A bill to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from rejecting or otherwise determining to be inadequate a State implementation plan in any case in which the State submitting the plan has not been given a reasonable time to develop and submit the plan in accordance with a certain provision of the Clean Air Act.

Mr. President, while I have been interested in the comments between the two leaders, I have to agree with the Republican leader that this is an exercise, in many ways, in futility because the bill brought forth by the other side has very little chance of passing through both Houses of Congress because it is a partisan bill.

Let me just mention a few things this morning. While growth remains sluggish in our economy, unemployment high, and job growth insufficient to drive unemployment lower, the number of pages in the Federal Register is at an all-time high. Pages devoted to final rules rose by 20 percent

between 2009 and 2010, and proposed rules have also risen by close to 20 percent to 2,439 in 2010.

Of the 4,257 regulatory actions already in the pipeline, 219 are considered economically significant, meaning they are estimated to impose a cost of $100 million or more on the economy. By comparison, that is 28 more than this time last year and 47 percent more than in 2009. In total, the Obama administration has imposed 75 new major regulations costing over $38 billion annually. And we wonder why our country is in such trouble.

The minutes of the late September meeting of the Federal Reserve monetary policymaking committee reveal that in talking to businesses and market participants, many contacts have ``cited uncertainty about regulatory and tax policies as contributing to businesses' reluctance to spend.''

If businesses are not spending because of regulatory uncertainty, then their customers will see lack of demand for their products. The lack of demand explanation for economic sluggishness offered by the administration and its Keynesian advisers begs the question of why there is a lack of demand. While there are likely several reasons, the Fed clearly identifies one of them: Uncertainty about regulatory policies.

Indeed, uncertainty regarding future regulatory policies as a contributing factor for business reluctance to hire and invest has been cited in minutes of the past three policymaking meetings of the Fed's monetary policymaking committee. Those identifying that such uncertainty is impeding job creation are American businesses and not government bureaucrats insulated from the front lines of businesses and not their Keynesian advisers. They are the boots on the ground in the American economy--the very people who create jobs--most of whom are small businesspeople.

The legislation I have introduced seeks in part to ease the burden of Federal regulations on businesses, including smaller and younger businesses--where vibrancy is critical for job creation--and to provide a rational regulatory decisionmaking process to provide greater certainty to businesses about the future regulatory environment.

Provisions in this act represent ideas that have garnered bipartisan support. Indeed, many of the provisions follow directly from the President's own jobs council. The President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, according to the council, ``was created to provide nonpartisan advice.''

I am talking about the bill we have filed on this side.

The jobs council presented recommendations to President Obama on October 11, 2011, in Pittsburgh, PA. Those recommendations stem from the council's interim report titled ``Taking Action, Building Confidence: Five Common-Sense Initiatives to Boost Jobs and Competitiveness.'' Many of the provisions in my act stem directly from recommendations in the council's report and from the report's call for a more rational Federal regulatory system.

Allow me to offer some quotes and comments related to the President's jobs council's interim report recommendations in the context of this act.

First, the President's job council says:

The nation's complex federal, state, and local permitting

system can lead to unnecessary delays. In fact, large

Department of Transportation projects can spend years getting

the required Environmental Impact Statement process completed

under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).

I agree. This legislation--my legislation--promotes more efficient regulation to rein in some of the burdensome Federal redtape that stymies transportation infrastructure projects and job creation. At the same time, it fully recognizes environmental and safety concerns surrounding those projects. Relative to those concerns, the President's jobs council remarks that ``what's gotten less attention, however, is the number of jobs at stake.''

Second, the President's jobs council says:

Current markets face significant uncertainty--tax policy,

pollution restrictions, and performance standards are all in

flux.

I agree. This side's legislation serves to reduce some of that uncertainty and promote rational regulatory decisionmaking with congressional review of rules and regulations that are of major economic significance and required approval of the very rules that would impose major costs on the U.S. economy and job creators.

Third, the President's jobs council states:

There is broad consensus that a key step towards jump-

starting economic growth would be removing regulatory

barriers and simplifying overly complex government processes.

Their inefficiencies cost businesses time and money.

I agree. This legislation seeks, through rational regulatory decisionmaking and reviews, to remove unnecessary and costly regulatory barriers and provide simpler, more rational government regulatory processes.

Fourth, the President's jobs council--this is referring to Executive orders to review regulations--says:

Unfortunately, the Executive Orders mandating regulatory

analysis and review did not apply to IRCs [independent

regulatory commissions] such as the Securities and Exchange

Commission or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

because the law won't allow it. While some IRCs employ

economic analysis when crafting new regulations, many do not

routinely do so. As an example, in 2010, IRCs issued 17

economically significant regulatory reactions--16 of which

were promulgated by the Securities and Exchange Commission

and the Federal Reserve System. None underwent the

comprehensive regulatory impact analysis or included the

cost-benefit analysis that is expected from executive branch

agencies. The Council therefore recommends that legislation

be passed that requires that IRCs conduct cost-benefit

analysis for all ``economically significant'' regulatory

actions that may have an annual impact on the economy of $100

million or more as well as any significant guidance that

meets the same threshold.

I agree. This legislation we have filed on this side will provide congressional oversight on any such performed by IRCs such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Reserve, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and other Federal regulators for economically significant actions.

Fifth, the President's jobs council says of its recommendations for economically significant regulatory actions:

These recommendations are not designed to weaken regulation

or regulatory agencies, but rather to improve the rulemaking

process, and to create more effective and less burdensome

regulations that will promote economic growth and job

recovery.

I agree. The Republican legislation promotes a rational regulatory system with improved rulemaking oversight to create more effective and less burdensome regulations in order to help promote jobs growth.

I also agree with the spirit of the jobs council remarks that efforts such as this legislation, far from ``gutting regulations and threatening safety,'' will promote economic efficiency and renewed job creation. The call for rational regulation and rulemaking is in no way a gutting of regulations or a sacrifice of public safety or of environmental quality efforts. We all know that rules and regulations are quite likely to continue to grow and evolve. This legislation seeks only to put rational decisionmaking into the foundation of our regulatory and rulemaking processes that are too often driven by special interests of largely unaccountable and fully unelected Federal regulatory bureaucrats wishing to impose their preferences on America's job creators.

Proponents of the so-called infrastructure bank have actively cited in recent advocacy speeches findings from Global Competitiveness Reports of the World Economic Forum. Well, if ratings from the World Economic Forum guide their views and guide them to advocate hundreds of billions of dollars from taxpayer resources for a risky new GSE that they call an infrastructure bank, let's look at what the forum has to say regarding the United States.

First, in their recent Global Competitiveness Report, in what are called ``the most problematic factors for doing business'' in America, the top 4 factors out of 15 are tax rates, No. 1; inefficient government bureaucracy, No. 2; access to financing, No. 3; and tax regulations, No. 4. Inadequate supply of infrastructure rates No. 10, right below policy instability and restrictive labor regulations.

There you have it. The Global Competitiveness Report the administration and my friends on the other side of the

aisle use to advocate a risky new infrastructure bank places taxes and inefficient government bureaucracy as the top two leading problems in doing business in America. Those are the top two factors that are holding back job growth, and a brandnew, risky infrastructure bank bureaucracy funded by permanently higher taxes would only make those problems worse.

By contrast, the legislation I offer directly addresses inefficient government bureaucracy by acting to ease the inefficient regulatory burdens imposed on job creators by largely unaccountable and unelected Federal bureaucracies throughout our massive regulatory agency maze and their special interests. And, I might add, those regulatory agencies seem clearly not to have job creation and easing of the plight of America's 14 million unemployed workers as part of their main interests.

The legislation I am proposing also provides for a fully paid-for highway extension through 2013 that will give States and contractors the certainty they need to begin large projects and create jobs.

It calls for an elimination of dedicated funding for transportation enhancements and gives States the authority to decide whether to spend resources on bike paths or other such transportation add-ons.

It reforms the National Environmental Policy Act--NEPA--to eliminate the inefficient bureaucratic environmental redtape and to accelerate project delivery and contracting, just as called for by the President's own jobs council. It addresses the bureaucratic redtape associated with the NEPA that the President's own jobs council identifies, and it contains reforms that receive the support of the Department of Transportation.

