A bill to require that certain aliens receive written notice of removal proceedings before being granted parole or released from detention and to enumerate the possible consequences for failing to attend such proceedings.

Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 2131 to the substitute and ask that it be reported by number.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

While he is still on the floor, I want to thank my friend and colleague. He and I came together in the House of Representatives a million years ago. We were part of the class of 1982, a huge class-- over 80 Democrats and Republicans. It has been a joy to serve with him, and I especially am proud of him--the words he has just said here today, healing words, uniting words--and we are grateful for his leadership.

Colleagues, the Senate is now considering the substitute amendment to H.R. 3684, the INVEST Act, and I rise today to urge our colleagues to join Senator Capito, who is sitting to my right, and me in debating the legislation, offering improvements where needed to it, and then voting for its adoption.

In February of this year, at my encouragement, President Biden invited Senator Capito, Senators Cardin, Inhofe, and me, all senior members of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, over to the White House right after he was inaugurated President to discuss the need to make bold investments in our Nation's crumbling infrastructure.

Sitting in the Oval Office that day, as I am sure the ranking member of our committee remembers, we were joined in person by the Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris, and we were joined virtually by Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg. I still want to call him Mayor Pete, but he has actually turned out to be a pretty good Secretary of Transportation as well.

Because of our committee's longstanding tradition of bipartisan work on infrastructure, my colleagues and I already knew as we headed into the White House meeting that our Nation had fallen woefully short-- woefully short--in maintaining and developing the critical infrastructure that supports us, our families, and our economy. But don't take my word for it. Don't take my word for it. The American Society of Civil Engineers' 2021 report card for America's infrastructure gave our Nation's infrastructure an overall grade of C- minus. In recent years, that rating has been as low as D-plus, a D, D- minus. Still, a C-minus is nothing to brag about; rather, it is a wake- up call to get our act together at a time, if you will, to move it on up. Move it on up.

That is what our new President called on us to do that day in order to help America move on up and move ahead. Without casting aspersions or affixing blame, he made it clear that America hadn't been getting the job done on this front for years and that by working together-- working together--we could do something about it, while creating millions of new jobs--a lot of them without college degrees--at the same time.

He asked us--leaders on the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works--he asked us to help jump-start the effort by getting to work on crafting and reporting to the full Senate surface transportation legislation, along with legislation to repair and upgrade drinking water and water sanitation infrastructure, as soon as we could.

Working together with all 20 members of the Environment and Public Works Committee--10 Democrats, 10 Republicans--that is exactly what we did in record time and with record levels, historic levels, of investment.

After soliciting input, I am sure my colleague from West Virginia recalls, from all 50 States--all 50 States--we crafted and then unanimously forwarded our water infrastructure bill out of committee to the full Senate--unanimously. There, it was debated, amended, and adopted by a vote of 89 to 2--89 to 2; you don't hear that every day-- on April 29, 2021.

With that behind us, we turned our attention to surface transportation legislation--roads, highways, bridges, climate--and unanimously reported our surface transportation bill to the full Senate by Memorial Day, the fastest the committee has ever acted, I am told, on such legislation.

I have thanked Senator Capito so many times, she is probably getting sick of it, but I want to thank her again, and I want to thank every member of our committee with whom we were privileged to serve on the Environment and Public Works Committee, along with the members of our staffs, some of whom are gathered here today, for their remarkable work on these important, bipartisan bills.

Speaking of staff, I look over my shoulder, and I see of our people right behind me. I look over the other shoulder, and I see some Republican staff over on the other side.

I especially want to pause and just thank our Environment and Public Works staff director, Mary Frances Repko; our chief counsel, Greg Dotson; as well as Rebecca Higgins, who leads our transportation team; and Kenneth Martin and Jordan Baugh as well.

A special thank-you to John Kane and Annie D'Amato, who ably led our efforts on water infrastructure; to Laura Haynes Gillam, our leader on

climate; and finally to my indefatigable chief of staff, Emily Spain. I practiced that word all night to make sure I got it right.

I hasten to add that we couldn't get any of this done without Senator Capito and the strong, bipartisan support we received from her, from the EPW minority staff director--I see him sitting over there--Adam Tomlinson--Adam, thank you--and his hard-working team; I won't mention them all, but Murphie Barrett, affectionately known as Murphie Brown, and Travis Cone and Jess Kramer.

You know, you would expect the chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee or the ranking member to be proud of their committee's work, and we certainly are, but we aren't the only ones who have worked hard to write the legislation that is before us today, not by a long shot.

I want to commend the bipartisan work of the Commerce Committee and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, along with the efforts of the Banking Committee.

I especially want to thank the bipartisan group we affectionately refer to--Senator Durbin already has--affectionately refer to them, at least most of the time, as the G-22, led by Senators Rob Portman of Ohio and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. I want to thank them and the other 20 Senators--half Democrat, half Republican--for their Herculean efforts to make this compromise legislation a reality; working not just with folks here and over in the House but also at the White House as well, with the President and the President's team.

In the Navy, we have--one of my favorite sayings in the Navy is ``Bravo Zulu.'' When somebody does extraordinary work, what we would say is ``Bravo Zulu.'' I would certainly say that on this occasion.

Of course, we all recognize that infrastructure encompasses much more than water, roads, highways, and bridges. In truth, it touches on the jurisdictions of many of our committees--many of our committees. That is why the legislation we are considering today is extraordinary. It is a comprehensive infrastructure investment package that encompasses water, highways, roads, bridges, transit, rail, airports, ports, power systems, dams, broadband, cyber security, ecosystem restoration, and more.

I would like to pause here for just a moment to remind all of us who serve in this body, along with the people we are privileged to represent, that infrastructure is also intensely personal, and when it does not work, our people suffer, their children suffer, and their livelihoods suffer. We all know that those who suffer most are those who have been shortchanged by the patently inadequate investments we have made for too many years.

In rural parts of Southern Delaware, communities like Ellendale have struggled for years to find and afford safe alternatives to increasingly polluted drinking water wells. Ellendale is not alone. Across our country, hundreds, maybe thousands of communities struggle with access to clean water and wastewater treatment, including my native West Virginia, now represented by our colleagues Shelley Capito and Joe Manchin.

Our communities across this country are torn asunder by--too many places across this country are torn asunder by highways that have divided and disrupted neighborhoods across our Nation. In my hometown of Wilmington, DE, construction of I-95 literally tore communities apart, cutting off access to neighbors, parks, and economic opportunity. We can begin to heal those wounds--in places like Baltimore and Philadelphia as well--heal those wounds with the projects we enable in this legislation.

The truth be known, almost all of our colleagues have stories like this to share--communities beset by raging wildfires fueled by climate change; thousands of acres of farmland lost to flooding; more than a third of the crops in Iowa destroyed by hurricane-force winds last year; kids without access to the internet for want of broadband access; and families struggling to deal with legacy pollutants in the land and water where they live.

In the near future, I hope we will take some time to celebrate the significant steps we are taking to rewrite these stories with this legislation before us. But I want to take a moment or two here today, if I may, to drill down into some of the most meaningful provisions reported unanimously out of our committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, this year. Let's start with the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021.

It is clear that the programs we have now, despite our best efforts, aren't sufficient to meet the needs of many of our communities, particularly those who simply can't afford to participate in the revolving loan programs of their States in order to upgrade increasingly inadequate drinking water and wastewater facilities.

As our ranking member knows, if communities borrow money out of the revolving funds, water funds--one for drinking water and one for sanitation, water sanitation--the communities that borrow money, take money out of them, they are expected to pay that money back. There are, as we know, a lot of communities that are just too impoverished to ever do that. We have decided not just to bemoan that but to actually do something about it. That is what we have done with this legislation-- provide them with an opportunity to receive a grant to clean up their water, their drinking water, and to deal with their wastewater. Millions of Americans are going to be able to do that, to deal with these challenges, and we are going to help.

This bipartisan legislation works to address this crisis by authorizing more than $55 billion--$55 billion--for programs that will create jobs and make our communities healthier by building, repairing, upgrading, and modernizing our Nation's aging drinking water and wastewater infrastructure systems--$55 billion dollars.

Here is how. First, the measure takes the historic step of reauthorizing the Clean Water State Revolving Loan Fund for the first time in 35 years--35 years. It does so while increasing funding levels for the first time since 1987.

This legislation also reauthorizes the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund, a program whose reauthorization expires at the end of this year. You will recall that this is the fund that helps to ensure that clean water flows from our faucets when we turn on the spigot.

To help resolve a historic injustice in water infrastructure investment, more than 40 percent of this bill's investments are targeted to help disadvantaged communities. The bill appropriates $15 billion in new funding to replace lead service lines. And particularly for our country's rural areas, including Native Alaskan villages, Tribal communities, and low-income neighborhoods, our bill invests another $1 billion in programs to connect households to drinking water and wastewater systems and services.

This legislation does far more than just fix what is broken. To borrow a phrase from our President, it truly does enable us to build back better by fortifying water infrastructure in the face of our new and worsening climate reality.

Sadly--sadly--our future is one with more severe weather events like hurricanes, like floods, droughts, and bitterly cold weather. I wish it weren't true, but it is. It is a future with ever more people living on the frontlines of sea level rise, like Louisiana, which, on average, if you can believe this, Louisiana loses a piece of land to the sea roughly the size of a football field every 100 minutes--every 100 minutes.

To that end, the bill before us provides a combined $500 million to make our water infrastructure system more resilient and more adaptable in the face of extreme weather events. Within that historic investment is a new $125 million program which will for the first time provide grants to communities seeking to fortify their wastewater systems against climate change's impacts.

