On Senate Floor, Portman Highlights Benefits of Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, Calls On House to Act

October 28, 2021

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WASHINGTON, DC – Senator Portman made a speech in the Senate today Take advantage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and called on the House of Representatives to pass the historic law without further delay.

The bipartisan bill passed the Senate almost three months ago with 69 to 30 votes. As Portman noted, this infrastructure legislation will improve competitiveness rather than add to the record inflation the economy is currently experiencing. Portman also addressed the Democrats’ ruthless tax and spending accounting. President Biden today unveiled the framework for the $ 1.75 trillion bill, which includes massive new spending and massive tax hikes on top of those that already existt the control inflation this country is already facing.

A transcript of his remarks can be found below and a video can be found here.

“I’m here tonight to speak about the growing drug addiction epidemic and the problem that is emerging in my home state of Ohio. And really all of them S.tates represented here in this C.hamber and how we need to redouble our efforts.

“And it’s a heartbreaking story because we made so much progress before the COVID-19 pandemic. But now, under the pandemic, we have this epidemic that is growing. But before I get into that, I need to first talk about what’s going on in the US House of Representatives tonight. We did it almost three months ago, at the beginning of August C.hamber passed bipartisan legislation to finally fix our infrastructure deficits in this country. The presidents of both parties had proposed it for many years. Congress had talked a lot about it. But we had never been able to find a way forward.

“And so a group of ten Republicans, ten Democrats got together and said we will grow this from the center and figure out how to approach our infrastructure challenges across party lines. We did that. The President of the United States, President Biden, supported our efforts, and we have been able to get this legislation through here in the United States Senate, not without some challenges and some changes, modifications. But we could do it because it was great for America, great for every state represented here, because it repaired roads and bridges, but also our ports, our waterways, our water infrastructure, our infrastructure that is considered digital, that would be very fast Internet – make sure it is available to all of our citizens.

“A lot of things that people had talked about for a long time said they were for it, but eventually we could actually put it down in writing and get it done. And it passed C.hamber with a great voice, 69 votes. Rarely does anything so significant happen beyond that C.hamber with that kind of bipartisan support.

“Unfortunately it languished in the House of Representatives for almost three months. Since the beginning of August. And the reason it languished over there isn’t because it doesn’t have the votes. It’s really more because people want to use it as a hostage for something they want even more. And that’s just wrong. And so tonight I urge my fellow house members, both Democrats and Republicans, to put aside partisanship and focus on the content of the bill and pass it.

“It has been held as a political hostage by something especially the Democrats in the house” P.Rogressives in the house, want even more. It’s not that they are against infrastructure. You know this is necessary. They know it’s good for their constituents. It’s good for our country. That’s because they want even more to pass a massive new spending bill, sometimes called the Build Back Better Bill, sometimes a Reconciliation Bill, sometimes a $ 3.5 trillion tax and spending bill. But that is completely independent of the infrastructure. But they really want that to happen.

“So you know there are a lot of moderate Democrats who support the Infrastructure Act. You need these moderate Democrats to support the massive tax and spending bill. So you held it hostage. They didn’t allow the infrastructure bill to be postponed unless they get commitments on the bill they really want, which is the bill for taxes and expenses. I think that’s just wrong.

“And so I ask the President of the House and my colleagues in the House to vote on this law tonight. I know it has been back and forth all day what will happen. I can only say that it is the right thing for our country. Think about it, the infrastructure bill is exactly what we need now. We don’t just have a long one–Challenge that everyone knows and that we have been talking about for literally decades.

“But it is very effective for the problems we are currently facing in our economy. Inflation. Everyone worries about it, and they should be. The petrol costs at the pump have risen by around 42 percent this year compared to the previous year. Really hard in the middle–Class families, because while paychecks may have risen a little, inflation has risen higher. So it’s essentially a tax on so many of our working families in this country. But everything is fine: food, clothes, furniture, everything.