It includes a provision to stop Environmental Protection Agency rules that serve to drive up costs of concrete and steel, which are key ingredients in the road and construction projects.

It includes provisions for waivers of inefficient environmental reviews, approvals, and licensing and permitting requirements on road, highway, and bridge rebuilding efforts in emergency situations.

It imposes a regulatory timeout on regulations to help stem the regulatory tsunami that is impeding job creation. We face a national jobs and unemployment emergency. It is truly a crisis. The Federal Reserve, the President's own jobs council, and job creators in Utah and across America have made clear that onerous regulations and regulatory uncertainty are acting to cast a wet blanket on job creation in America, and the 14 million unemployed Americans are painfully in need of jobs. My fellow Republicans and I are listening.

The legislation I propose goes straight to the matter in the interest of job creation now, not years from now once some inefficient, new, politicized, unelected Federal bureaucracy called an infrastructure bank is up and running to supply taxpayer funds to specially chosen and favored risky projects--something we have seen plenty of in this administration and some administrations in the past as well.

The legislation I propose addresses the repeated calls from job creators who are stymied by inefficient, burdensome regulatory redtape derived from special interest Federal bureaucracies rather than the interests of American workers.

The legislation I propose draws from bipartisan recommendations, including recommendations from the President's own bipartisan jobs council.

The legislation I propose accommodates fully paid-for infrastructure projects to be undertaken to help build roads, bridges, and a host of other projects without imposing permanent, job-killing, higher taxes during a national unemployment emergency.

I urge all of my colleagues in the Senate to support this legislation. This idea of an infrastructure bank appears to me to be just a future example of what Fannie and Freddie were all about. I think we can do this without having an infrastructure bank, we can do it better, and we can do it pushing a lot of the President's ideas forward, a lot of the World Economic Forum's ideas, and a lot of ideas that both sides of the aisle have to conclude are important for overcoming this regulatory mess that is making it almost impossible to create jobs and almost impossible to get legislation through this body.

Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the time be divided equally and not charged to one side or the other.

I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, let's be clear about what the Democrats' Rebuild America Jobs Act is and what it is not about.

It is about expanding infrastructure spending, financed by tax increases. It is about setting up a brand-new government bureaucracy in the form of an infrastructure bank that will take years to get underway and will subject taxpayers, once again, to private sector risk-taking and to bailouts.

It is about following in the footsteps of the ongoing costly government-sponsored enterprises, or GSEs, called Fannie and Freddie. It is about increasing the Federal footprint in the infrastructure arena. It is about increasing taxes on those with incomes above $500,000, now creatively called millionaires, including incomes of many business owners who risk their own capital to create jobs.

It is about further Federal wage controls on construction projects which lead to inefficient use of taxpayer funds. It is also about creating political talking points for the upcoming Presidential election. They know their bill is doomed to fail. It is all a game.

Here is what the legislation is not about. It is not about creating jobs. It is not about engineering a more efficient and a more fair tax code. No, this is the same tune, different song: A bill for more spending, financed with new taxes.

It remains baffling to me that this is all the other side ever seems to have to offer. The Democrats' proposal incorporates more spending on various infrastructure initiatives, including one of the President's favorites, high-speed rail.

As columnist Robert Samuelson wrote in the Washington Post in February of this year:

High-speed rail is not an investment in the future. It's

mostly a waste of money.

As for the arguments by some that we risk losing our global competitive edge without things such as high-speed rail, I would encourage them to pay attention to what is going on beyond our shores.

China, facing safety concerns, high debt associated with high-speed rail, and political scandals involving kickbacks and undue influence on rail spending has scaled its plans back and operates some high-speed rail at 30 miles per hour.

Spain, a one-time darling of those who promote high-speed rail spending, is also scaling back, having identified such spending as imprudent in the current economic environment.

Here at home, States have rejected high-speed rail initiatives. We just learned in recent days that California's bullet train is now projected to cost close to $100 billion, nearly twice its previous projection.

Nonetheless, the administration and my friends on the other side of the aisle wish to plow forward by shoveling more taxpayer funds into exactly those sorts of projects, with little more than rosy projections of future costs and benefits that justify the expense.

I am deeply skeptical that the Democrats' legislation to fund more infrastructure projects is a good way to address our current national unemployment emergency and need for jobs.

According to CBO:

Large-scale construction projects of any type require years

of planning and preparation. Even those that are ``on the

shelf'' generally cannot be undertaken quickly enough to

provide timely stimulus to the economy.

More often than not, the delays are because of burdensome and inefficient regulatory red tape.

As President Obama discovered too late, shovel-ready projects are hard to find. In June he joked about his first stimulus, saying:

Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we had expected.

Now, that may have been humorous, except they should have known better. Unfortunately, Americans looking for jobs and the American taxpayers who are now on the hook to pay off President Obama's stimulus-driven debt do not find this to be a laughing matter.

The infrastructure bank proposed by the other side would not even be up and running for well over 1 year, and probably longer. It will take 1 year or more just to set up the bureaucracy. How can this possibly have anything to do with creating jobs and lowering unemployment today?

There are worrisome details about the proposed new government infrastructure bank bureaucracy and the power it will wield. The proposed bank's board is required to give ``adequate consideration''-- whatever that means--to a host of features, including ``whether there is sufficient State or municipal political support for the successful completion of the infrastructure project.''

While proponents of the infrastructure bank are selling it as a new, politics-free way to fund projects, even the authorizing legislation explicitly calls for political considerations.

The Democrats' bill also claims the bank would be a ``United States Government-owned independent'' institution--government-owned and controlled by political appointees but somehow independent, just like a GSE, government-sponsored enterprise.

The definition of ``eligible infrastructure project'' in their bill includes a wide range of possible projects, including high-speed rail, which Americans do not want or need, and solid waste disposal facilities such as the one that drove Harrisburg, PA, into bankruptcy.

Most worrisome, the infrastructure bank board is provided with the authority to make any modifications it would like, at its discretion, to what constitutes an eligible infrastructure project. How long do we think it would take for the board to start doling out taxpayer funds to non-viable projects? Haven't we seen enough of that in this administration?

Proponents of the infrastructure bank make the peculiar argument that somehow because the bank would not be able to make grants, taxpayers face no risks of losses. Yet the bank is empowered to make loans, which are risky. The bank is empowered to issue loan guarantees just like taxpayer-backed government guarantees of Fannie and Freddie. Really. Stop and think about it. This just looks like a rebirth of Fannie and Freddie. That is all we need. How is that not risky?

Also problematic is direct authorization in the Democrats' proposed infrastructure bank for deferral of payments of direct loans in the event ``the infrastructure project is unable to generate sufficient revenues to pay the scheduled loan repayments of principal and interest on the direct loan under this Act.''

Translation: If a project's revenues streams are insufficient to pay off the government loan, then the loan gets modified and extended. This, of course, benefits any private partner of the taxpayer-funded infrastructure project while taxpayers are put on the hook for the losses.

Have we been here before? We all know what the answer to that is.

This is an explicit admission, in the authorizing legislation, that contingencies are expected in which taxpayers suffer losses and end up bailing out private entities. This is the essence of a corporate bailout. This is corporatism at its worst--privatized profits and socialized losses.

The whipsawing is too much to handle. On one hand, the President, a former community organizer, stands with the Occupy Wall Street protesters, criticizing the so-called rich. On the other hand, he and his congressional allies support legislation that would make taxpayers responsible for the bad decisions of wealthy contractors. I look forward to the critiques of this crony capitalism at the Occupy Wall Street gatherings.

Taxpayers are on the hook for billions. Keep in mind it is not merely the advertised initial price of $10 billion of taxpayer money necessary to start up the proposed new infrastructure bank bureaucracy that would be at stake. The bank will be empowered to ``leverage'' taxpayer dollars to support 10, 20, or maybe 30 times that amount for so-called public-private partnership projects.

Have we already forgotten that leverage is what helped create the largest financial crisis since the Great Depression? Yet, amazingly, for proponents of the infrastructure bank, leverage in this case is a good thing.