This is not just a bill to spend and build but legislation that will direct our Agencies to build and spend more wisely. We know that investment and innovation as envisioned in this bill before us can have a profound impact on our economy, creating jobs and fostering growth for entire communities. We can, in short, seize the day in the face of so much adversity. Seize the day. Carpe diem--or, as we say in Delaware, Carper diem.

It is fair to say there is also much we can and will do to invest in our Nation's highways, roads, and bridges. Our Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act increases the baseline for

funding our surface transportation programs by more than one-third to $303 billion over the next 5 years--$303 billion. On top of that, the legislation will invest over $60 billion in new funds for roads, bridges, and multimodal programs over these 5 years. This investment will repair and rebuild our roads and bridges with a new focus on climate change mitigation, resilience, equity, and safety for all users, including cyclists and pedestrians.

Every day, motorists cross bridges in poor conditions in too many parts of our country 170 million times. Every day. Every day. A hundred and seventy million times a day. Some 40 percent of the bridges in our country are in need of repair or replacement, including nearly 500 bridges in Massachusetts, 3,000 in Pennsylvania, and God knows, more in our State as well.

At the current pace of investment in bridges, it would take nearly 40 years--40 years--to tackle the current backlog of bridges in poor condition. That is right--40 years. That is why today we consider legislation to provide a $40 billion investment to address our daunting bridge repair backlog.

Our legislation also includes for the first time in a Senate reauthorization bill a climate title with provisions dedicated to curbing harmful greenhouse gas emissions, while ensuring that the investments we make are more resilient to climate change-enhanced extreme weather events because, like it or not, it is coming our way.

As many of you know, the transportation sector is the largest source of carbon emissions in our Nation; almost 30 percent just from one source: cars, trucks, and vans. If we want to save our planet, and we do, for our children and grandchildren, we have to tackle this major contributor to the climate crisis with a special zeal.

The bill we marked up in our committee, the Environment and Public Works Committee, this spring by, again, a 20-to-0 vote put us on the right track, dedicating $18 billion toward reducing our carbon emissions and including $2.5 billion for building electric vehicle charging and hydrogen fueling stations on highways and in locations like schools, workplaces, parks, and publicly accessible areas for communities. This bill also adds another $5 billion for EV charging and hydrogen fueling stations to help us transition to a zero-emission future.

A lot of people have heard about and talked about electric vehicle charging stations. Not so many people have mentioned hydrogen. Hydrogen is a big part and will play a major role in reducing our carbon emissions, particularly with midsized trucks and larger trucks, and also when we talk about reducing carbon emissions in the industrial sector. So stay tuned. There is a lot more to come on that front.

A great thing about our clean hydrogen investment in vehicles propelled with hydrogen, with the technology that we have developed, it creates an emission from these vehicles, but it is water, H2O. I am told it is water we can actually drink. Think about that.

We can also drive down emissions and curb pollution by supporting convenient, healthy alternatives to driving. Bicycling and walking are not only affordable modes of transportation but healthy ones as well-- an important consideration in a nation where all too many Americans are dying from medical conditions tied to obesity.

Sadly, far too many Americans live in neighborhoods where there are no safe bike lanes and crosswalks. Tragically, in 2019 alone, over 7,000 pedestrians and bicyclists lost their lives in traffic accidents--over 7,000 pedestrians. I would wager that many Members of this body actually knew one or more than one of those victims or their families personally. So I am grateful that our bill works to address these needless deaths head-on. The question is, How? By providing a 70- percent increase in funding for programs that develop safe, accessible pedestrian and bicycle pathways across our Nation and by authorizing almost $17 billion in funding for highway safety improvements.

I also want to note here some of the critical investments in infrastructure that are outside of the EPW Committee jurisdiction and the important work that those committees did to bring this bill to the floor.

First, a note of appreciation for the portion of the legislation that was authored by the Senate Commerce Committee, led by Senators Maria Cantwell and Roger Wicker. As one of the tens of thousands of Americans who commute to work on the east coast by taking Amtrak almost daily, I am encouraged to see that this bill invests in our railways across the Nation. This legislation not only provides $6 billion in grants to the Northeast Corridor to address Amtrak's deferred maintenance needs, it also provides another $16 billion for Amtrak's national network and another $41 billion in grants to improve passenger rail performance and safety.

I also want to applaud the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and others both on and off the committee who worked tirelessly to advance robust funding for public transit infrastructure in order to make it possible for millions of people to get to work and home again every day.

Transit and rail are both critical components of our climate change response, providing low- and zero-emission travel choices. This bill, our bill, reauthorizes and grows our transit programs, while also providing more than $5 billion in grants for State and local agencies to purchase electric and low-emission transit buses.

Our colleagues on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, led by Senators Manchin and Barrasso, crafted legislation to help support and clean up our Nation's energy infrastructure. Investments made in this bill will work to make our electric grid more reliable and resilient, support families and businesses to become more energy efficient, while helping to clean up our Nation's old and abandoned mines and wells that leak toxic pollution and methane emissions.

The bill before us this week also includes investments in battery recycling and zero-emitting technologies, including a program much like the one passed out of our EPW Committee last year that supports our existing nuclear power fleet, which collectively produces--get this-- half of our Nation's carbon-free electricity.

While there is much to celebrate in this product of our bipartisan efforts, more work still needs to be done. Collectively, we have incorporated badly needed climate provisions in surface transportation, water, power, and a number of other infrastructure programs, but in truth, we have, in the words of Robert Frost, miles to go before we sleep--miles to go before we sleep.

With the words of Robert Frost as a reminder, all of us who serve here together understand that every race won begins with a first step and ends with a final one. With the enactment of this legislation, we will be taking not one but a number of important steps--a number of important steps.

In the days ahead, we will move a good deal closer to the finish line in a race with a dangerously changing climate that we simply cannot afford to lose. That is why I will be examining the budget resolution closely in the days ahead to ensure that we are devoting the resources necessary to put climate change on the run as we advance environmental justice.

I would be remiss if I didn't add that we must not shy away in the days ahead from working hard to agree on how to honestly and thoughtfully pay for the investments that need to be made. In the words of a colleague from West Virginia--words of a former State treasurer of a small State on the east coast who now serves in this body, ``Things that are worth having are worth paying for.''

But the key message of this day is that we have pushed through earnest disagreements, varying priorities, and much headache and heartache to achieve a truly singular success in taking on a number of major infrastructure challenges facing our Nation. We have elected to work together to address the obvious--to repair and upgrade much of our Nation's infrastructure in order to better position America to succeed in an ever more competitive global economy and to survive in an ever more dangerous world due to the climate crisis.

Senator Capito and I have served together on this Committee for a number of years, and she succeeds Senator John Barrasso, who for a number of years was the chair and I was the ranking member. I will never forget--and

you probably won't either, Senator--we won't forget the words of attorney Rob Wallace, who is also from Wyoming, a friend of Senator Barrasso's, and he was nominated, I think, to be Assistant Secretary of the Interior. He focused on, among other things, national parks, wildlife, and fish and wildlife. I never forget what he said in his confirmation hearing. He commented on the history and the tradition of our committee as one where we actually work together and like each other even though we don't always agree on the issues. We work together to get things done. He said these words. He said: ``Bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions.'' That is what he said. ``Bipartisan solutions are lasting solutions.'' I thought at the time, well, he really nailed it. And I hope, with this legislation, we will nail it, too, because a lot of Americans are counting on us to do just that.

With that, I am happy to yield the floor again to--I am tempted to call her our wingwoman; she calls me her wingman--to my colleague and friend and ranking member of this committee, who has been great to work with.

I yield the floor.

I am going to ask unanimous consent, if I could just insert one quick comment, Mr. President?

Ranking Member Senator Capito has mentioned very graciously the names of all of our staff.

I was here this weekend. She was here this weekend. And there were people here working this weekend, not just our staffs on the Environment and Public Works Committee, not just on the Appropriations Committee, just staffs like here in this body. Folks throughout the building, throughout the complex, they were here working. They have children. They have spouses. They have parents. They have other obligations. They were here working. And we would be remiss if we didn't mention that.

The other thing I want to say is, as Ranking Member Senator Capito knows, I go back and forth on the train a lot of days, much like Joe Biden used to do. And almost every week somebody says to me on a platform either in Delaware or here in DC waiting for the train: Why can't you guys work together? Why can't you folks just work together

I just wish that they could be here to participate, to listen, to hear that, actually, we do work together. And when the chips are really down--pandemic, terrible situation, 15, 16, 17 months' ago especially, we worked together in an almost unanimous way. And we are working together here on some things that are extraordinarily important.

The other thing I would say, and I reminded the President of this just the other day, this is not all on the Federal Government. You know, whether it is climate change, whether it is meeting our infrastructure needs, whether it is a pandemic, this is a shared responsibility, and the Federal Government really bears a lot of responsibility.

We have a responsibility especially to lead, but there are States involved. And as a recovering Governor--States were involved, counties, and cities. Nonprofits were involved. And it is all of us working together.

We have a Home Depot just a couple of blocks from our house, Senator Capito. And when I think of--whether it is cities and towns or counties where they have responsibilities to meet, I like to say: You can do it; we can help. Like they say at Home Depot: You can do it; we can help. And there is a lot of good help here.

To the folks around the country who need the help, we are going to help. You can do it, but we can help, and we will.

