On the recordAugust 3, 2021
As we all know by now, a bipartisan group of Senators worked with the White House over the last several weeks to negotiate a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, and I know a lot of hard work went into it, a lot of late nights, and I want to thank all of our colleagues who have made a positive contribution in this debate and discussion. It is particularly important at this time, I believe, that we do these things on a bipartisan basis, if we can. After much anticipation, we finally received the text Sunday night, and a lot of what we expected to see, we saw, like funding for roads, bridges, ports, waterways, airports, and broadband. But what we didn't see were adequate pay-fors for the bill. For example, we learned after the bill was announced that it would be essentially a supplemental to the current infrastructure bill, which would require another $118 billion in general revenue to fill the gap left because of the inadequacy of the highway trust fund funding. Now, we have all known that that is a problem. We had to use general revenue the last time we did a highway bill. But that hasn't really been part of the discussion, and I think, once people begin to see an additional $118 billion in borrowed money in order to pass this bill, it causes significant concern. I guess the other part of it is that this bill seems to be moving at warp speed. Under normal circumstances, an infrastructure bill would go through a long and arduous subcommittee process.…