Make no mistake, leverage means risk, and more leverage means more risk. Why, when taxpayers have not even seen the last of the losses from Fannie and Freddie, would we even consider setting up a brand-new public-private mongrel called an infrastructure bank that will again subject taxpayers to losses? Why would we set up a new Federal bureaucracy that will require bailouts on projects specially selected by unelected political appointees with the power to pick winning and losing projects eligible for government assistance?

It is of interest that one of the new pitches for an infrastructure bank is that we need it to help us be more globally competitive. Sometimes comparisons are made with the growth of infrastructure spending in developing countries such as China. But, of course, developing countries devote many resources to infrastructure spending. It is almost a tautology. Those countries are starting with a much smaller beginning base, so we would expect a need for greater growth.

Proponents of infrastructure spending cite rankings of the United States globally on its infrastructure from a recent World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report. If they had read the most recent report carefully, they would note that it identifies that the top two most problematic factors for doing business in America are tax rates and inefficient government bureaucracy. Yet the Democrats' bill seeks to increase tax rates and construct a new bureaucracy called an infrastructure bank.

We do not need a new Federal bureaucracy filled with politically appointed bureaucrats. We do not need a government picking economic winners and losers. We do not need more government spending years from now to deal with an unemployment crisis today. We do not need more taxes at a time when the unemployment rate is stuck at 9.1 percent. And we most definitely do not need another GSE. But if you like Fannie and Freddie, you will love the proposed infrastructure bank.

Once again, the other side has turned to divisiveness and class warfare. Evil millionaires and billionaires, whom Democrats now define as an individual with income starting at $500,000, need to be brought to economic justice. A 0.7-percent tax--or whatever the rate-of-the- week special cooked up by the Democratic war room happens to be-- imposed on individual incomes that begin at $500,000 will bring equality and justice for all.

A few points need to be made about the surtax proposal. First, it is more taxes to pay for more government spending. We need to keep that in mind when we hear Democrats talk about the need to raise taxes to reduce the deficits.

Second, it is not real economic or tax policy. It is designed to deliver a talking point to an administration increasingly concerned about its reelection prospects.

I remind my friends on the other side of the aisle again that those earning $500,000 or more, whom they creatively call millionaires and billionaires, are not a static group of people. Many who earn those amounts in 1 year are likely to earn far less in the next year or in the prior year. In fact, the highest income taxpayers are a dynamic and rapidly changing group. Any one of us could get there if we just work hard enough and are smart enough to get there. That income group is constantly changing.

Keep in mind that a significant number of people hit by the Democrats' tax hike would be business owners--the same people we need to create new jobs. Significant fractions of net-positive business income and of active flow-through business income would be subject to Senator Reid's new surtax. This is especially harmful to small businesses, which are often organized as flow-through entities, including sole proprietorships, partnerships, LLCs, and S corporations.

We do not need higher taxes that will fall on job creators to write checks for the President's special preferences, such as spending on high-speed rail that Americans do not want or need. We do not need a risky, GSE-like, taxpayer-funded infrastructure bank populated by political appointees, able to pick and choose whatever spending they would like to define as an infrastructure project, while subjecting taxpayers to private risk-taking.

Fortunately, there is a better way, and it is contained in my legislation, the Long-Term Surface Transportation Extension Act of 2011. Briefly, here is what it does.

It eliminates dedicated funding for transportation enhancements and gives States the authority to decide whether to spend resources on add- ons, such as bike paths.

It reforms the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, by eliminating inefficient bureaucratic red tape and accelerating project delivery and contracting, just as called for by the President's Jobs Council.

It supports job creation by placing a temporary timeout on job- killing regulations that are estimated to have significant economic effects.

It includes provisions for waivers of inefficient environmental reviews, approvals, and licensing and permitting requirements for road, highway, and bridge rebuilding efforts in emergency situations.

It goes straight to the matter of job creation, and it draws from bipartisan recommendations, including recommendations from the President's own bipartisan Jobs Council. We have not ignored the President. We are taking some of his ideas and putting them in this bill.

It allows fully paid-for infrastructure projects to be undertaken to help build roads, bridges, and a host of other projects without imposing permanent, job-killing, higher taxes during our national unemployment emergency.

I urge all of my colleagues to vote in support of my legislation and to vote against the tax-and-spend alternative offered by those on the other side. We have had enough of this. We had enough with Fannie and Freddie. Yes, it was set up to do good, but it has wound up putting us in hock, and then just this week we find that they all--many of the leaders of Fannie and Freddie--are taking home huge bonuses for running the place. The new ones, the new leadership--maybe that is a little harsh, but the fact is, why should they be taking bonuses when we know Fannie and Freddie are in real trouble? I predict that if the Democratic bill passes and we get this infrastructure bank set up, it is only a matter of time until this will be another Fannie or Freddie. That is what happens when government bureaucrats decide who wins, who loses, and interferes with the private sector and those who have always made the private sector go and work well for all of us.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I listened with interest to the Senator's explanation of the cross-air rule. I would just say he is off the mark, because if you produce deadly pollution in your State--deadly--you have an obligation to clean it up before it goes into another State.

It is like taking your garbage and dumping it in your neighbor's front lawn. We don't do that in America. So we are going to have a robust debate next week on the cross-State air rule.

I hope people keep in mind that we are talking about deadly pollution produced in one State and moving over to a series of other States which have no defense. So anyone who wants to come and claim that is the right thing to do morally--just walk away from that rule--I think they are going to have a hard time explaining it back home. I would not dump garbage on the front lawn of my neighbor's house. I think that patina is the best explanation of what this is about. More on that later.

Today we are going to be facing a very interesting choice. As we know, President Obama has put together a major jobs package, and he pays for it by going to the millionaires and saying that once they make $1 million, after that we think they could pay a little bit more to help us get out of this recession. My Republican friends voted that down. They were appalled we would even suggest there would be even a few dollars of increased taxes on people who make over $1 million. They would rather not do any job creation and protect the people who earn over $1 million.

(Mr. MANCHIN assumed the Chair.)

We have a very stark choice today. We have a small version of the jobs bill--this one focuses on infrastructure, mostly transportation investments--paid for by a seven-tenths-of-1-percent tax on people who earn over $1 million, and it would not go into effect on any of those funds until they pass the million. So it would be taxed seven-tenths of 1 percent on income over $1 million.

I make that point because it is not going to hurt anybody. A person making $1.5 million would pay an additional $3,000. This is not anything that will hurt the millionaires and billionaires. It is going to make this country stronger. It is going to grow this economy.

Here is what we have: We have a Democratic jobs bill. It is $60 billion--$50 billion for roads and bridges and $10 billion for an infrastructure bank.

To put that into the context of why this is such a good bill and why it would create 650,000 jobs, let me tell you what it is doing in essence. It is taking an extra year of transportation funding--we spend about $50 billion a year, approximately, through the highway trust fund--and it would inject essentially another year of spending over the next 12 months, creating well over 650,000 new jobs.

The Republican alternative actually loses jobs. They say they will continue the highway trust fund for 2 years. So they are just continuing what we are already doing. That is great. But then they cut the equivalent amount from police, fire, food inspection, and the FBI, and it will result in a loss of many jobs--200,000 jobs. So we have one bill, the Democratic bill, that creates a minimum of 650,000 jobs, and we have the Republican bill that cuts 200,000 jobs.

What are they thinking, Mr. President? What are they thinking? This is not the time to cut 200,000 jobs. Then they end health care reform which we all know, while not perfect, is going to help reduce our deficit. What they have done is continue the highway spending at current levels--it doesn't add one job--and then they cut all those other jobs to pay for it--200,000 jobs--and then they repeal health care reform, which will add to the deficit.

They cannot stand the thought of a millionaire paying a little bit more to help us at this time even though everybody knows we are at a point in time where the gap between the wealthiest and the middle class has never been bigger. Four hundred families earn more than 50 percent of all the rest of us; 400 families earn more than 50 percent of all the rest of us. It is unbelievable.

My State has many wealthy people in it, many poor people in it, and has a good middle class. But it is getting tougher to be part of that middle class.