I would just say, in closing--I see the Senator from Montana is here, a great Member of this body, a great Member from Montana, and a great member of the Approps Committee, and the chair as well. I just want to say thank you for all of your involvement in this effort, all of your involvement, as part of this G-22, with some sanity and some common sense at times when it was really needed and just tenacity.

The fellow who normally stands at this podium is our leader, Senator Schumer, our majority leader. He spoke earlier this morning. And Senator McConnell spoke from where Senator Capito was speaking. Not everybody expected Senator McConnell, a Republican leader, to vote in favor of the motion to proceed to the bill. He did. And that encouraged others, 16, 17, 18 other Republicans to join in voting for the motion to proceed. We don't proceed unless we have 60 votes, and that was just hugely helpful.

And to Chuck Schumer, who was just--this guy, he just doesn't give up. I have known and worked with him forever, and I am very proud of his leadership. I know he will be glad when this is all over, and he can maybe go home and get a good night's sleep.

But for his family who is willing to share and his kids' willingness to share him with all of us, especially, thanks.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, while the Senator from Alaska is still here, I have been sitting here listening to a tour de force. God, what a wonderful, wonderful speech and clearly from the heart.

The Presiding Officer and I are recovering Governors, and the Senator's father was a recovering Governor at one time; and, actually, one of the smartest things he ever did, he appointed his daughter to serve--when there was a vacancy in the Senate, he appointed Lisa to serve at that vacancy.

And 2 years later, Tony Mills, who was Governor of Alaska, ran against her. Tony is one of my closest friends. We were Governors together for 6 years, and I said: Oh, my God, this is a hard choice.

And it was a hard choice for the folks from Alaska to make as well.

And Lisa was elected to the Senate and served with distinction. And when she ran for reelection as a Republican, I think, was defeated in a primary, and then turned around and ran a write-in campaign that I will never forget. I am sure she won't either.

And in a write-in campaign, in one of the cleverest political maneuvers I have ever seen--Murkowski is not an easy name to write in. Not everybody in Alaska, even though a famous name, knew how to write ``Murkowski.''

My recollection is the Murkowski campaign folks were smart enough to distribute fliers and messages throughout the State that had a picture of--a drawing--a cartoon of a cow on skis, with a bubble coming out of the cow's mouth with the word ``Mur''--``Mur cow ski.'' Then she won, rather handily, her write-in race and still is with us today.

We talked a lot here today about bridges. When I was in college, I was actually a Navy midshipman, and I was driving down to Florida to visit my parents and close friend, and we drove across a bridge across the Ohio River. I want to say--actually, I think the date was 1967. December 15, 1967, we were on our way to my parents in Florida, and the next day the bridge that we had gone across collapsed into the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, WV, and Conagua, OH, and 46 people were killed. Forty-six people were killed. I will never forget that. Whenever we talk about the need to address our poor condition bridges, I remember that. And for the folks who had lost loved ones that day, they remember that too.

We have gone through some troubled waters here in the Capitol and the Senate and in the House and in our country in recent months, weeks, years, and there is still trouble. And it is great to have a bridge over troubled waters, like you, to carry us through. And I just want to thank you for your great work in so many different ways but also with respect to the gang of 22 and keeping people on track. You make your family proud, and I think all of us proud, so thank you. Thank you.

I have been joined by a fellow from Louisiana, and I understand we are also going to be joined shortly by the fellow from Ohio, Senator Portman, who is going to come to the floor any minute, I think, to give his remarks. And I don't know if the gentleman from Louisiana is here to speak shortly or not, but we look forward to whatever he has to say.

We are now joined by the Senator from Ohio, successor to George Voinovich, who was both a Senator and a Governor. I had a great conversation with him in Ohio last week, and I am very grateful to him for his extraordinary leadership through these troubled waters, and there will be another one of those bridges over troubled waters.

I am happy to yield the floor to Senator Portman.

Would the Senator yield the floor?

While the Senator is still on the floor, we are talking about the serious side of Carl, and there is also a lighter side of Carl, as you know, and I just want to recall one of those today.

I was elected to--been State treasurer and elected to Congress in `82, and one of the Members of my professional class was Sandy Levin, Carl's brother--his older brother--who apparently had run for Governor--not successful--and later on got elected to the House, and I think he served as the Ways and Means Committee chair.

But, anyway, so I got to meet Carl pretty early, although he didn't join me here until about 20 years ago. But he is from Detroit and that area and loves the Detroit--loved the Detroit Tigers, and so do I. And try to figure out why an Ohio State boy would end up being a big Tigers fan, but I was.

Ended up on the Homeland Security Governmental Affairs Committee, and he was in charge of the Subcommittee on Investigations, and I ended up being the chairman of the committee; worked pretty close with Tom Coburn and others.

And Carl asked me--he said he wanted me to come up--as chairman, he wanted me to come up and tour the border--the U.S.-Canadian border, and right there by Detroit on boat, by water, by helicopters, and so forth.

I said: Sure. Count me in.

We just had one--just one heck of a day. It was a lot of fun and very informative. Got to spend time with Coast Guard people and others just very much involved in our border security.

And late in the day, it was opening day of baseball season, and the Tigers were playing in Minnesota, the opening game. It was an afternoon game.

And after we had finished our day's activities, it was moving on toward suppertime. He said: Let's go to this area of Detroit where they have all these Mexican restaurants, and we will have dinner.

And when we got to the restaurant, the Tigers game was on the radio, and he said let's have a couple of libations and sit in his car and listen to the Tigers game, and so we did.

And the game--we were in the 7th or 8th inning. We stayed until the very end, and it turned out to be a very sweet ending and the Tigers won the ballgame and we had a couple libations and some laughs. And then we went inside, and for, like, six bucks we bought two of the biggest dinners I have ever seen, and I had a wonderful time.

But I loved Carl. Loved Sandy too. And the idea that Carl has left us is real sad. Barbara, his wife, wonderful woman, thank her for sharing her husband with us.

Here is an issue, on a more serious note, called beneficial interests, which involved shell corporations and some criminal people who are doing untoward--maybe illicit, illegal things. They are using shell corporations to try to do those bad activities. And there was a question about who should have the authority, who should be responsible for making sure that no nefarious activities were taking place because of these shell corporations.

Delaware happens to be a State where there are a lot of corporations. I think half of the New York Stock Exchange, half of the Fortune 500 are incorporated in Delaware. So we had a real interest in doing this, but doing it in a way that doesn't unduly burden the State.

This was an issue that we didn't let come between our friendship. This was an issue that lasted and lasted and lasted and lasted.

And Carl, when he went to meet our Maker, about a year or so before, we resolved that issue, and it took years to resolve that issue. And he was tenacious, his staff was tenacious, and, frankly, so were a lot of other folks, but we got the job done in a way that

I think protects the public interest and makes sure that government, State and local and Federal, are doing their job.

And so, Carl, if you are listening, buddy, our Tigers are doing better this year, and hopefully they will continue to.

But thank you for raising those points.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendments be called up to the substitute and be reported by number: No. 1, Padilla-Moran, No. 2133, Indian health; No. 2, Thune- Tester, No. 2162, communications workers; further, that at 5:30 today, the Senate vote in relation to the amendments in the order listed, with no amendments in order to these amendments prior to a vote in relation to the amendment, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption, and 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to each vote.

Madam President, I would say thank you to the ranking member for those comments. I, too, am ready to get to work. This is a good way to do it, a couple of amendments that I think a lot of us can support.

But I appreciate the consent to lock in votes on these two amendments. We will start with these and work to have votes on others as well, hopefully sooner rather than later.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to yield the time back.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the following amendment be called up to the substitute and be reported by number. No. 1, Barrasso, 2180, which deals with building energy codes; further, that the Senate vote in relation to the amendment at 7:40 p.m., with no amendments in order to the amendment prior to a vote in relation to the amendment, with 60 affirmative votes required for adoption, and 2 minutes of debate divided equally prior to the vote.

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

Mr. President, I am on the floor this afternoon as we are waiting to learn when we might be able to proceed to a series of amendments as they relate to the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

This is a significant measure, one that I have been very proud to be involved with for a period of time, working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle in our working groups--G-10, G-22--working with the committee chairman and ranking member, working with other Members to get where we are today, which is a long-awaited--really, a long-away-- investment in our Nation's infrastructure.

I know that Members are looking through the significant legislation that is in front of us. You don't need to take my word for it. You can look at the number of inches of the document in front of me. It is significant.

Mr. President, I would suggest to you the need in this country is significant when it comes to investments in our Nation's infrastructure--our core infrastructure--what we define to be our roads, our rails, our bridges, our ports, our water and sewer, our broadband. I think we recognize that we talk a lot in this Chamber and perhaps on the other side, as well, and Presidents have come and gone and all talked about the need for more investment in our infrastructure. But truth be told, we really haven't done a real wholesale effort toward that goal until this year. We saw significant work come out of committees this year.

I want to commend the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, Senator Carper, my friend from Delaware. His committee worked hard, not only on the surface transportation measure but also the water infrastructure measure that had passed through.

We have seen other good work in other areas of infrastructure.

I am on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. That committee was able to move out a significant--what we call the power infrastructure--piece that became one of the anchor tenets, if you will, within this measure.

There has been good, collaborative work through the committees. Then that has been built on by Members, again, across the aisle over these past months to get us to where we are today.

I ask Members, as they are going through the bill itself, the language that we had hoped we would get a little bit earlier for colleagues to go through--but in fairness, we really needed to take the time to make sure

that we had gotten it right. It really does matter. So it did cause some delay that we wish we could have avoided, but we are where we are.

