Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I rise today to speak in support of the pending bill, America's Water Infrastructure Act. I congratulate Chairman Barrasso and Ranking Member Carper of the Environment and Public Works Committee for completing this vitally important bill on time. It is critical that we reauthorize Army Corps projects and other water financing authorities every 2 years, as they have done. The bill before us authorizes construction of 12 new water resource development projects and 65 studies. America's Water Infrastructure Act also includes a number of provisions that will benefit California. The bill includes a provision I authored that will require EPA and the Bureau of Reclamation to enter into an agreement within a year. The agreement must specify how the two agencies will jointly administer a Treasury-rate loan program for storage, water recycling, groundwater recharge, and other water supply projects. This provision builds off EPA's success using Treasury-rate loans to fund projects under the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, WIFIA. The idea is to extend these Treasury-rate loans to water supply projects. There are three significant ways WIFIA loans will lower costs for local agencies wanting to build storage, water recycling, groundwater recharge, or other water supply projects: No. 1, they will pay only 3.2 percent interest rate on their loans based on today's rates, versus 4 percent or greater rates for municipal bond financing; No.…”