The middle class is hit hard with health costs, with college costs that keep going up, and with gas prices going up. They are hit hard with mortgages they can't refinance because their mortgage is now higher than their home is worth. So we have to act on these issues. We have the ability to do it.

If we just read the Preamble of our Constitution, it tells us what we are supposed to do: work for a more perfect union, establish justice, domestic tranquility, and promote the general welfare. We have to do these things today because we are losing the middle class.

This bill before us, the Democratic jobs bill, is an excellent place to start this very day by infusing $60 billion into spending that will go mostly to private sector contractors, people who build roads and bridges. Do you know that 70,000 bridges in America are deficient?

My colleague, Senator Inhofe, and I are working closely on a highway bill. We are going to have one soon. He tells the story of a woman walking in Oklahoma. She is simply taking a walk, and the bridge starts to fall apart; it falls down and traps her and kills her. He said she was a young mother. This is America in the 21st century. That is not acceptable. We can't have a country like ours neglect its infrastructure. It is wrong.

But our Republican friends will not work with us because they don't want to ask people earning over $1 million to pay just a little bit more. For example, if someone makes $1.1 million, they will have to pay $700 more in their taxes. That is it. But they don't even want to go there. What they want to do is say: Oh, yes, we will just renew the highway bill, but we will slash across the board everything but defense. That is how we are going to pay for their jobs bill, which actually will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs. It is unbelievable to me.

I don't think this is the time to say we will turn our backs on jobs. As a matter of fact, in order to extend the highway trust fund we are going to fire cops, firefighters, food safety inspectors, FBI agents, and Border Patrol agents. That is their alternative. So don't vote for it unless you think it is the time to put all those people out of work.

What Republicans also do in this so-called jobs bill--which is a no jobs bill; it is a jobs loss bill--is they decide they want to block implementation of very important health and safety rules. I want to go through what those rules are. We are going to talk about the Clean Air Act right now.

The Republicans are repealing two rules that deal with clean air. Here is the thing. It is going to make people sicker. It is going to mean lots of jobs in clean tech. It is the last thing the country needs. It flies in the face of the views of the people. Let's talk about one of the rules they want to cut back: industrial boilers and incinerators.

This bill, called a jobs bill, would halt an EPA rule issued in February 2011 to reduce toxic air pollution. What do I mean? Toxic means it is toxic to our health; it will hurt us. People will die from toxic air pollution. People do die from toxic air pollution. The toxins the boilers and incinerators rule would reduce include mercury, lead, and other hazardous air pollution released by boilers and incinerators.

They can write it the way they want it, but here is what happens when we go back to those days when we allowed these toxins to be emitted. We saw developmental disabilities in our children. We saw more cases of cancer, more cases of heart disease, aggravated asthma, and premature death.

These are not just words. Congress commissioned a study, and we now know exactly what we are doing, how many lives it saves, and how many visits to the hospital it saves. Let me remind my friends who think that it is good for the economy to have toxic air pollution, if we cannot breathe we cannot work. If someone has to rush to the hospital or their child is rushed there because of an asthma attack, they lose a day's work. If a pregnant woman now has a problem with the child, and the child is disabled or has problems mentally from too much mercury, this is a tragedy.

Some people say: Oh, the EPA is regulating too much and it costs too much. Let me tell you the price of the Republican agenda: sick people, loss of jobs in the clean tech industry, lost days of work, loss of kids' schooldays.

I urge my colleagues in the Senate, when they have their next meeting with a large group of people--whether it is 100 or 50 or just a couple--ask them how many of them have asthma. Ask them how many know someone close to them with asthma. I guarantee the hands of one-third to one-half of those in the room will go up. That doesn't just happen-- asthma--because a person just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It happens because of the air they are breathing. It is toxic.

But in the Republicans' so-called jobs bill--which I already told you loses jobs--they not only do that, but to add insult to injury they repeal all of these rules.

Let me put it into context for you, since I have now spoken emotionally about what it does to people when they breathe in toxins. Let me cite the numbers.

Congress demanded a study. We said, give us the numbers, and so a study was done. We believe the protections from this industrial boiler rule will annually prevent up to 6,500 premature deaths, 4,000 heart attacks, 4,300 hospital emergency room visits, 310,000 days when people miss work or school, and 41,000 cases of aggravated asthma. The benefits from these safeguards are expected to be $54 billion annually by 2014. That is the rule my Republican colleagues want us to set aside.

If you went to your constituents and said to them: You know, we have a rule here that says industry is going to have to use the best available technology and clean up their pollution, and here is what it is going to do--it is going to prevent 6,500 premature deaths, 4,000 heart attacks, 4,300 hospital visits, 310,000 days when people miss school or work, and 41,000 cases of aggravated asthma, and it is going to deliver $54 billion a year in health benefits--I think your constituents would say, go for it, Senator; that makes sense.

Let me talk about a poll that just came out that reflects how people feel about this. Listen to this. We have our Republican friends offering what they call a jobs bill, which I have proven contains job cuts because they simply continue the highway trust fund. They do not add anything new, but they cut a couple hundred thousand jobs to pay for it. That is their so-called jobs bill.

They then want to repeal two rules that fall under the Clean Air Act, and I just talked about the boiler rule. But let me tell you what the people think, since we are supposed to represent the people.

There was a bipartisan poll done in October, a few days ago, reflecting 88 percent of Democrats, 85 percent of Independents, and 58 percent of Republicans opposed Congress stopping the EPA from enacting new limits on air pollution from electric powerplants.

Who is speaking for the people? We need to vote down the Republican alternative because 88 percent of Democrats want us to, 85 percent of Independents want us to, and 58 percent of Republicans want us to. They do not want Congress stepping in.

On Tuesday, Senator Paul is going to have a motion to repeal the cross-state air pollution rule, which is a rule that says to the States if they are creating toxic air pollution and it is flowing to another State, it has to be cleaned up. Now, 67 percent of voters support the cross-state air pollution rule and 77 percent of voters support the mercury air toxics rule. So 65 percent of voters surveyed are confident the health and environmental benefits of air pollution standards outweigh the costs, and 75 percent of voters believe a compelling reason to implement these air rules is the boost to local economies and thousands of new jobs that are created from investments in new technologies.

If we are representing the people of these great United States, we better listen to what they are saying in a bipartisan way. They are telling us to leave the EPA alone. When people come to this floor and demonize the EPA, they are going against the beliefs of the American people.

There are some incredible quotes I want to read, because, to me, it is amazing what is happening around here. When I get to the place here I want, I am going to cite some quotes from unlikely sources.

Mr. President, how many minutes remains on our side?

I thank the Chair.

Here is a quote from General Motors:

General Motors company recognizes the benefit of the

country continuing the historic national program to address

fuel economy and greenhouse gases that the EPA began.

That is signed by the chairman and CEO of General Motors.

Here is a quote from a letter from a whole group of electricity- producing companies: PG&E, Calpine Corp., NextEra Energy, Inc., Public Service Enterprise Group, National Grid USA, Exelon Corp., Constellation Energy, and Austin Energy. This is a quote from their letter to the Wall Street Journal:

Our companies' experience complying with air quality

regulations demonstrates regulations can yield important

economic benefits, including job creation, while maintaining

reliability.

Kind of amazing, isn't it? And there is Gerald Ford, the Republican President who signed the Safe Drinking Water Act in 1974--also under attack, by the way--who said:

Nothing is more essential to the life of every single

American than clean air, pure food, and safe drinking water.

Yet if you look at the Republican plan, they roll back clean air regulations and they roll back food safety. Even after we had people die from contaminated cantaloupe, my friends on the other side think now is the time to cut back on food safety inspection. Give me a break. Who are we here representing?

This is why people across the country are upset. They see things such as this and they say, is this Alice in Wonderland?

Listen to what Christine Todd Whitman and William Ruckelshaus wrote-- two Republicans who were former EPA Administrators under Republican Presidents. They said:

It is easy to forget how far we have come in the past 40

years. We should take heart from all this progress and not,

as some in Congress have suggested, seek to tear down the

agency that the President and Congress created to protect

America's health and environment.