It is Monday afternoon, and what I am hearing from colleagues is that they want an opportunity to engage in this process. Many in this body have not been part of the working groups. Perhaps, they weren't part of the committees that had advanced some of these pieces of legislation that we have incorporated. They want to be participants, and rightly so. This is the time to do just that.

I think it is everyone's intention that we have a robust amendment process moving forward. I am actually looking forward to this. I have had the opportunity on this floor several times now to be able to manage energy bills, natural resources bills, bills that have been significant, bills on which we have actually been able to have a pretty decent amendment process.

Sometimes, in fairness--sometimes--that amendment process caused things to derail for a period of time. We don't want to do that in this instance, not at all. But it is not very often that we really do have a true and a meaningful amendment process. We are going to have an opportunity for that with the budget resolution coming forward. But I think, for the most part, most of us know that there is a lot of messaging that goes on. This is not about messaging. This is about delivering results for the American people. This is about creating jobs as we build out legacy infrastructure that is needed around the country.

Highways. We all know--we all know--that our highways are in need of help and support. The provisions that we have included in this measure for roads and bridges will be significant as we attend to the many damaged bridges that we see around the country, that really do present a threat to public safety. Let's get on them. We know our highways, in so many areas, are in serious disrepair, and in certain areas, we need to be doing more to help build out that highway infrastructure to ease the congestion to allow for greater efficiency, to allow us, as Americans, to do more of the things that we want to do, whether it is to spend more time with your family, be more productive at your work, but let's have an efficient system.

We have a little over 14,000 miles of public roads in Alaska. I can tell you that, as we look to my State's roads and the condition and the shape that they are in, I know that we need investments in this space, but I also know that it is not just about roads and bridges. We also allow for things like replacements of culverts for the community-- actually, the community that I was born in--in Ketchikan. I just met with the community leaders, and they shared with me that some of these culvert replacement projects are as key and critical to them as anything else that they have going on. And so recognizing that what we are doing is allowing for greater safety, greater access through our support for highways, for bridges, for things like culverts, for pedestrian safety initiatives, I think we all want to do more in that area.

Alaskans probably fly more than we drive. Our reality is some 80 percent of our communities are not connected by road, and the geography, the expanse that we deal with, is that we are just not going to be connected that way. But we don't need to be connected that way when we can be connected by the air and when we can be connected over the water. And so this legislation is, again, very important to those who fly.

And when I talk about flying, you know, sometimes these are small bush carriers, moving mail and groceries and people to medical appointments. But the fact that we have $15 billion in formula funding for the FAA Airport Improvement Program, this is going to be key. This helps with everything from runway lighting to navigation, taxiway initiatives. These are ways that the 400 public airports in Alaska are going to be able to move out on a more efficient basis, if you will, some of the necessary safety upgrades that they have in front of them. And, again, us, it is not just about the land-based airports; we also have the sea-based areas that we worry about. We have some 114 sea- based airports that we refer to.

So recognizing that not every airport is like a Dulles or a DCA here, what we are able to do for our small hub airports, our nonhub airports, our nonprimary airports--communities of all sizes, because, again, whether you are in Bethel or Utqiagvik or wherever you may be throughout the State, all sizes are not the same here. So making sure that we are able to accommodate that is going to be important.

I have mentioned that we are also connected on land, air, but also by sea, and for those of us who are in coastal States--the Senator from Delaware has a coastline, has ferries--people move around by ferries. We rely on our Alaska Marine Highway System. There are some 30, 35 different communities where that really is their connector. That is how the kids move the high school basketball team. That is how the church groups move. That is how you pick up the groceries at Costco in Juneau, and you put them on the ferry to go over to Angoon. It is how people shop. It is how they--it is their road. It is the Alaska Marine Highway System, and so recognizing the support that we can provide for our ferry systems, whether it is in Alaska or Delaware or places in between, is, again, an important opportunity for us.

We recognize that as we provide support for those technologies that will allow us to move people more efficiently and more cleanly, there is a lot of emphasis from this administration, particularly, with focus on EVs. Well, in this measure, we not only have provisions as they relate to clean schoolbuses but also to alternative fuel ferries. Recognizing that we have some opportunities, whether it is an EV ferry that might run from Haines to Skagway or an alternative fuel, we want to be thinking forward into the future.

One of the pieces of this measure--this very significant infrastructure bill--that a lot of work has gone into is the water and wastewater title. This is significant. This is significant. We saw, not too many years ago, the situation in Flint, MI, with lead pipes. We have been working to address many of those issues for a period of time, and rightly so. We provide significant funding--more than $180 million over 5 years--for the water and wastewater projects in Alaska through the Clean Water State Revolving Fund and the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund programs. These are significant for us.

In so many parts of the State, we are either faced with unserved communities, when it comes to water and wastewater, or vastly underserved. And when I say unserved, we kind of know what it means in the broadband sense, but let me explain to you what it means in the water and sewer place. It means that you don't have running water in your home; you don't have a toilet that flushes. You have a community well where people go, and they fill up their cherry jugs and haul it back. It means that for sanitation, for using the bathroom, the bathroom is effectively a Home Depot bucket. If you are fancy, you have a toilet seat on it. But it is the responsibility of somebody in the family to haul that bucket out and dump it.

I have shared pictures on the floor here of what that really means in a community to have no water--no water, no sewer system. Thirty-two out of a hundred ninety rural Alaska villages are currently in this situation.

I received a voice mail, over the weekend, from one of Alaska's mayors from a smaller community--on the road system, though. And she shared with me--and I owe her a call back--but she shared with me--she said: You know, there are so many people in my community who don't have running water. And, again, this is a community that is on the road system between Anchorage and Fairbanks. And so how we can help address what most would say is pretty basic infrastructure, is pretty basic healthcare needs when it comes to water and sanitation, there is significant funding in this measure for Indian Health Service's sanitation facilities.

I am the ranking member on the Indian Affairs Committee. I have been on this committee since I came to the Senate 19 years ago. I have seen, over the years, the efforts that we have made to try to address the water and sanitation needs in Indian Country in Alaska with our Native villages. Our reality that we face is we are still in an extreme deficit when it comes to our Tribal communities. The reality is that

we have left them behind when it comes to something like modern-day water and the wastewater systems. And so the unprecedented investment in sanitation infrastructure is one that, I think, is significant and incredibly important because we are seeking to clear all the known project needs.

Now, people will say that is aggressive, but let me tell you, when you go to some of these communities and you hear the concerns from the people in the village about how they are supposed to keep their families from contracting this virus, when this first simple step is to wash your hands, and they say: Water is pretty precious around here because we don't have a sink to wash our hands in. And so the effort here to catch up--and I don't even like to use those words in that sense. We have to do right by our Native people, and the effort here, I think, is key and critically important.

Another area that I am pleased that working with the committee of jurisdiction, led by Senator Carper, that there has been a focus on-- and this is something that Ranking Member Capito has been keenly focused on, as well--and this is the PFOS contamination through our clean water and our drinking water programs.

I also recognize that there is a focus on small and disadvantaged communities. I have one small community down in southeast Alaska, Gustavus. It is the community that is right next to the Glacier Bay National Monument area, and the PFOS in their little community, near the airport area, is something that is a major and significant concern for that tiny, small, little community. So making sure that, again, these programs--the funding that we are helping to advance--is good, whether you are an urban area with 100-year-old pipes that need replacement or you are a community that has lacked the original infrastructure in the first place, how we are able to ensure that the needs of our small communities are met as well is significant, and I think it is an important part of this legislation.

I mentioned broadband as being that other connector. We connect by way of transportation systems. We get that. But, nowadays, if you are not connected--if you are not connected by the broadband availability, the ability to communicate elsewhere--your economies are limited; you are limited. I mentioned the fact that so many of the communities in my State are not connected by a road and probably will not be in my lifetime. And they are not seeking that as an answer, but they do want to be connected to the rest of the world. They want to know that for the crafts that they are able to make at home, they have the ability to, perhaps, sell them to a broader audience. Maybe it is on your own little website, selling to folks in the lower 48 or globally. But you can't do that. You can't do that if you don't have the connection.

And so the recognition that the grants for the deployment--the broadband deployment--with minimum allocation to each State are important, but also recognizing a focus on these high-cost areas for deployment. I am just saying, if you are looking for a high-cost area for deployment, look no further than Alaska. It is not something that we are proud of; it is a reality. But part of the tragedy that we see is that, in many communities, broadband has arrived. The internet is there, but people can't afford to use it.

We have heard in the height of the pandemic last year a reality that families could not--could not connect because the cost to do so was just prohibitive, which meant that children weren't gaining that full access to the information. It meant that if you were trying to work from home, that you couldn't do that. And so it is a reality that it is not just about access, but access has to mean some level of affordability.

So the focus in this broadband piece, I think, is critically important as we look to the provisions in the Middle Mile Infrastructure grants; as we look to the support, again, for Tribal broadband, recognizing, again, that this is an area that has been chronically underfunded in the past.

There is so much that--when you think about how solid infrastructure allows you to have an economy. In Anchorage, we host what we call Alaska's port. And it is a significant port. Obviously the largest one in the State. But it is through the Port of Alaska that over 85 percent of the goods, the commodities come into the State, and then they are distributed either by truck or by rail, air, but they are moved out from there. And we know what an economic driver that port is to not only Anchorage, but to the State as well.

But it is not just big ports; it is also the smaller ports. We have got more coastline than any State in the country.

