgrading our port facilities, for instance. That is why I think that, as Representative Wasserman Schultz was just mentioning, it is important what is happening in Port Everglades. It is important what is happening in the port in Miami. It is important to what is happening in the port in Lake Charleston.
Do I have a hometown component to the fact that I like Charleston and
South Carolina?
Yes. But it has everything to do with the growth of the region based on the Panama Canal being widened and based on post-Panamax-sized ships coming to the East Coast, Gulf Coast, and West Coast ports in this country. To be competitive, we have got to be continuing this process on a regular basis of upgrading our infrastructure.
Finally, this is about a change in process, if you look at the underlying bill. The Founding Fathers talked about e pluribus unum-- from the many, one--and too often we have gotten away from that; we have gotten to a Balkanized look at the way districts work.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. SANFORD. Mr. Speaker, we have got to go about looking at the national needs of this country as opposed to just the regional needs or the local needs.
We got off on the notion of earmarks, and at times our answer is just to cede to the executive branch that deliberation. I think that what this bill correctly does is it pulls back to Congress that which the Constitution vested with the Congress in deliberation of these kinds of matters, which makes it incredibly important.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source