They wrote that letter in March of this year. They understand. This isn't a partisan issue. Republicans breathe the same air that Democrats and Independents breathe. That is why it is so frustrating to see, in a so-called jobs bill from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, an actual loss of jobs and loss of clean air regulations and loss of food safety inspectors.

I have to say I find myself quoting Richard Nixon more and more these days. He signed the Clean Air Act. Listen to what he said at a State of the Union speech. He said:

Clean air, clean water, open spaces--these should once

again be the birthright of every American.

I have cited these quotes from Republican Presidents and former Administrators of the EPA under Republican Presidents, so I am stunned at this so-called jobs bill. I have talked about the industrial boiler rule, but they also roll back the cement manufacturing facilities rule that would indefinitely delay standards to address smog and toxic soot pollution from over 150 cement kilns nationwide. These facilities contain hazardous air pollutants, including mercury, arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals.

Remember the movie ``Arsenic and Old Lace''? Arsenic kills you. Too much of it does that. Come on. We need to clean up the air, and we need to be sure we do it in a reasonable way. I am on that side--the side of doing it in a reasonable way. And no one could be more reasonable than Lisa Jackson. I tell you, the woman has the patience of a saint. She is not going to go out and hit people over the head with this. She is going to phase in these regulations, and she is going to listen carefully. And you have to listen. Mercury, arsenic, lead, and other heavy metals are the third largest mercury source in the country. These relate to cement manufacturing facilities.

Let me tell you what these pollutants do. They cause cancer and they harm the reproductive system and the developmental system. Pregnant women and children are at risk. We hear a lot of talk about life--when does life begin? That is up to each individual and their God to decide that. But one thing I hope we can agree on is that a pregnant woman shouldn't be subjected to too much mercury or too much arsenic in the air.

We have a rule here, a reduction of mercury and toxic soot emissions. We know that rule will prevent 2,500 premature deaths, 1,500 heart attacks, more than 1,700 emergency room and hospital visits, that it will prevent 17,000 cases of aggravated asthma attacks, 130,000 days of lost work, and it will provide up to $18 billion of benefits annually by 2013, which is a benefits-to-cost ratio of 19 to 1. Yet my friends on the other side think it is a terrible idea and want to indefinitely delay it.

Let me tell you something. If we had that kind of attitude in Congress years before, we wouldn't have a Clean Air Act. I can tell you what happened in Los Angeles. We used to have about 160 days in Los Angeles where people could not go out. They were warned to stay indoors. As a result of the Clean Air Act, we have had none of those days--none--in Los Angeles in 2010.

So why on Earth does anyone want to delay these rules? If you want to sit with Lisa Jackson and sit with me, as the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, and sit with others and see if there is a way we can do this in a fair manner, of course. But the public wants us to act, and the action they want us to take is to support the EPA, not to put our noses in there and stop them from doing what the Clean Air Act requires them to do.

Poll after poll shows that voters are on the side of clean air. They are on the side of protecting the public health. They are not on the side of polluters. So I wish to say, we know two things today: People want jobs, and they also want their health protected. We also know that when you protect the people's health, what happens is a huge economic boost is given to the clean tech sector, and that boost has resulted in many jobs. As many as 1.7 million jobs are created because of these clean air rules and clean water rules.

The whole world wants these technologies. I had the amazing experience of visiting China, and I didn't see the Sun--I didn't see the Sun--for the 7 days or so I was there. The air is filthy, and people complain about it. One day we had the hint of sun--the hint of sun--breaking through the pollution, and the people there said, what a beautiful day. You must have brought the good weather. I said, you know what, come to California, I will show you a blue sky.

We cannot go backward. We need to move this country forward.

If the arc of history bends toward justice, it also bends toward health, public health, making sure our people get that health care, that they don't have those public health enemies out there--the soot, the arsenic, the lead, the mercury--and, yes, jobs. We have seen our GDP explode since we passed the Clean Air Act, and we grew more than any other industrialized nation while we had these laws in place, for two reasons. One, these laws create clean tech jobs. Two, if we can't breathe, we can't work. When we have a healthy society, we are far more productive.

So we have the Democratic alternative that will create over 600,000 jobs in transportation. It doesn't go into these extraneous issues such as the air pollution laws, and it is paid for by seven-tenths of 1 percent of income over $1 million.

Then we have the Republican alternative that just continues our transportation at the same levels and pays for it by cutting 200,000 jobs--police, fire, and the rest, FBI agents, food safety inspectors, Border Patrol agents. Just what we don't need. That is what they do. Plus, just for good measure, they repeal basically two Clean Air Act rules that I talked about from boilers and cement plants.

Folks, if ever there was a difference between the parties in evidence, this is it. If one person comes up to me and asks if there is really a difference between Democrats and Republicans, I will point them to this debate.

So I hope very much that we will get enough votes to take up the Democratic bill that is fully paid for and will create over 600,000 jobs, that will fix our deficient bridges and our deficient highways, that will say to the construction workers: We know you are out of work, and we are going to put you back to work--or the Republican alternative that would result in 200,000

jobs lost and overturn these clean air rules that are so important that the vast majority of people, including Republicans, who are asked about it would say: Congress, keep your hands off these rules because, you know what. We think they are working.

I reserve the remainder for other speakers, and I yield the floor.

Madam President, what is before us now is supposed to be a jobs bill. Actually, all they do in this alternative, my Republican friends, is extend the highway trust fund at the current levels. That is something we intend to do, and Senator Inhofe and I are going to bring the bill to the floor that does that, but they decided they want to do it now. And how do they pay for it? They cut $40 billion out of such functions as firefighters, police, Border Patrol, food safety inspectors, and we will lose 200,000 jobs from that action.

In addition, there are two rollbacks of environmental laws that deserve a heck of a lot more notice than putting them in this bill. That is going to hurt our people because if you can't breathe, you can't work. We have to get the mercury and the soot and the arsenic out of the air.

I hope we will vote no on this. It is not a jobs bill.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I would like to speak about an issue that I and most Americans, I believe, find extremely troubling and one I have been seeking to have properly addressed for many years now; namely, the outright corruption and blatant abuse of the American taxpayer that has been taking place at the hands of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for decades.

Since they were placed in conservatorship in 2008, the two government-sponsored enterprises--GSEs; i.e., supported by the taxpayers--have soaked the American taxpayer for nearly $170 billion in bailouts. Just this morning, the Associated Press reported that Freddie Mac has now requested an additional $6 billion to continue their, so far in my view, failed efforts. I quote from the Associated Press:

Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac has

requested $6 billion in additional aid after posting a wider

loss in the third quarter. Freddie Mac said Thursday that it

lost $6 billion, or $1.86 share, in the July-September

quarter. That compares with a loss of $4.1 billion, or $1.25

a share, in the same quarter of 2010. The government rescued

McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac and sibling company Fannie

Mae in September 2008 after massive losses on risky mortgages

threatened to topple them. Since then, a Federal regulator

has controlled their financial decisions. Taxpayers have

spent about $169 billion to rescue Fannie and Freddie, the

most expensive bailout of the 2008 financial crisis. The

government estimates it will cost at least $51 billion more

to support the companies through 2014, and as much as $142

billion in the most extreme case.

Freddie and Washington-based Fannie own or guarantee about

half of all U.S. mortgages, or nearly 31 million home loans

worth more than $5 trillion. Along with other federal

agencies, they backed nearly 90 percent of new mortgages over

the past year. The two mortgage giants buy home loans from

banks and other lenders, package them into bonds--

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So here we are. We have spent $169 billion and now they are asking for $6 billion more. What do we find out? Fannie and Freddie now will dole out big bonuses. I am not making this up.

Quoting now from a Politico article:

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government

regulator for Fannie and Freddie, approved $12.79 million in

bonus pay after 10 executives from the two government-

sponsored corporations last year met modest performance

targets tied to modifying mortgages in jeopardy of

foreclosure. The executives got the bonuses about two years

after the federally backed mortgage giants received nearly

$170 billion in taxpayer bailouts--and despite pledges by

FHFA, the office tasked with keeping them solvent, that it

would adjust the level of CEO-level pay after critics slammed

huge compensation packages paid out to former Fannie Mae CEO

Franklin Raines and others.