And, again, if you don't have the roads, how are you getting in?

You are maybe flying in by small airplane, but more likely your materials are barged up during the summer months. That is how you get the lumber. That is how you get the snow machine or the four-wheeler to go out and do your hunting.

Our reality is that our ports have to work in every size community, and so knowing that there will be additional support for remote and subsistence harbor construction is going to be so key--so key--to these small, small, little communities for whom, if they didn't have this, they have got nothing.

You can't move fish out, you can't move fish in; you can't move goods in, you can't move goods out. Everything, then, is flown in; and think about what that means if everything is flown in. It is crazy, wicked expensive. And you are talking about a--you are talking about a sheet of sheetrock, the fact is that if you are--if you are flying in your materials, it is almost impossible to be able to afford any of it.

There is so much, again, when I think about ways that we help to build our communities, help build our economies, help create jobs through infrastructure.

And I spent a lot of time focused on energy initiatives, and I am pleased with the work that came out of the Energy Committee that is focused in these various areas that drive the level of innovation that we will need as we are working to be more efficient, to have cleaner energy sources, and to really be more competitive.

We effectively took the Energy Act that we passed last--at the end of last Congress and we helped to build out many of the provisions that were contained in that act, whether it is the advanced reactor demonstration project; more on hydropower and marine energy research; funding for geothermal, wind, solar energy; the energy storage demonstration projects--so much, again, that is focused on what do we need to do to really be not only forward-leaning and innovative, but efficient to allow for a more competitive role globally.

When you think about our Nation's grid infrastructure and resiliency, you don't need to close your eyes and imagine what can happen when your grid fails.

Unfortunately, as we are seeing--as we are seeing, whether they are wildfires, whether we are seeing brownouts with the extreme heat, our reality is that our grid infrastructure needs support. We need to have that resiliency that we all talk about. And, again, I am going to stand up for the small grids, the smaller utilities who face the same pressures that you might have in an integrated grid back here, in fact, even maybe more so.

If you are a small, stand-alone community, you are your own grid. You need to have a level of resilience and the ability to make sure that people are not literally freezing in the dark.

And so the effort that we have included with regards to our set-aside for small utilities, these are--these are significant initiatives.

I have mentioned resilience a couple different times. I think sometimes people think that that is a word that is overused, but I will tell you, we can't be doing enough when it comes to resilience.

We have included in this measure a provision that we entitled ``Tribal Climate Resilience.'' This is funding that is included to really help with those threatened communities. Many we see in my State, but certainly I hear from colleagues in other States who are seeing the same concerns as communities are more threatened due to--whether it is erosion, as we are seeing in Alaska, or flooding, but support to assist with climate resilience, adaptation projects, as well as community relocation.

I will wrap up by just a little bit more commentary on the resilience

piece. We are seeing in the West incredible drought right now. We are seeing the extent of these forest fires from Oregon going east. But I think it is important for colleagues to know that, again, when we are taking about infrastructure and resilience, we also are acknowledging natural resource-related infrastructure and what more we might be doing with wildfire management, ecosystem restoration.

And so to make sure that there is support for things like mechanical thinning, fuel breaks, other activities to reduce the risk of wildfire, whether it is on our Forest Service lands or any of our public lands, but also the concerns, then, when the fire knows no boundary as to whose lands they are

Certainly in Alaska we saw the benefit of fuel breaks as they were implemented on the Kenai. We had a pretty significant fire several years back, the Funny River Fire, and we saw full well what that fuel break really did to help protect property and life.

The bill also includes precommercial thinning, which, again, is important in a host of different areas, not the least of which in my State on the Tongass.

But I think we do a good job to make sure that when we are talking about infrastructure, we are recognizing the core infrastructure of-- whether it is legacy projects, like roads, rails, bridges, but also recognizing that infrastructure has impact to our lands and how we ensure that there is greater resilience, again, greater protections, and ensuring that it is addressed perhaps more broadly.

So there is much good in this bill. There is not everything that I would have wanted, most certainly. There are a lot of things in it that, in fairness, I wish weren't in it. There are some pieces that I look at and I say ``way over the top,'' but I have to acknowledge I come from a State where infrastructure is just a little bit different.

We don't have a big public transit system, so I look at the transit dollars, and my immediate jump is: Way too much. Don't need this.

But I recognize that in a collaborative process, in a negotiated process, you have got to hear the views back and forth of all of your colleagues, and you take some things and you leave some things behind in a give-and-take process.

And so just as my colleagues have listened to me convey the urgency of need for more support for the Tribal programs when it comes to infrastructure, whether it is on water and sanitation or broadband, they heard the urgency there; whether it was recognizing that not all infrastructure projects are big in terms of their size, but they are big for that small community; to know that the fishing community of Craig is going to be able to build out that little harbor there.

And so I have asked my colleagues to listen to the concerns of a very rural State like Alaska, a State where our infrastructure is very unique, and they have had an open mind and a view towards not only recognizing how unique Alaska is, but recognizing the unique needs of rural America.

So we have a compromise product in front of us, and it is a significant product, and we are now at a place where we want colleagues to join us in this product, weigh in with your good ideas. Let's move some good amendments. But I would suggest that the sooner we start moving with these amendments, the better it will be for us and this process here, but also for the American public.

I yield the floor.

Chairman Carper, thank you. Thank you for managing this important legislation and all the work you have put into it.

You know, I asked my team today: Can you give me a sense of how much of this underlying legislation we are talking about on the floor this week that was already written? In other words, what did Senator Capito, Senator Carper, and others on the EPW Committee, as an example, already write with regard to this surface transportation bill that we are simply picking up in this legislation and moving forward to be sure it gets reauthorized, certainly before September 30, and we hope far before that. And about half of the pages of the bill is language that was written through the committee process here. Now, some may be happy to hear that, and some may be unhappy to hear that, but that is the truth. And, frankly, it made our job easier because a lot of the hard work was done.

In the case of the legislation that Senators Carper and Capito shepherded through their committee with regard to our highways and bridges, it was a 20-to-nothing vote, as I recall, out of committee, unanimous. So we thought it was appropriate for us not to tell them how to do their job but to help them by picking up that legislation, and as they have improved that legislation, their underlying authorization legislation, and ensure that it is

included in the package. And I appreciate Senator Carper and Senator Capito working with us on that even over the past few weeks. So, yes, we have added more on top of it because we believe our Nation needs a shot in the arm. We have enormous infrastructure needs. But without Senator Capito and Senator Carper's involvement, 20 to nothing out of committee, we wouldn't be where we are today, and that is the foundation upon which this was built. So, again, I know that is not understood by everybody, but that is a fact.

And our Nation's infrastructure does need the help. And this legislation, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act before us right now, is an unprecedented investment. It is historic, but it is that because a historic investment is needed. It is important to note that we did so without raising taxes on the American people or causing further inflation in an already overheated economy. I heard some of my colleagues on my side say: Gosh, I want to support you, but I am worried about the spending and its impact on inflation. Well, this is what the economists would call supply-side spending. This is long-term spending for capital assets that may last 40, 50, 70 years. Think of a bridge or think of another infrastructure project like a big water infrastructure project. So it is a different kind of spending. It is not going to be spent over the next year. In fact, very little, if any, will be spent in the next year, but it will be spent over time--over 5, 10 years for these kinds of projects. That is the kind of money that goes into building infrastructure and building jobs. Therefore, again, on the supply side rather than the demand side of the economy, as economists would say, it is not stimulating the economy in that way; it is growing the economy long term.

Most economists who have looked at this, including economists like Doug Holtz-Eakin, who used to be here at CBO, or an economist like Michael Strain at the American Enterprise Institute or the Penn work- study at the University of Pennsylvania. They all say the same thing, which is that this is actually counterinflationary kind of spending. That is important.

I will say that this is needed because we are falling behind as a country, and every State has its own needs here. I will tell you what my needs are in the State of Ohio, which is that we make a lot of stuff. So our factory workers who make tanks and cars and washing machines, we want to be sure that our infrastructure works to be able to get that to market. Sometimes that market is the United States, and sometimes it is overseas. Therefore, our ports are important but so is our rail and so are our highways. Our farmers--we have got a lot of farmers in Ohio who plant crops. We want to make sure that those crops can get to the elevators so that the grain can get out.

We have a lot of people in Ohio who live in cities and commute. And so the mom who is looking at her commute every day and saying, ``Why do I get stuck in traffic at rush hour both ways and have to spend all this time in the car when I could be spending it with my kids,'' wouldn't it be great to improve those highways and those bridges to be able to reduce the amount of time that someone is stuck in a car? So this is about helping our country at a time when we need it.

There is probably no better example of that than broadband because think about the child in Appalachian Ohio who has no Wi-Fi service-- like none. I am not talking about slow Wi-Fi; I am talking about no Wi- Fi. I look at my colleague from West Virginia and think of all the counties in West Virginia that are in the same shape that they are in Eastern Ohio. We are expanding broadband in an unprecedented way. The deployment of broadband into the rural community but also access in the more suburban and urban communities, that is really important because that child now can be able to do the schoolwork at home. And during the pandemic, of course, this has been a huge issue, but it is an issue every day. Rather than having to drive with her mom to the local library, which some girl might have to do in Appalachia to find a Wi-Fi signal, she can actually get it at home because of this deployment we have provided here, which is unprecedented.

So all of this is in this. It is all part of it. It is important.

The American Society of Civil Engineers has given our Nation a report card every year. Our report card right now is a C-minus. We get a C- minus.

