Rebuild America Jobs Act--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I come to the floor this morning to speak to the legislation that is pending before us, S. 1769, the Rebuild America Jobs Act. This legislation, in fact, would put literally millions of Americans back to work rebuilding our Nation's roads, our bridges, our airports, and our railways.

The bill that is before us has two components. The first is a direct $50 billion Federal investment in our infrastructure, and it would be split between roads, rail, transit, and airport projects. More than half of that would go to our well-established, formula-driven highway and transit programs, and that would include about $132 million for New Hampshire.

The second piece of this proposal would create an infrastructure bank. That is legislation I cosponsored, and it has had bipartisan cosponsorship in the Senate. The bank, as it is structured, would be able to leverage public dollars to attract private capital, and that would, if it is successful, lead to hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure over the next 10 years. It is a bipartisan idea, as I said, and it has attracted support from both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Clearly, it is a good idea if it has both of those organizations onboard. Together, this legislation that is pending before us would mean immediate jobs for our construction industry. It has been one of the hardest hit by this recession.

In New Hampshire the number of people working in the construction industry in 2010 was the lowest it had been in a decade. It was 25 percent lower than it was just in 2006, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Christian Zimmerman, who is the head of one of our biggest contractors in New Hampshire, Pike Industries in Belmont, told me he has had to lay off 150 workers in the last couple of years as Federal funding to build New Hampshire's roads has run out.

The Federal Highway Administration estimates that every $1 billion in highway spending supports more than 27,000 jobs. Economists at Moody's estimate that for every dollar we spend on infrastructure, our gross domestic product goes up by $1.59. That is because of the ripple effect this spending has in economic activity. There are a number of good reasons to support the legislation that is before us.

In the short term, this proposal would help put those who are unemployed in the construction industry back to work. That is something that would be critical as we are thinking about how to help the millions in this country who are unemployed and who have been unemployed, many of them for more than a year.

In the long term, the benefits of this investment in our infrastructure are equally important. A quality infrastructure is critical to our businesses. It is critical to our future economic growth, and it is critical to our future competitiveness in the world.

According to numerous studies, deteriorating infrastructure costs businesses more than $100 billion a year in lost productivity. There is very good evidence to show that our lack of investment in recent years is making itself felt in the condition of our roads and our bridges. This past June, the New Hampshire Society of Civil Engineers issued a report card on the condition of our State's roads and bridges, our dams, our wastewater facilities, our airports, and our waterways, those major projects we all consider part of our infrastructure. Sadly, the engineers' report card gave New Hampshire's infrastructure a grade of C. That is better than the grade the national organization has given the United States as a whole; that was a D. It is not as good as we want it to be, and it is not as good as we need for New Hampshire or this country if we are going to continue to be competitive.

Mr. President, 15 percent of New Hampshire's bridges are rated structurally deficient by the Federal Highway Administration, and 148 of them are red-listed. When I was first elected to the State senate, we had a controversy in New Hampshire because we had a highway commissioner who said because of the number of red-listed bridges, when we all drove around New Hampshire and went over a bridge we should drive fast and not look back.

Well, fortunately, we are not in that position right now, but we have a lot of bridges that need investment, and this bill before us would provide New Hampshire with additional Federal highway funding that would help us address these bridges that are red-listed and address our other transportation needs.

The most important project that should be addressed by this legislation in New Hampshire is a project that has been under way for years in the southern part of our State that has been threatened by the uncertainty surrounding Federal funding. It is the widening of Interstate 93 between southern New Hampshire and Massachusetts. This project is long overdue. It is badly needed by commuters and businesses in the area. The I-93 project was budgeted and planned based on the idea that the Federal Government would provide a consistent level of funding, but, unfortunately, the Republican budget the House has called for would produce a 35-percent cut in our highway program. Unfortunately, Congress has not yet been able to reach an agreement on a long-term reauthorization of our highway program. The uncertainty around this and the prospect of such a drastic cut has made this project, I-93, very difficult to finance.

Right now New Hampshire transportation officials have $115 million worth of bonding authority for this project that is just sitting on the sidelines because the Federal Government has not made good on its funding commitments. The bill before us would help complete this critical project for New Hampshire and so many others like it across the country.

If we want to see the benefits that investment and infrastructure can provide in New Hampshire, we only need to look at the new airport access road that goes to our largest airport and our largest city of Manchester. It is going to open to traffic a full 2 years ahead of schedule. The project was accelerated because of the funding it received from the Recovery Act.

I remember the winter after we passed the Recovery Act and looking at the bridge that was being constructed and talking about how we were going to be able to speed up this project because of those Recovery Act dollars.

In fact, it has happened. It is going to open 2 years early. Local planning boards along the Manchester Airport access road are already seeing increased interest from commercial developers for the land that is along that road, that has been opened because of this new highway. Of course, Manchester's airport is also going to benefit from the investment in our airport access road.

Another piece that is in this legislation that is critical to our infrastructure investment in New Hampshire and across the country is the funding for a next-generation system of air traffic control which would transfer our system from a ground-based radar system to a GPS-based system--something most of us have in our cars these days. That would allow the entire airline industry to plan more efficient, point-to-point routes, and it would allow everybody to save on fuel costs.

I had the opportunity to meet with Southwest Airlines a couple weeks ago. It is the largest air carrier at the Manchester Airport. They talked to me about the challenges they are facing and the entire airline industry is facing because we haven't invested in this next generation system of air traffic control. They said it will save us money because it will be more economical in terms of fuel usage because they can go point to point, and it will save time because we can provide for more efficient routes.

This is a no-brainer. Right now, our system of air traffic control is behind even the country of Mongolia. It is time for us to make this investment, to make it easier for airlines to fly into a small hub airport such as Manchester. It would save us all money. It would be safer. It is an investment that is long overdue.

A couple weeks ago, I also had a chance to speak at an infrastructure summit that the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce supports for the Greater Manchester region. There was a whole day of talking about why investment in our infrastructure is important, because without reliable power, without reliable bridges and public transportation and roads, businesses can't thrive. The Manchester Chamber believes investment in infrastructure is critical to growing our economy and creating jobs, and I share that belief. It is a belief that I came to as a State senator way back over 20 years ago, when I served in the New Hampshire State Senate. It is something I continued to support as Governor. In those days, we worked together on a bipartisan basis because we all understood, Republicans and Democrats, investing in infrastructure produces returns.

New Hampshire and the rest of our country need this investment that this legislation pending before us would provide. Our unemployed need the work. Our businesses need to know we are going to make these investments so they can depend on this certainty for their long-term growth and competitiveness.

So I hope, as we come to this vote today on the motion to proceed to this legislation, my colleagues, particularly those across the aisle, will give up their opposition to this legislation. I know they know how critical it is to invest in our infrastructure. So this is something we all ought to come together around. Just because this is a proposal that has been put forward by the President is not a reason not to support it.

I urge all my colleagues to support the passage of this legislation. Let's make these investments. Let's put people back to work. Let's make sure we are going to be competitive in the future. Thank you very much.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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