Congressional Progressive Caucus: Infrastructure

Floor Speech

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Mr. POCAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, which is having our Special Order hour today to
talk about the Nation's need for infrastructure--the fact that we need
to keep serious investments in infrastructure not only to keep our
roads and bridges and other important parts of our country together but
also to help the good, family-supporting jobs that come along with
these important investments in our infrastructure.

I serve on the Budget Committee, and we were talking one day with Dr.
Elmendorf from the Congressional Budget Office, our nonpartisan agency
that we deal with to talk about budgetary matters.

Specifically, I asked the question of Dr. Elmendorf about the
Recovery Act that we passed in this country a number of years ago. Dr.
Elmendorf said that, thanks to that Recovery Act, over 3 million jobs
were saved or created because of the investment we put into our
Nation's infrastructure.

In my State of Wisconsin, I was at the State legislature at the time
and I chaired our budget committee. We had a report from the road
building industry and the vertical construction industry that said
54,000 jobs just in Wisconsin were saved or created because of the
Recovery Act.

As much as that helped provide a boost to the economy and help fill
our infrastructure needs, we still have so many more to take care of.
We have been given a grade of D-plus by the very engineering society
that grades our Nation's infrastructure. We have been told that we have
100,000 bridges in this country, or 16 percent, old enough that they
can qualify for Medicare.

As we know from recent disasters that we have seen in different parts
of the country where bridges have fallen and people have literally been
killed, we need to reinvest in that infrastructure so that we have a
country that operates, that businesses can function.

Also, we need to help create those jobs now for people who are still
out of work. As the economy is coming back, we know that wages have
been stagnant, and these are good, strong, family-supporting jobs that
can provide it.

The Congressional Progressive Caucus will soon be putting out our
version of the budget, just as we will among the Democrats and the
Republicans, but we will put out our version
of the budget--just as the President has--with a deep investment in our
infrastructure needs because we know that that investment is one of the
pillars of the strong economy.

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

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