Now, I did get a couple C's in high school and college, so I don't think C's are always terrible, but I don't want our infrastructure to get a C, much less a C-minus.

They estimate that somewhere in America there is a water break every 2 minutes. Water infrastructure is part of this. They also estimate that 43 percent of our public roads are in poor or mediocre condition. This hasn't improved in years.

We are now listed 13th in the world for infrastructure in the most recent rankings by the World Economic Forum. They, every year, look at all these countries around the world and say, where do you rank? The United States is right up there. I think Singapore and the United States are some of the most competitive countries in the world, in terms of all the analysis they do, but not on infrastructure. On infrastructure, it drags us down because, frankly, we haven't invested as other countries have.

The number out there that people use is that China spends four times more than we do as a percent of their economy on infrastructure. I think it is actually higher than that from the numbers I have seen. But let's say it is four times more. China gets it. They know infrastructure is important for economic growth. I talked earlier about how it makes the economy more efficient and therefore more productive and therefore you have more tax revenue generated. They get that. We have allowed our infrastructure to get to the point where we are not competitive as a country with so many others, not just developed countries either.

We have cut back funding over the years, and so it is probably no wonder this has happened. The Aspen Economic Strategy Group calculated that as of 2017, our total spending on infrastructure across the public and private sectors hit its lowest point since at least 1947. So relatively speaking, we have less expenditures on infrastructure, and this lack of investment has real impact. Historian Henry Petroski estimates that the delays caused by traffic congestion alone cost our economy more than $120 billion every year.

So I talked about the mom who is commuting and not being able to spend more time with her kids because she is sitting in her car--$120 billion a year is the economic impact. That is important, too. One 2017 study by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimated there was a total infrastructure gap of more than $2 trillion that we need to address by 2025; otherwise, we could lose nearly $4 trillion in GDP, economic growth, that we otherwise would have produced as a country.

Now, those are big numbers. Those are big numbers. These are the engineers who say we have a gap of $2 trillion we need to address by 2025. Ours is $550 billion over the next 5 years--historic levels. Some would say it may not be enough. I think it is. And you will hear a lot about this, this week, all the different places where the infrastructure investments are made. But others would say we need to do even more. You can see that there is a need for renewed infrastructure.

Let me give you a really specific example, and it is one reason I am interested in this project, honestly. For, gosh, 25 years now, we have been talking about fixing our bridge in Cincinnati, OH. It is called the Brent Spence Bridge. It is where I-75 and I-71 come together, so think about all the commercial traffic. Actually, 3 percent of the Nation's commerce goes over this one bridge every year. It is a huge economic issue for us in Greater Cincinnati. There is congestion there every day. It is a bottleneck. The bridge is busy. In fact, it is carrying twice the number of cars that it was built to carry already.

There are no shoulders anymore on it because they tried to expand the lanes as much as they can. We recently had two trucks crash there partly because there is no shoulder, and the safety problems are huge on that bridge. It took the bridge out for a couple months--a huge economic impact, huge economic impact. This bridge, again, for 25 years, people have said: We have got to replace this bridge. It is not safe. It is not big enough. It doesn't connect 71 and 75 in the way that it

should for our commercial activities. It is a bridge that has been deemed by the U.S. Department of Transportation as ``functionally obsolete.'' That sounds pretty dramatic--``functionally obsolete.'' Unfortunately, again, these accidents continue to happen because it is not safe. You have got 160,000 vehicles on it rather than the 80,000 per day it was designed to accommodate. It needs to be fixed, but it is really expensive, and the local community and the State just simply can't do it alone.

There are critical pieces of infrastructure like the Brent Spence Bridge in States all over our country, from roads to railroads, to ports, to broadband networks that all need upgrades to stay competitive in this global economy. It is no surprise, then, that infrastructure is an area where the American people really do want action. They get it on this one. They want us to come together as Republicans and Democrats and fix this problem.

There was a recent poll by CNBC saying 87 percent of Americans think it is important we invest in improving our crumbling roads and bridges. There was another poll that came out a couple months later, a very recent poll, saying--again, this is a CBS poll--87 percent of Americans support more Federal spending on repairing roads and bridges. Two polls, 2 months apart, same number, 87 percent. Eighty-seven percent of the American people don't agree on anything, but they do agree on this, which is let's fix our infrastructure. Let's do what Presidents in modern times have all said we ought to do: President Bush, President Obama, President Trump, President Biden. President Trump had a proposal for $1.5 trillion. Ours is $550 billion. President Trump is a developer, a builder, and he understood the need for infrastructure investment, but, frankly, Congress didn't work with him to get that done. There were also issues about how that was to be paid for. But I commend President Trump for raising that issue. He ought to be given some credit because we might not be talking about it. At the end, he continued to say we need to invest big time in infrastructure.

Then President Biden, in his campaign, said the same thing, and when he took office, he said the same thing: We need to do an infrastructure plan. His original plan wasn't one that Republicans could support because it had huge tax increases in it and it had a lot of infrastructure that wasn't core infrastructure. That is why we came together as a bipartisan group.

Senator Capito is here. She worked with the White House on this to try to come up with a way to move forward, and, again, that helped create the foundation for what we have done here.

But the point is, Republicans and Democrats alike over the years have said the same thing, which is, it is time; let's fix this infrastructure.

Finally, we are giving infrastructure the help it needs and deserves and giving the American people, more importantly, the infrastructure that they want. And it is a good investment. One 2014 University of Maryland study found that each dollar spent on infrastructure can generate a return of as much as $3 to the U.S. economy--$1 in, $3 out. It is smart spending if done correctly. That explains again why President Trump put forward the $1.5 trillion package, why President Biden put together a package, and why Democrats and Republicans alike up here on Capitol Hill talked about infrastructure for years.

American workers need infrastructure. They don't need new taxes. That is why, in this proposal, again, we say: Let's take the taxes out. Let's pull the core infrastructure out so it is more focused on what is really needed, and let's do it on a bipartisan basis. That is what we do in this proposal.

The pro-growth policies put in place by Congress through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was very good for our economy in every respect. Wages went up, lowest poverty rate since we started keeping track of it back in the 1950s. It had a lot of very good things. Unemployment was at historic lows for many groups, including Blacks and Hispanics. It was an overall 15-year low in unemployment.

We have to be sure that we are not raising taxes now because we went into this pandemic with a strong economy, and we have to come out of it with a strong economy. But infrastructure is something that we should do without raising taxes.

There was a lot of discussion, after President Biden talked about infrastructure, as to whether it could be partisan or bipartisan. There were some people saying: Let's put it in what is call reconciliation, where you don't need a single Republican vote. I applaud President Biden and Republicans and Democrats in this Chamber for saying: You know what, this is one where we ought to be able to get together. If you can't get together on a bipartisan basis on infrastructure, where can you?

That is why we were able to figure out a way--again, without raising taxes and focusing on core infrastructure--to ensure that the critical infrastructure we rely on every day--our roads, our bridges, our railways, our electrical grids, our water supplies, our broadband and more--will get fixed. Again, 87 percent of the American people are looking for us to do that. It is no wonder. Go home and talk to the people you represent in your State, and they will tell you this is one where we can come together. We need to deal with the infrastructure challenges we face and the digital divide that is out there.

What this does not include is a grab bag of social spending priorities that the Democrats want to include in the other bill they are talking about, which is the $3.5 trillion spending proposal they unveiled earlier this month, and that is an important point my colleagues should not miss.

The President has said that the $3.5 trillion package, the so-called reconciliation package, will not include more core infrastructure funding. In other words, the President has said: I propose $2.65 trillion. The bipartisan group pulled out core infrastructure and said it is going to be $550 billion. I am now not going to put the additional amount I wanted into reconciliation.

Simply put, Republicans and Democrats alike, coming together to focus on the core part of this, without taxes, have ensured that the ``lot more'' is not going to be spent both on core infrastructure and on so- called social infrastructure with huge tax increases in another package. So this is the best thing for the American economy by far, to have a bipartisan proposal.

The President has said that we are not going to double-dip. In other words, infrastructure won't be in the next package. He said that privately, he said that publicly, and I believe he will keep his word on that. Certainly, those of us who were involved in this will ensure that that is not part of the agreement that is violated.

So we are seeing these studies come out that show that this is the right approach for the economy. We talked about the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of business proposal that says our proposal will actually increase the economy, raise wages for workers, and actually lower our national debt over the longer term. Again, because of this feedback loop we talked about earlier, it makes the economy more efficient, more productive, grows the economy, and more revenue will be coming into the economy, and, again, we do so without raising taxes.

A Democratic economist, Larry Summers, and many on the Republican side of the aisle have been warning for months about inflation. Again, as I said earlier, this is counterinflationary.

The bottom line is that the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will provide a historic investment in hard infrastructure, with input from a bipartisan group of Senators, while avoiding the tax hikes and the reckless spending proposed by the Biden administration.

Importantly, for the sake of future bipartisan hearings here in Congress, this is an infrastructure plan that allows us to avoid the repeat of the COVID-19 $1.9 trillion spending bill that passed under the partisan process called reconciliation. It demonstrates to the American people that, in fact, we can figure out how to work together to get big things done. President Biden said he wanted to work in a bipartisan way. Well, this is a great example of it. It is a genuine effort on behalf of Republicans and Democrats to find common ground and move our country forward.

I am committed to working with my colleagues here in the Senate to see

this legislation through to the end. We have come a long way, and I believe we are close to achieving a historic victory for the American people. I encourage all of my colleagues to join us in supporting this Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act so that we can truly make an important bipartisan investment in the next generations of Americans.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I want to begin by thanking the chairman of our EPW Committee. We work tremendously well together.

