Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Chairman, the appropriations bill before us includes only $100 million for the National Infrastructure Investment grants, otherwise known as TIGER grants. This is an 83 percent cut to this critical investment. This wrongheaded and foolish slashing of infrastructure monies will cost us far more than the money saved.

TIGER grants have invested, as my colleagues have pointed out, in road, in rail, transit, and port projects that achieve vital national objectives all across this great Nation.

Yet, the bill before us not only imposes a savage cut to the program, it restricts the use of these grants to highway, bridge, port, and freight rail intermodal projects only. It says that these are the only projects that can get done, meaning that transit, passenger rail, bike and pedestrian paths would no longer be eligible.

Mr. Chairman, we face an infrastructure crisis in this country. The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that we need to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020 to bring our Nation's infrastructure back to good condition.

We also face a job crisis in this country, and TIGER creates jobs. A study last year on the Economic Impact of Public Transportation Investment found that every $1 billion invested supports 21,800 jobs, and these are jobs that cannot be outsourced. It generates $3 billion of additional business sales, and $432 million in Federal, State, and local tax revenues.

We need to invest in our national infrastructure. We need to support projects that make our communities more livable and sustainable.

In this project's history, we have found that so many of our colleagues in Arkansas and Illinois, Ohio, Minnesota, Arizona, Iowa, Pennsylvania, and, yes, Connecticut, Georgia, Utah, Washington State, Idaho, Florida, Virginia, Maine, California, Nevada, North Carolina, many of whom have received more than one TIGER grant, with the results that, the reason why they wanted these grants was because, in fact, it does make that investment in infrastructure. It creates jobs and creates future economic growth.

TIGER grants are an excellent way to do this that make our communities more livable, more sustainable, and we should support them. I urge my colleagues to oppose this deep and this dangerous cut.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

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