The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“Infrastructure (Executive Session)” mentioning Gary C. Peters was published in the Senate section on pages S2206-S2207 on April 27.
Of the 100 senators in 117th Congress, 24 percent were women, and 76 percent were men, according to the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
Senators' salaries are historically higher than the median US income.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
Infrastructure
Mrs. FISCHER. Mr. President, I like to think that infrastructure is in my DNA. My father was Jerry Strobel, a civil engineer who spent his entire career with the Nebraska Department of Transportation. Now, that was back when it was still called the Department of Roads. He eventually became director/State engineer and served under two different Governors, Kay Orr and Ben Nelson, one Republican and one Democrat.
My dad used to take my two brothers and me on weekend road trips across Nebraska to check up on our infrastructure--trips that he would call ``inspection tours.'' Many of the photos that I have from my childhood are of my brothers and me standing on partially finished bridges, in front of bulldozers, and next to highways that were under various stages of completion. He taught me how to drop a plumb line and showed me how to handle his surveying equipment.
Those trips with my dad taught me that infrastructure takes a long time to plan, it takes a long time to permit, and it takes a long time to build. Even short stretches of a single highway can sometimes--well, it can take years to finish. To get the most out of our limited taxpayer resources, we must condense that process to save both time and money.
I learned that reliable infrastructure doesn't happen by accident, and when I was elected to the Nebraska Legislature, I brought that appreciation with me. As chair of the Transportation and Telecommunications Committee, I introduced bills like the Nebraska Build Act. The new revenue from that bill has funded over a dozen important infrastructure projects across Nebraska.
Nebraskans and all Americans know what actual infrastructure is. It is roads and bridges, but it is also ports and airports and railroads and pipelines and waterways and broadband. Those things are a core responsibility of government. The American people also know what infrastructure is not. If Congress passes a bill to reform Medicare, that is not infrastructure; that is healthcare.
We all know that words don't change their meaning overnight to suit one party or the other's political goals, but President Biden seems to think they do. He is asking us to support an infrastructure proposal that could eventually top $2.7 trillion, which redefines that word to mean policies such as climate research and federally funded home or community care services--things that have nothing to do with what we have traditionally called infrastructure.
Less than 6 percent of the $2.25 trillion that is identified in the Biden proposal would go to roads and bridges. Barely 4 percent would go to broadband, and less than 2 percent is for airports. At the same time, hundreds of billions of dollars would be funneled to things like housing, Medicare, and electric vehicles.
The President wants to enact trillions of dollars in new taxes to pay for all of this. Proposals being discussed include raising the capital gains tax to the highest level in history, as well as forcing American businesses--and then, ultimately, their customers--to pay the highest combined corporate tax rate in the developed world. Congressional Democrats have also proposed getting rid of the estate tax exemption, which would make the Federal death tax apply to hard-working, middle-
class families for the first time in decades. This would hit our small, family Main Street businesses and our family farms, making it even more difficult to pass their life's work on to their children.
Infrastructure has always been bipartisan, and it has always enjoyed widespread support. I would gladly--I would gladly--support a bill that takes our very real infrastructure problems seriously, and I told President Biden that when I met with him at the White House a few weeks ago. But his proposal simply doesn't do that. The President's plan asks the Senate to vote for a policy wish list of priorities that no one--no one outside of Washington, DC's bubble--has ever dreamed of calling infrastructure.
When it comes to real infrastructure, the Senate does have bipartisan roots. We passed the FAST Act by a vote of 83 to 16 under President Obama in 2015. We passed an FAA reauthorization 93 to 6 under President Trump. And the Senate unanimously approved water development bills and my pipeline safety bill last year. I see no reason why the administration can't tackle this important issue in a bipartisan way once again, and the President, who represented Delaware in the Senate for more than 35 years, knows better than most that we do this every day. We do it on bills like the HAULS Act, which I reintroduced in March to provide more flexibility to ag and livestock haulers and which has won support by both Republicans and Democrats. There is also bipartisan support for my bill to establish an online portal for reporting blocked railroad crossings.
My Democratic colleagues and I find common ground on infrastructure more often than we disagree, and that includes bills like the Rural Spectrum Accessibility Act, which made internet access more widely available in rural areas.
History shows that infrastructure is a bipartisan issue, and it can be once again. But, right now, our friends on the other side of the aisle are pushing this wish list of priorities for their progressive agenda and calling it infrastructure.
For our part, Senate Republicans have made it clear that we are willing to work with the President on a bill that actually addresses our Nation's ailing infrastructure and makes targeted investments to meet the needs that we have.
We introduced our own framework last week. It draws on our past bipartisan successes, like the FAST Act, and it focuses on roads and bridges, broadband, and other actual infrastructure. It matches or raises the funding levels in the FAST Act, such as $299 billion versus
$226 billion for roads and bridges, and provides nearly twice as much funding for transportation safety programs and rail and Amtrak grants.
We have spent enormous amounts of money in the last year to deal with COVID-19, and Republicans and Democrats both voted for five bills, totaling around $4 trillion, to address that very real crisis. Another
$1.9 trillion passed on a partisan basis in January. That is $6 trillion of new spending in 1 year--$6 trillion of new spending in 1 year. That level of spending is not sustainable. Adding another $2.7 trillion that is in the President's plan to this spending that we already have is not sustainable.
Our proposal is clear that funding for infrastructure should be fiscally responsible. It should use existing, proven formula programs as much as possible, and it should make regulations less burdensome. This is what President Biden should be focused on, and I hope that he takes us up on our offer.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. PETERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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