He gave a great speech right there, outlining not only the difficulties that we had reaching consensus but really how the building blocks of what we are embarking on today really came from the bipartisanship that we have shown at EPW with our surface transportation and our water bills.

I think, you know, by having those building blocks in place, it has led us to where we are today.

And I do remember that first meeting with President Biden in the White House. It is not every day you get to go to the White House and sit in the Oval Office and talk to the President of the United States and Vice President. But we started out with basically saying that we can do this, we want to do this, and bipartisanship can work, particularly on areas that we traditionally work together on, but also on areas that are of critical need to our country. And we never really sort of lost our focus on that, and neither did the President.

So here we are today, really meeting that challenge that he sort of laid down before us over 6 months ago. And with the building blocks that us and Commerce and others have put into place, we find ourselves with the great hard work of the bipartisan group and a great place of-- at a point at which we can discuss these, amend these, and look at these on the Senate floor, as we should be doing.

So after months and months of negotiating, the time is finally here. A lot of people, in pun, said we would never get here. As a matter of fact, I had an interview on national TV about 3 or 4 months ago, when I was leading the effort for the Republicans, and the commentator said: Well, I will believe bipartisanship on infrastructure when pigs fly.

So watch out. They are flying.

So we are debating this historic bipartisan infrastructure bill. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is the product of countless hours, as the chairman said; late nights; and more than a couple of tough conversations. And I want to include not just our staff but a lot of staffs throughout the Senate, whether it is the Finance Committee, Approps Committee, Commerce Committee, Banking Committee, EPW Committee, Energy Committee, all-encompassing--a lot of our staffs have been working through the weekends sleeplessly to try to get us to today.

We debated the definition of infrastructure. We actually talked about that at the White House on the day we went to see the President and what that scope should look like and the pricetag and, very important, how to pay for it.

I think that nobody, probably, of the 100 of us thinks this bill is absolutely perfect. It never would be. And there is always a saying going around that, if we all thought it was perfect, there is something wrong with it.

So delivering for the American people is more important than our newspaper headlines today. We can make a historic investment in our Nation's infrastructure with this bill. It reflects our commitment to keeping Americans safe, as the chairman mentioned; improving our global competitiveness; and growing our economy and creating jobs. This legislation gives States both the certainty in funding to plan for big projects, but also that flexibility in spending to cater to unique needs.

What you need in Georgia is different than what you need in Delaware, or my other colleague from Montana would differ from what we need in West Virginia. This bill is a product that the American people can be proud of and one that will benefit them and the next generation. This is not a one-and-done. The impacts of this bill will go on through a generation.

So after we had the meeting with the President--the bipartisan meeting--the President put out his American Jobs Act. He actually challenged my party, the Republican Party, to come up with a reaction to his American Jobs Plan. And I took up that challenge, along with the ranking members of the relevant committees. So that would be Senators Wicker, Toomey, Barrasso, Crapo, and Senator Blunt, and we went back to the White House. And I was talking to Senator Carper the entire time through this process to make sure that our surface transportation bill, which we were in the midst of negotiating, was going to be the building block on which we could formulate a bipartisan agreement. And the Drinking Water and Wastewater bill had already passed out this entire body 89 to 2.

So we decided--and the President was very much in the conversation and the will to get this done. So our Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act had already passed, as I said, unanimously. We passed it on the floor, 89 to 2. And we were making steady progress on our Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill.

At this point, the talks between the President and me and our working group, as Republicans, began to falter, and the bipartisan group picked up with the President. I am really, really glad and proud of their efforts that they were able to come to an agreement that is before us today. As I am going to reiterate again because I think we are going to be saying this a lot, I am glad that the basis of this are the two bipartisan bills that came out of the EPW Committee.

There are several provisions I would like to highlight as we begin this process.

Roads and bridges are what we think of when we think of infrastructure. We talked a lot about this over the last several months. As ranking member of the EPW Committee, one of my top priorities, along with Chairman Carper, is the reauthorization of the Surface Transportation Reauthorization bill. We worked painstakingly; and those were a lot of sleepless nights, too, for many of us and our staffs, in particular, to write a bill to meet our transportation needs. And the chairman outlined a lot of what his priorities were, and I am going to talk about some of what the priorities that I had, sharing his priorities as well.

I came to the table with several major priorities for that bill, and I am proud to say that each one of them is in this bill that we are getting ready to consider. I wanted a robust investment in our Nation's roads and bridges. Nothing bugs people more, literally, than driving into a pothole when they know they are paying a gas tax and when they know they are trying to do their best to support their State and local to repair their roads. But it is, I think, the least, I think, that Americans--as they are going to work or going to school or going shopping--would expect that they could be safe as they are traveling.

I came to the table, and we did a robust $303.5 billion over 5 years for the Federal-Aid Highway Program, which, as the chairman said, is a 35-percent increase over current law. That investment represents historic funding. These are historic levels of funding for our roads and bridges and provides States that long-term certainty that they need to plan and complete a project. I am sure the chairman has projects in his State that have been on the burner, waiting to be done or partially finished, and they can't get the investment because they can't get the

long-term investment that we provided in our bill.

So I specifically made funding for our Nation's bridges a priority. West Virginia has so many bridges. It is a small State, but we have got a lot of hills and valleys, so we need a lot of bridges.

One recent report said that 21 percent of West Virginia's bridges are in poor condition. Another report says that 13 percent of our interstate bridges are in poor condition. So that latter figure of the interstate bridges is the highest one in the Nation. Our bill created a new bridge program. We worked hard with our colleagues to make sure that there is a massive infusion, which there is, on top of what we had in our bill in the appropriations package.

The overall package includes $40 billion in dedicated resources for bridges. This is the single largest investment in bridge infrastructure since the construction of the Interstate Highway System. This is money that will make a difference for West Virginia and the rest of the Nation.

Second, I wanted to preserve the flexibility for our States and localities to use Federal funds to meet their own unique transportation needs. That priority is reflected in the fact that 90 percent of the EPW bill's funding will be provided to our States through the formula-- that means the predictability of the formula that every State has relied on over the last several transportation bills. That is important because it lets States use the Federal dollars to address their own priorities. As I said, we have different priorities, from congestion in urban areas to economic growth in small towns.

And third, I wanted to make sure that all parts of our Nation--not just urban areas, but the rural areas--benefit from transportation grant programs. Rural areas can sometimes struggle when it comes to receiving competitive grants.

It is hard to show cost-benefit analysis. It is hard to show how many people are being served. But these transportation corridors are so vital. That is why I am very pleased that the EPW bill creates a new $2 billion rural grant program that will dedicate resources to something very important to me--the Appalachian Development Highway System, or the ADHS--and other critical projects across rural America.

We also worked together to provide additional dedicated funding for the ADHS in the broader legislation.

So what does that mean for my home State?

That means that this funding will aid the completion of Corridor H, which is the connector to the eastern and central parts of our State with the Metro and DC area and opening up more opportunities for economic growth and tourism. So if you are coming from the DC area, you can just slice right through the center of the State where you can ski Whitewater, see the beauty of our State, or bring your business.

How about that?

Finally, we hear a lot--everybody hears a lot--from folks back home that it just takes way too long to develop a project. We sometimes think sometimes the bureaucracy is our worst enemy when it comes to building our infrastructure. So we prioritized improvements for the project delivery process to help road and bridge projects advance from the planning stage to the completion stage much more rapidly.

I am excited about reforms we had in our EPW bill. Particularly, our bill codifies the One Federal Decision policy, making it easier for project sponsors to work through the Federal environmental review process--not skirting any environmental review, but just expediting it so it can go quicker, which means more development, more considerations, but also more efficiency on how you spend your dollars.

The EPW bill makes other commonsense reforms, like allowing States to be reimbursed for utility relocation necessary for a project while the review process is ongoing, or even establishing deadlines for Federal Agencies to make decisions.

These are a few examples of the 19 sections included in the robust project delivery section of our EPW bill.

Additional provisions in the broader legislation will extend the FAST-41 permitting reforms to help us build other types of infrastructure more efficiently.

So my key priorities: Robust investment in roads and bridges, flexibility for--and certainty for--our States; resources for rural communities and especially the ADHS, and project delivery improvements are all reflected in the EPW bill and across the broader package we are considering.

I am extremely proud of the work we did on our committee to produce this, and I think it will make significant benefits to our Nation's infrastructure.

I am also going to talk about our Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act. The chairman went into more detail on it, but you can see it is very far-reaching. It is the largest, most robust investment in new areas around this very crucial area. We have authorized $35 billion for water projects across the country with a focus on upgrading aging infrastructure. It invests in innovative technologies and provides assistance to rural and low-income communities to help them keep their water safe and clean. The bill provides that flexibility I talked about so that both rural and urban areas can best address their needs.

The most significant investments are in the Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Funds, otherwise known as SRFs. Our former Governors in the body would know all about SRFs, how important they are. They maximize the authority to the States to determine how best to address their own challenges with a revolving loan fund to facilitate additional future investments.

When this water legislation was voted on by the Senate, 89 Senators supported it. Senators recognized that the legislation will help thousands of communities to improve their health, safety, and standard of living. I am very pleased that this bill before us again is a part of this package--a part of the larger package--so we can make sure that it gets to the President's desk.

I am glad that the overall package we are considering represents the largest investment in clean drinking water in our Nation's history.