I might add, these huge bonuses and packages that were given to Mr. Johnson, Mr. Raines, and many others--and there is clear evidence of this--was done by cooking the books. Yet not a one of them has been held accountable in any way, shape or form.

Continuing to quote from the article:

Securities and Exchange Commission documents show that Ed

Haldeman, who announced last week that he is stepping down as

Freddie Mac's CEO, received a base salary of $900,000 last

year yet took home an additional $2.3 million in bonus pay.

Records show other Fannie and Freddie executives got similar

Wall Street-style compensation packages; Fannie Mae's CEO

Michael Williams, for example, got $2.37 million in

performance bonuses.

That was after the taxpayers paid $160 billion. That is why they are on the hook for another $6 billion and God knows how much more. So we are giving these individuals $900,000 a year in salary, millions of dollars in bonus pay, and who in the world is the Federal Housing Finance Agency to award these bonuses?

FHFA's Acting Director Edward DeMarco--and I must admit to my colleagues I had not heard of Mr. DeMarco--told Congress last year that the managers who were at the helms of the mortgage companies during the market collapse were dismissed but also argued that generous pay helps lure ``experienced, qualified'' executives able to manage upward of $5 trillion in mortgage holdings.

Whatever happened to asking patriotic Americans to come and serve and help homeowners out of this crisis? Whatever happened to patriotic Americans who would serve and help the nearly half of all homeowners in my State of Arizona whose mortgages are underwater?

DeMarco told lawmakers he is concerned that suggestions to apply a Federal pay system to non-Federal employees could put the companies in jeopardy of mismanagement--could put the companies in jeopardy of mismanagement--and result in another taxpayer bailout. They just asked for $6 billion more. He said the compensation packages at Fannie and Freddie are part of the plan to return them to solvency while reducing costs to the taxpayers.

A March report by FHFA's inspector general--obviously ignored by Mr. DeMarco--said the agency ``lacks key controls necessary to monitor'' executive compensation, nor has it developed written procedures for evaluating those packages. In other words, the beat goes on. Business as usual, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It is unconscionable. It has been proven time and time again that Fannie and Freddie Mac are synonymous with mismanagement, waste, outright corruption, and fraud. And their Federal regulator has the audacity to approve $12.8 million in executive bonuses to people who make $900,000 per year. This body should be ashamed if we let this happen, especially in these economic times. Every day more and more Americans are losing their jobs and their homes, and we are allowing these people to take home annual salaries of $900,000 and bonuses of millions of dollars, all while they ask the taxpayers for $6 million more today.

It has come to my attention that some of my colleagues are writing letters, calling for committee hearings on this issue. Letters are fine, hearings are fine, hearings are great. They are not the answer. The answer is for us to stop it from happening, and we can do that with an amendment on the pending appropriations bill. I will be offering an amendment, and I hope all of my colleagues would join in.

Let me just bring the attention of my colleagues to a book called ``Reckless Endangerment,'' written by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner. The title of it is ``How Outside Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon.'' So we are talking about pay and bonuses, and I read from the book:

Because bonuses at Fannie Mae were largely based on per-

share earnings growth, it was

paramount to keep profits escalating to guarantee bonus

payouts. And in 1998, top Fannie officials had begun

manipulating the company's results by dipping into various

profit cookie jars to produce the level of income necessary

to generate bonus payouts to top management.

Federal investigators later found that you could predict

what Fannie's earnings-per-share would be at year-end, almost

to the penny, if you knew the maximum earnings-per-share

bonus payout target set by management at the beginning of

each year. Between 1998 and 2002, actual earnings and the

bonus payout target differed only by a fraction of a cent,

the investigators found.

Investigators uncovered documents from 1998 detailing the

tactics used by Leeane Spencer, a finance official at Fannie,

to make the company's $2.48 per-share bonus target. That

year, Fannie Mae earned $2.4764 per share.

In a mid-November memo to her superiors, Spencer forecast

that the company was on track to earn $2.4744 per share, just

shy of what was needed to generate maximum bonus payments to

executives.

Look, this story goes on in this book. It goes on and on how the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac executives intentionally ripped off the American people, describing profits in a way that was totally false, getting tens of millions in bonuses. This is a government-sponsored enterprise. Mr. Johnson, bailed out with $100 million or so of taxpayers' bonuses:

In 1999, Johnson joined Goldman's board, stepping into a

highly lucrative position that offered rich investment

opportunities overseen by the firm and opened doors for

Johnson around the world. In 2000, the Goldman board position

paid Johnson $50,000, not counting stock awards.

With brokerage firms such as Goldman Sachs, which flourished from the fees by underwriting securities issued by Fannie and Freddie, with fees totalling $100 million a year, guess who came on Fannie's board. Mr. Johnson.

Johnson was still on the board in 2010, when the Securities

and Exchange Commission sued the investment bank for

securities fraud related to its sale of a dubious mortgage

security. By that time, Johnson was earning almost $500,000

for his work on the Goldman board.

The accounting fraud at Fannie went undiscovered until 2005

when an investigation by OFHEO unearthed it. In a voluminous,

intensely detailed 2006 report, OFHEO noted that if Fannie

Mae had used appropriate accounting methods in 1998, the

company's performance would have generated no executive

bonuses at all.

A lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission

in 2006 said the company's 1998 results were ``intentionally

manipulated to trigger management bonuses.''

Although a highly kept secret at the time, Johnson's--

This is Mr. James Johnson--

Johnson's bonus for 1998 was $1.9 million, investigators

determined. It later emerged that the company had made

inaccurate disclosures when it said Johnson earned a total of

almost $7 million in 1998. In actuality, his total

compensation that year was like $21 million, OFHEO said,

referring to an internal Fannie Mae analysis it had turned

up.

So one of the great scams in American history is going on, and the people responsible for it have never been held responsible. They have never been held responsible. I refer my colleagues, take a look at this book, and I recommend taking blood pressure medicine before you read it.

Now, here we are, business as usual in Washington. The approval rating of Congress is now down to 9 percent. As I have said continuously, we are down to paid staffers and blood relatives.

Why aren't they happy with us? Why haven't we solved the housing crisis in America? Why is it that half the homes in Arizona are still underwater, worth less than their mortgages, while the financial institutions on Wall Street are doing just fine, with record profits, and Fannie and Freddie continue to act as if they did nothing wrong? And to add insult to injury, after a third quarter loss of $6 billion, they are going to get millions of dollars in bonuses.

I may be a bit of an idealist, but I will bet you there are some patriotic, talented Americans who would be willing to serve on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac without being paid $900,000 a year and millions of dollars in bonuses. I really believe that. I really believe that. Yes, people are sitting in around the country; and, yes, I don't agree with a lot of their agenda. But when they read of things like this, their anger is justified. Already, $170 billion in bailouts. This morning, an additional $6 billion. Yet the American taxpayer is told they are making progress? And who has been held responsible at these organizations, at these government-sponsored enterprises that were responsible? To my knowledge, no one.

So it seems to me the least we can do is cancel these bonuses, make sure it doesn't happen, and maybe ask for some qualified, experienced, talented Americans to come in and take over this agency. And the first guy I think ought to go is the guy who approved these payouts, Mr. Edward J. DeMarco.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I couldn't agree more with the Senator who just spoke that we are in a situation where the all-time approval rating of this body seems to have reached an all-time low. There are justified reasons for the frustration and for the anger of a very broad run of our constituents, of the folks who hired us to come here from our States of West Virginia and Delaware, from Arizona, and others to try to fix the problems confronting this country. And much of the mess, many of the things that got us into this problem have not been solved.

I rise today to speak about one way forward out of it. I think one of the reasons there is so much frustration with Congress and the general public is there is broad support for some simple solutions to get Americans back to work, to revive and strengthen our economy, and we just seem incapable of reaching across this partisan divide and moving forward. One of those is an infrastructure bank.

