Investing in A New Vision for the Environment and Surface Transportation in America Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to en bloc E.

Of the 171 amendments in this bill, or in this bloc that we are considering, it contains 27 individual amendments carefully selected and grouped by the other side of the aisle with absolutely no input whatsoever from Republicans. Unfortunately, this is par for the course for the way the majority has managed its my-way-or-the-highway bill.

These 27 amendments were picked so the majority could falsely claim that their bill includes bipartisan provisions, when in reality this bill is still nothing more than a partisan wish list.

Mr. Speaker, if a car is a lemon, putting a nice cup holder in it isn't going to make me buy it.

Regardless, we should at least have adequate time or an adequate amount of time to consider and debate each of these amendments individually, because, frankly, there are a number of amendments in here that I do support. But this process has not been open. It should be open. But, instead, we have been dealt a poor hand from a stacked deck.

It would be an understatement to say that I am disappointed by how the majority is rushing this bill, which spends $1\1/2\ trillion of the taxpayers' money through a sham legislative process.

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Mr. GRAVES of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I rise in opposition to this en bloc amendment, and I am, frankly, embarrassed by the process.

I am willing to bet that everyone who sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is proud of its track record of working across the aisle to get things done. That is the proven track record for success for getting bills actually signed into law, but that is not how our committee has operated during the process on this particular piece of legislation.

If you choose to operate and move legislation in this manner, you are going to get nothing accomplished; you are not going to get any bill signed into law. The only thing you are going to get out of this process is going to be a press release, and that is it.

This is a sham process, and dusting this massive bill with a few amendments that Republicans support doesn't make it a bipartisan process or a bipartisan product.

When the majority is ready to work across the aisle on responsible legislation, we will continue to stand at the ready to work with them. But I can't vote for this en bloc package, and I cannot vote for the underlying bill.

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Mr. GRAVES of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, I would like to offer amendments en bloc printed in part G.

Mr. Speaker, although I support this amendment, I want to, again, note my continued disappointment in this overall process.

More than once, I faulted the majority's one-sided committee markup of H.R. 2, but at least we were given time to consider 165 Republican amendments, although 112 were ultimately rejected and mostly through en bloc. But now the majority wants to further stifle consideration of minority amendments by giving us a scant eight Republican amendments out of nearly 400 that were filed. We weren't even given the courtesy to choose.

In 2015, if everyone remembers, and for those who weren't here, when the House considered the last surface transportation law, the FAST Act, there were more Democrat-led amendments--remember, Republicans were in the majority. There were more Democrat-led amendments that were agreed to than there were Republican-led amendments that were made in order for today's debate.

Of course, the FAST Act was a bill that was developed at that time by both the majority and the minority, which is a stark difference from the majority's bill that we are discussing today.

In fact, I remember the Big Four agreement. If the chairmen of both the subcommittee and the full committee and the ranking members of both the subcommittee and full committee, if one of us didn't agree on a provision, then it wasn't included. It was as simple as that.

Today could have been a great day for all of us, and we could be approving a bill that all of us could be proud of. Instead, we are left with a bill and a process that shreds one of the only bipartisan issues left in Congress. It just shreds it to pieces.

I can answer the gentlewoman who managed the last section of the bill, the financial services section. She said: I don't understand why everybody is so disappointed in this.

Mr. Speaker, because it is a failure. An absolute failure is what this bill is. And it is not going anywhere, absolutely not going anywhere.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to oppose this partisan process, but I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. GRAVES of Missouri. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I would like to lend my support for the gentleman's thank-yous for the staff. We all know that staff works very, very hard on these pieces of legislation, and they put in a tremendous amount of time and effort, regardless of which side that they happen to be on.

Madam Speaker, I want to continue to note how much of a missed opportunity that this is and this was. I support this amendment, but unfortunately, it doesn't fix the overall bill for it to make really too much of a difference.

The sad thing is, is we know we could have come together and written an infrastructure bill that would easily gain bipartisan support, which it needs to become law.

In 2 weeks, the T&I Committee plans to mark up the bipartisan Water Resources Act, and I hope and I expect that it will pass. It is bipartisan at this point because it is a bill that both sides continue to develop together. We have worked together on it. That bipartisan process stands in stark contrast to the process that has been used today.

The water resources bill absolutely has a chance of becoming law, whereas this $1.5 trillion wish list won't go anywhere after today.

I congratulate my Republican colleagues for their work on these particular amendments, and I would urge Members to support this amendment.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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