“So inflation is being driven in part by stimulus spending. You recall, there was a huge $ 1.9 trillion bill in March, and many of us said it, including some Democrats, including the famous Larry Summers, a former Democratic Secretary of the Treasury. He was working for President Obama and in the Clinton Administration, he said if you make these massive expenditures, unprecedented amounts of stimulus spending, you will drive inflation up because you are putting a lot more dollars in people’s pockets in the economy at a time when the economy is already beginning to turn to improve, and that will be chasing less and less goods and that will increase inflation.

“And that’s what happened, which is bad for everyone, especially again, lower and middle–Income families who really see this hidden tax on everything they buy. And again they are taking the power of their slight wage increase that we have seen. In fact, if you look at the data, it looks like wages have actually gone down over the past year. They fell because wages are worth less after inflation. So here we are.

“And the infrastructure law is actually inflationary. Why am i saying this? Because it doesn’t invest as it is invested in the tax and expense accounts, it’s not about incentives. It’s about longer–long-term investments in property, plant and equipment. That’s what economists are looking at, including conservative economists at the American Enterprise Institute. Including Doug Holtz-Eakin, who is a former CBO director and a rather conservative economist. And they say that it actually works against inflation because you are investing a long time–to include in these investments, to create jobs, to make our economy more efficient and more productive. And so in this case, now that we have this high inflation, it’s a good thing.

“Number two, we’ve had a lot of natural disasters in this country, especially last year. One in three Americans appears to live in an area affected by one of these natural disasters. It’s the hurricanes, it’s the floods, it’s the forest fires. It is something that is affecting our country a lot right now. We hear about it practically every week.

“This legislation, the Infrastructure Act, actually contains resilience provisions to mitigate the damage caused by these natural disasters. In this sense, too, it is a well-timed bill. There is a historical obligation to make sure that we don’t just talk about climate change and natural disasters, but actually create things that will protect communities from those natural disasters, whether it’s forest fires, cyclones, tornadoes or other natural disasters. That’s in this law, the infrastructure law.

“Finally, what is one of the biggest problems we are currently facing in relation to our economy? The supply chain crisis, like many of you, go into a store in your community and you will see that the shelves are a lot barren than they used to be. And there isn’t much on the shelves because we have this supply chain problem, kind of a bottleneck. Well, this legislation helps in that regard because it provides funding for infrastructure, including our ports. Our ports of entry, our land ports, but also our sea ports, which are now overcrowded with more and more container ships and yet cannot process quickly enough.

“So the experts tell me that the $ 2 billion in infrastructure bill will help improve these facilities, improve their operations, improve intermodal connections – in other words, truck connections, train connections to our ports, and so on help to get around. ”that isSupply chain issue that we are currently facing. Legislation helps with rail freight transport. It helps with our waterways, which carry a lot of cargo in our country. So it would be something that would be helpful in all three areas – inflation, natural disasters, and also our supply chain problems.

“At the same time, it is only necessary because our infrastructure has fallen behind, especially behind other countries. And that’s why it’s good to make our economy more efficient and productive. That is one of the reasons why it got 69 votes here in the United States Senate and we have to pass it. “It is completely different from the tax and expense reconciliation invoice. That’s massive new spending, massive tax hikes that will add to inflation.

“At a time when we have such high debts and deficits, this will increase our record levels of debt and deficits. Its high tax hikes will hurt our economy if we can’t afford it. We just got the numbers from last quarter’s economic growth. They came just today, 0.5 percent growth. Very disappointing. Far below expectations. So we know that economic growth is slowing. We know that inflation is rising. We know this is not the right time for us to come forward with this type of legislation because it will add to inflationary pressures, but it also means that we see huge spending spikes in times of debt and deficit, and eventually again at a time in which unfortunately our economy is not running the way we would like to see it. It’s slowing down. The worst economic quarter since 2000. We have to be sure that we are not currently putting any new taxes on our economy. So the timing is bad.

“Incidentally, the infrastructure draft does not contain any new tax increases. The infrastructure bill is not about immediate expenses. It’s about long-term investments over five, 10, 15 years. Against inflation. so you areare very different proposals, aren’t they? Tonight I call on my colleagues in the House to pass this law and finalize the infrastructure law. Don’t think it’s anything but hostage. That’s not how we work. Do the right thing for your constituents and for our country.”

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