I rise today to follow up on a speech I gave yesterday about why investing in American infrastructure means investing in America's future. Infrastructure--building roads and bridges, highways and sewer systems, modernizing America's backbone--enjoys very broad support from all across the United States, from all different sectors, because Americans understand it will put folks back to work in the building trades industries that have taken the hardest hit in this recession and in a way that will lay the groundwork for our long-term future competitiveness.

This is smart spending. This is investing in the best tradition of Federal, State, local, and private partnerships to make America more competitive for the future.

I want to talk about one element of the bill which I hope we will move to later today, the American Infrastructure Financing Authority, or known more colloquially as the National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank.

If this idea sounds familiar, it is because it has already been introduced. It is a bipartisan bill, the BUILD Act, championed by Senator Kerry and Senator Hutchison, of which I am a cosponsor, and one that provides a creative financing vehicle for building infrastructure going forward.

Before becoming a Senator in the election just 1 year ago yesterday, I served for 6 years as the county executive of Delaware's largest county, and one of the services our county was responsible for was running a county-wide sewer system. We had 1,800 miles of sanitary sewer, and it was a constant challenge to maintain. That is a lot of pipe, a lot of pump stations, and a lot of sewage backing up in people's homes in the middle of the night, which led to a lot of aggravated calls from constituents.

It was an aging system like so much of America's infrastructure, one in which we had underinvested for too long. From personal experience, I can tell you that the lack of infrastructure, of adequate sewer capacity was a major to barrier to future growth. So, too, across States and counties and cities all over this country. Where the roads and rail, the ports, and the sewer systems aren't up to current global standards, we can't expect to grow to meet our global competitors.

When we talk about capital infrastructure improvements at the local level in the government I used to be with, it wasn't some wish list. This wasn't some future technology. This wasn't some risky investment. It was triage. It was critically needed investment in pipes in the ground that would protect our water, strengthen our community, and grow our economy.

As a nation, the American Society of Civil Engineers has told us we need $2.2 trillion over just the next 5 years in infrastructure investments to keep America moving forward. We are talking about fixing unsafe bridges, dealing with clogged highways, and rebuilding

airports so they can handle larger modern aircraft safely. That is an enormous scope, $2.2 trillion over just the next 5 years. We are already asking so much of the supercommittee in terms of finding dramatic savings and reductions in Federal spending. Where will this level of investment come from to put America back to work?

So, in my view, we have to get creative. We have to leverage. We have to bring in more resources than are currently on the field, and especially now, especially in this country I think we have to be smart about how we spend our funds.

The Rebuild America Jobs Act, to which I hope we will be moving later this afternoon, would put $50 billion directly into infrastructure, put $10 billion as a downpayment into making possible this new infrastructure bank, seed money that makes possible loans and loan guarantees--not grants--for a wide range of infrastructure projects, including energy, water, and critically needed transportation. Remember, we need more than $400 billion a year in investment right now just to keep up. But we all know the constrained budgets of our counties, State, and local governments can't get the financing they need. This infrastructure bank would provide the leverage, a vehicle to finance desperately needed projects.

Just a few things about it. It would be for big projects, projects that cost more than $25 million in rural communities, $100 million in the rest of the country. It would only be allowed to finance up to 50 percent of a project to avoid crowding out private capital and to make sure that private capital has skin in the game so it is a viable project. It is my expectation, in fact, that the infrastructure bank would finance a much smaller piece of most projects, just enough to bring private investment to the table. It would be government-owned but independently operated, have its own bipartisan board of directors, and function much like the successful Ex-Im.

An infrastructure bank passed by the Senate this week could provide up to $160 billion in direct financial assistance over its first 10 years to infrastructure for transportation. That would be paired with private investment that could double, triple, or even quadruple, increasing the full impact of this bank.

I said yesterday that infrastructure is a smart investment for our country and that a national infrastructure bank as a part of that strategy would provide a vehicle for the private sector to get in on this investment as well and to help us accelerate our move toward the future. This is smart policy.

It is a funny thing about infrastructure, how we inevitably take it for granted. Whether you are running a State highway system or a county sewer system, you never know how much people miss it until it isn't working the way they expect.

Unfortunately, in cities, counties, and States across our country today, companies and communities are discovering that our aged infrastructure is imposing costs on us we cannot bear. The American Society of Civil Engineers, which I have referred to before, recently released a study saying that our Nation's deteriorating surface transportation infrastructure alone could result in the loss of nearly 1 million jobs and will suppress our GDP growth by nearly $1 billion between now and 2020. That is an enormous loss of future economic activity.

We cannot put this off any further. As a country, we cannot keep swerving to avoid these potholes on the path to prosperity. Eventually we are going to hit them, and eventually they will continue to be a drag on our Nation. The Rebuild America Jobs Act would fill these potholes, would patch these pipes, would lay the new runways to allow America's economy to take off.

This Rebuild America Jobs Act, which would rebuild 150,000 miles of roadway, maintain 4,000 miles of train track, upgrade 150 miles of airport runways, restore critical drinking water and wastewater systems, is nothing short of the smart investment we need to be competitive for the future. It would put people back to work, it would steer us on the right road to sustained recovery, and it would fix the problems that lie right in our path as we try to do our jobs for the folks who hired us to come here and help them get back to work.

We need to act today. It is my hope that my colleagues will join us this afternoon in voting for the motion to proceed to the Rebuild America Jobs Act, a critical piece of which is this smart infrastructure bank.

The Nomination of Richard Andrews

Mr. President, I move now briefly to support the nomination of Richard Andrews, who has been nominated to be U.S. district court judge for the District of Delaware. Rich Andrews is an exceptional lawyer, a dedicated public servant, and a good man. When the Senate confirms his nomination, hopefully later today, Rich will become the fourth active judge serving in the District of Delaware. This will mark the very first time in 5 years that this very busy court will operate without a vacancy. For a small district such as Delaware, albeit one with such a specialized and complex caseload, even a single vacancy places a significant burden on the court.

Mr. Andrews' nomination has been pending 177 days, and while I am grateful for the consent agreement that I hope will allow his nomination to be considered today, I remain concerned that such a noncontroversial and qualified nominee as Rich could take nearly half a year to reach floor consideration. The judicial vacancy rate hovers near 10 percent, we have 31 judicial emergencies, and it is my hope that this body will continue to move expeditiously to fill vacancies throughout the country.

As a member of the Judiciary Committee, I had a chance to chair the nominations hearing for Rich and to take part in the committee's consideration of his nomination. I have reviewed his record, listened to his testimony, met with him personally, conferred with my senior Senator, Mr. Carper, and as a result of all this, I assure my colleagues I have every confidence that Rich is a qualified judge and will serve Delaware and this Nation brilliantly.

During his 30 years of service for Delaware so far, he has established himself as a talented, dedicated, and humble public servant who possesses the strongest work ethic and the highest integrity and intellect.

He began his service to our State when, after graduating from Berkeley Law School, he came to Delaware as a law clerk for Chief Judge Collin Seitz of the Third Circuit. Luckily for us, he never left.

After completing his clerkship, he joined the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Delaware, where he spent the next 24 years, much of it serving as the first assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the Criminal Division. During this time, he has tried, in that role, more than 50 felony jury cases and argued 17 cases before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Since leaving the U.S. Attorney's Office in 2007, he has served as State prosecutor for the Delaware Department of Justice and leads more than 70 deputy attorneys general in the Criminal Division and has overseen tens of thousands of prosecutions each year. I am confident that his experiences as a prosecutor have given him the knowledge, skills, and temperament to join and serve ably on the District of Delaware Federal bench.

When I chaired his nomination hearing, I was impressed by his professionalism, intelligence, and demeanor. Rich enjoys broad bipartisan support, having been reported unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee.

I urge all my colleagues to join Senator Carper and me in supporting Mr. Andrews so he will have the opportunity to continue his selfless service to the people of our State and our Nation.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we know that investment in our infrastructure means jobs and economic development now and in the future. We know as a country that in the fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties we built infrastructure--highways, bridges, water, sewer, community colleges, medical research, modernizing high schools--all the things we did in the postwar years for five decades, in the forties through the eighties. The world had never seen this before.

