On the recordNovember 2, 2011
Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I believe we are currently debating the motion to proceed to go to the energy, water, et cetera, package. Included in that is the proposal of the President that he has sent up asking the Senate to vote on the question of an infrastructure bank. I believe there was a prior vote in the Senate on that in the context of the Jobs Act, which we all know failed at that time. There are some signs that this may wind up being a partisan effort here, but I hope colleagues will stop and think very carefully about the infrastructure bank proposal and what it represents to our country. Whether we can get it over the hurdle at this moment, I do not know. But it is an idea whose time has come, and I am confident in the next weeks or months, hopefully, the Senate will embrace this concept. The reason for doing so is very simple. Colleagues on both sides of the aisle are increasingly reminded when they go home, as well as familiar here just in the general dialog about where we are going in our country, of the enormous deficit reduction--the deficit; it is on my mind--of the infrastructure deficit we face in this country as a whole. So I want colleagues to stop and think hard about a simple question: How are we going to build America?…