We know that American prosperity--the postwar prosperity--in large part was based on the foundation we had set in infrastructure--again, the physical infrastructure of bridges across the Ohio River joining the Presiding Officer's State and mine in Huntington, Ironton, Parkersburg, Marietta, and Wheeling, and across to Belmont County in Ohio. We know that the infrastructure of building community colleges such as Jeff Tech and building branch campuses at OU, and now building broadband, but then funding medical care--those things created the long-time prosperity of our country.

These are forward-thinking investments with payoffs that last for decades and benefit our Nation, our small businesses, and our workers for generations.

History tells us that our Nation's infrastructure has been critical to our Nation's economic, competitive, and industrial strength. Let's look back a bit. Abraham Lincoln created the transcontinental railroad. Thousands of jobs were created, and the development of the American West was possible. President Roosevelt modernized our Nation's electric grid during the New Deal. More than just electricity came to the Tennessee Valley in rural America. Americans were put to work setting the poles, stringing wire, building the hydroelectric dams that improved the quality of life, and attracting countless businesses to the region. So the infrastructure was built, creating jobs. But even more so, the foundation was set where many more jobs were created.

President Eisenhower and the Congress established our interstate transportation system. A generation of workers carved out highways and roadways, allowing commerce and people to travel from coast to coast.

Our Nation used its postwar infrastructure boom to become the economic superpower that we are today. Public work investments not only create good-paying, middle-class construction jobs, they spur economic development projects in small towns and rural communities and urban areas. We know what happens when a highway comes into a community, what it does to spawn other kinds of work. It serves as a multiplier effect and attracts businesses and workers and foreign companies to build in America, and benefits from that clear competitive advantage. That is why we led the world for five decades.

It is clear that when companies decide where to locate or expand or invest, that infrastructure, broadband, energy, transportation, all are critical factors in the decision. Businesses rely on solid infrastructure.

Companies such as Ohio's Proctor & Gamble in Cincinnati recognize that our infrastructure provides a competitive advantage, enabling them to ship their products anywhere in the world. Ohio manufacturers, such as General Motors and Honda and Smuckers, rely upon our infrastructure as they operate with just-in-time manufacturing.

Yet we are falling behind in maintaining the very infrastructure that made us a superpower. Unsafe bridges have cost lives. Clogged roads and congested air space cost billions of dollars in lost trade and productivity. Some people tell us they spend more time commuting than they are at home with their families.

We are seeing 19th century water and sewer systems failing our 21st century cities. Meanwhile, more and more people depend on these services, while cities and States can't meet demand--where States face budget and revenue shortfalls that make these investments difficult, if not impossible.

And there is China--which is fast becoming one of our chief economic competitors--building more roads, better airports, and faster rail systems than we are. Why do we let that happen? No one in this Congress--nobody--and in State legislatures, as Senator Shaheen said earlier--should be proud of the condition of our roads. No one in this Congress should be proud of the fact the newest airports and train stations are being built somewhere far from our shores. Yet there remains an unwillingness here--and I am still incredulous about this-- to make the sort of investments necessary to improve our Nation's infrastructure.

I guess we have to cut taxes more for rich people instead of asking them to pay a little more to put that money into infrastructure. Historically, infrastructure has been bipartisan. I have heard some of my colleagues saying there is no such thing as a Democratic or Republican bridge. But it seems there is now because we see time and time again some of my conservative colleagues saying: No, we are not going to spend money on infrastructure. We are not going to do that.

Let me show a picture of a bridge I have been across many times. I have seen it from Cincinnati many times. This is a view from the Kentucky side. This is called the Brent Spence Bridge. The President was there not too long ago. I was not with him that day, but I have been on this bridge many times. It was named after a Congressman from Kentucky who served from 1931 to 1963. The bridge was inaugurated by President Johnson. So the bridge construction began and came later.

This is I-75 through Cincinnati, going from Kentucky to Cincinnati into Dayton, if you can follow it all the way north, and then into Toledo and ultimately into Detroit. This bridge carries millions of dollars' worth of freight and millions of drivers across the bridge. Someone said this bridge accounts, perhaps, for as much as 4 percent of our gross domestic product going either north or south across this bridge.

Today, the Brent Spence Bridge is 1 of 15 the U.S. Department of Transportation has deemed functionally obsolete. But the Brent Spence bridge is not alone. We can see there is no real space if a car breaks down. There is not much of a lane to get over if someone has a heart attack while driving or all the problems one can imagine having while on the bridge. This is major, major bridge across one of the most important rivers in this country--the Ohio River.

A recent study of our Nation's infrastructure found there are more-- get this--more structurally deficient bridges in the United States than there are McDonald's restaurants. Think about that: There are 14,000 McDonald's restaurants. But according to Transportation for America, there are 18,000 deficient bridges and 70,000 structurally deficient bridges.

From a public safety and commerce perspective, fixing a bridge is a necessity. The largest hurdle remains financing. Under the President's proposal we will vote on this afternoon, more than $60 billion, completely paid for, would go toward road and bridge construction, fixing our airports and transit systems. It would make our roads and skies safer for transportation.

The bill includes a national infrastructure bank that would fund infrastructure projects of regional or national significance, such as this almost 50-year-old bridge. Increasing private sector infrastructure lending, a national infrastructure bank could couple Federal loans with private equity, ensuring a private-public partnership that meets local needs.

For the Brent Spence Bridge, it would mean Ohio and Kentucky could obtain the necessary funding to complete the project ahead of schedule, create jobs, and protect the public safety.

We have to do this. We have to renovate and update our infrastructure. Why wait? Interest rates are as low as they have almost ever been. Construction costs--because there is so much competition among construction companies to get work now--are as low in historical times as perhaps they have ever been, and we need this work now because of the job employment situation. So we will benefit from replacing and fixing this bridge for years into the future.

For freight rail investments in Columbus, it would mean reducing the bottlenecks that prevent goods from moving across the country. For airports, it means reducing congestion and improving runways; on our rivers, such as the Ohio River, it means fixing locks that slow barge traffic.

Lake Erie, at the other end of my State, has made such a difference in the settlement of Buffalo--although there is also Lake Ontario there--Cleveland, Ashtabula, and Toledo. We know what these Great Lakes have done for the economic development of our country. It means fixing these ports. For all our States, it means jobs and economic development.

This is about a construction manufacturer in Peoria selling equipment to contractors working at the Port of Toledo. It is about dock workers loading American-made steel and Ohio-grown soybeans for export to markets around the world. That is what this bill is about.

This bill is about jobs now. It is about setting the table for jobs in the future. We know that. Republicans and Democrats alike know that. Yet Republicans, I guess, just want to see Barack Obama fail. That is what the Republican leader has said repeatedly, though I don't understand that. But that is what he says.

This bill is fully paid for. The bill before the Senate is funded by a very small tax on people making over $1 million a year. If someone is making $1 million a year, their taxes will not go up, but they will pay a little bit of money on the second million they make. So this isn't in any way going after small business, it is just saying the people who have done well have to pay a little more money. It is common sense and it is the American way.

We are asking those who have benefited the most--many on Wall Street, many of them on Main Street--people who have done very well to make this investment. We know it is infrastructure that has helped people make lots of money in this country. Without infrastructure, many of these companies never would have been successful.

World-class infrastructure is how we move goods across the country and export around the world--on our trucks, on our rails, on our barges, and on our airplanes. It is how we get to work and school, it is how we attract businesses, and it is how we protect the public health, through clean water and sewer systems.

This will create jobs immediately--good-paying, middle-class jobs. These jobs provide workers with health care and retirement. These are exactly the kind of jobs the Presiding Officer welcomes in Wheeling and Charleston and Beckley and I welcome in Portsmouth and Cleveland and Akron. These jobs enable people to buy a home, to save for their children's education, and to plan for their future. These jobs not only create the construction jobs we need, putting money in people's pockets they will spend in the community, but they also create manufacturing jobs in steel and cement and all kinds of materials. They also create long-term jobs as companies grow because they have better infrastructure.

This is about rebuilding our infrastructure. It is about rebuilding our middle class. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation later today when we vote on it.

I yield the floor.