It also has some niche things in there that are important to me. Just what we hear anecdotally in our State, we are wasting water in our State. We have leaky old pipes that just leak out 50 percent of the water from the treatment facilities to the home. What a waste. Think about our friends in the West and how precious water is in certain areas. What a wasteful thing that is. So we addressed some of that into our bill.

There are a number of other provisions in this large package that will be significant wins for West Virginia and the Nation. I launched my Capito Connect initiative in 2015, to help expand broadband infrastructure in West Virginia. Many communities that lack adequate broadband service are struggling economically. And I see my fellow Senator from Montana--we had talked about this endlessly on the Commerce Committee and how absolutely important it is.

Many communities that lack adequate broadband service are struggling. It is impossible to compete for new jobs if a community cannot offer good internet service--I mean, it is just a necessity--causing these areas to fall further and further behind. So, today, education, tourism, healthcare, all require high-speed internet service.

Broadband is core infrastructure, and this legislation recognizes that. It is a major broadband investment that will tremendously help close the digital divide in this country. We will get it to the last house. We will get it to the last business.

Additionally, significant funding is included in this package to improve our Nation's airports.

Funding for the Corps of Engineers will improve our water resources infrastructure, our locks and dams. We rely a lot on that as you are going knew down the Ohio Canal, the Big Sandy in through West Virginia.

Reorganization of the AML Program will provide billions of dollars to clean up abandoned mine sites. Another new program will provide resources to clean up orphaned oil and gas wells. Both programs will have a positive effect in this country and particularly in my State.

The items I have highlighted are major wins for West Virginia and the Nation. They are investments in the next generation, ensuring America continues to compete on the global stage.

I would like to thank Senators Portman and Sinema for their leadership on this legislation and the entire bipartisan working group for their hours and hours of long work.

I would especially like to thank--and we are going to be together a lot here in the next several days--my counterpart, ``Carper diem,'' Chairman Carper of the EPW Committee.

I would also like to thank President Biden for his commitment and his willingness to see this bipartisan work product through. I would like to add that I would like to thank the President's staff because I know that they have committed hours and hours to this effort, beginning with me and ending where we are today.

I hope this isn't the end. I mean, I hope this is the beginning of things that we are going to be doing together. I hope this isn't a one- and-done. I hope this is the beginning of all good things.

The American people elected us to do this tough work. Tough compromises are necessary to develop and pass bipartisan bills, and I believe this legislation is a major positive step.

I look forward to working with my colleagues as we begin the amendment process so that we can advance this package.

I would like to join with Chairman Carper in thanking our staff members who have worked so hard on the EPW bill.

As the Senator mentioned, I see his staff over there and part of my staff over here.

At the risk of picking one of my favorite children off the EPW Committee, I am going to name my entire staff because they all had a hand in this. So I would like to thank Lauren Baker; Murphie Barrett; Libby Callaway; Georgianna Clemmons, who is going to be a mom in about a month; Marli Collier; Travis Cone; Sarah Delavan; Will Dixon; Elizabeth Horner; Max Hyman; Tyler Jenkins; Jess Kramer; Jake Kennedy; Matt Lupes; Kayla McMurry; Taylor Meredith; Jacob Mitchell; Kelley Moore; Katherine Smith; and my staff leader, Adam Tomlinson--I will give him an extra check because he is an amazing person--Travis Voyles; and Andy Zock for their tireless efforts that have helped advance this committee's infrastructure legislation.

On my personal office team, I would like to thank my chief of staff, Joel Brubaker, and JT Jezierski for their leadership.

I say to the Senator that I also want to thank his staff. We have worked really well. You and I work well together, but our staffs really do, I think, rely on one another. And that is the way it should be.

I would like to especially thank Mary Frances Repko because she has devoted many hours and time--she and Adam--I don't know how many times they have talked on the phone, but it is many, many, many--Rebecca Higgins, John Kane, Greg Dotson, Laura Gilliam, Jordan Baugh, Heather Dean, Mackie McIntosh, Annie D'Amato, Kenneth Martin, and Tyler Hoffman-Reardon for their dedication for this process as well.

With that, I yield the floor.

Madam President, I don't have an objection. I just wanted to say to the--to Chairman Carper here and others in the bipartisan group and all of us here: We are ready to get this thing started.

This is a great way for Members to say what they like and what they don't like, and the amendment process is on its way.

Thank you.

Madam President, I would just like to join my chairman and thank him again. This will be our third amendment of the night. I think it shows good progress for all of us.

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

Madam President, I come to the floor today to bring attention to the wildfires raging in our Western States, devastating community after community. I am also here to call on my colleagues to use the ongoing infrastructure discussions to take the swift, bold action necessary not just to confront the current crisis but to address the root cause and help save others from having to endure similar fires and tragedies in the future.

For nearly a month now, the Bootleg Fire, pictured here, has been the biggest of 91 fires burning across 12 States. It has been raging in Southern Oregon. It has burned about 415,000 acres. Translate that into square miles. That is 646 square miles. Translate that. That is an area about 20 miles wide and 30 miles long, half the size of the State of Rhode Island reduced to ash and smoke.

It is ranching country. There are not a lot of developed communities, but you still have a lot of homes getting burned, at least 161 homes; double that or roughly double that in outbuildings. Hundreds of vehicles have been destroyed. Thousands of families have been forced to evacuate.

This fire grew so large, it started generating its own weather system. Think about that. Usually, we watch the weather to see how the weather is going to influence the fire. Will rain and storms slow them down? Will humidity slow them down a little? Will dry, hot conditions help them grow or, worst of all, hot and dry with wind? Well, that is not the case with the Bootleg Fire, which created these massive clouds rising more than 30,000 feet into the air, and as the air surges up, then below it, it pulls in air from all around, which feeds oxygen to the inferno. Then, when that air cools and drops down, it pushes the bottom air out, spreading sparks like some living monster sucking in fire, intensifying oxygen, and then spewing out fire-spreading embers as the air cools and descends. It even generates its own lightning storms and spawns fire tornadoes, swirling vortexes of heat and flame.

Fires are an annual occurrence in Oregon, but decade after decade, they are getting a lot worse. There are two major reasons for this. Climate chaos is one, and poor forest management is the other. The forests, due to climate chaos, are drier and more prone to fire. Why are they drier? Because, well, carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels and methane gas leaking out of our natural gas systems are heating the

planet. So we have to pivot quickly and transition to renewable energy to stop it from getting worse.

But that is a discussion really for another day. Let's focus today on the second part of the challenge, which is forest management.

When fires erupt, we put them out as fast as we can, trying to prevent devastating fires like the Bootleg Fire. But the result of putting fires out fast over decade after decade after decade is that a lot of fuels build up on the floor of the forest.

In addition, we have a lot of forests that are second-growth forests, with trees planted very close together, and they all grow up at about the same height and their canopies are touching each other, which makes it very easy for the fire to spread from tree to tree to tree.

So you throw in the combination of longer, hotter, dryer summers and second-growth forests, and you have the perfect recipe for infernos like the big fires we have been seeing out West.

To reduce the risk of these devastating fires in the short-run, we have two basic tools. One is, we reduce the grass and undergrowth that fuels the fire--we sometimes call that mowing--and then we do prescribed burns, and the second is, we thin the forest.

Now, thinning the forest works better in some forests than in others. For ponderosa pine, it works really well. You spread out those pine trees. They would never have grown so close together. In the old days, when fires regularly swept through, they would kill the younger trees. The older trees would survive, widely spaced trees. They would burn up the fuel on the floor of the forest, and it worked well. Other forests--wetter forests, Douglas fir forests, other types of forests-- we are still trying to figure out exactly the best way to do forest management to reduce fire risk. The Bootleg Fire did show the effect of these types of efforts.

Over the last decades, ecologists have been working in the Sycan Marsh Preserve. They have been thinning out the forest, and they have been using prescribed fires. So they have been reducing the number of ponderosa pines to make it a less fire-prone forest.

As the Bootleg Fire came into the preserve, firefighters on the ground report the flames didn't jump as easily or readily from treetop to treetop; they went back to the ground. Going back to the ground, where there had been prescribed fire, they didn't burn as quickly. The fire moved a lot more slowly, and, in addition, it is easier for firefighters to get into the front of the fire.

So the thinning and burning of the Sycan Marsh Preserve are strong proof of why we need to use these tools, with science-informed adjustments resulting in the most effective strategies for different kinds of forests. But, again, those strategies may not work as well in other types of forests, and we need the best science. I have asked the head of the Forest Service to get us the best science so we can apply the best strategies to make different types of forests more fire- resilient.

But we need to be able to fund such efforts on a much more massive scale. Out in Oregon, we have 2.3 million acres that have been approved environmentally to be treated that aren't treated because we haven't had the funds. So this infrastructure bill is an opportunity to address so much of the work that needs to be done to make the forest more fire- resilient.

Well, I am pleased to say that the bill is going to have quite a bit in it, and I really am pleased with this. I have been pushing for this for years, that we need to spend not millions but billions of dollars in forest management. So $8 billion of wildfire-related funding is included, and that will go out through the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior; $2.4 billion for hazardous fuels reduction efforts; $2.1 billion for efforts to restore ecosystems on a broader scale in a fashion that will help reduce the vulnerability of the forests and other ecosystems to fire; $1 billion to help fund wildfire mitigation activities for at-risk communities; $650 million for rehabilitating areas burned by fires; and $600 million to give firefighters the pay raises they deserve and to increase the year-round workforce.

For years, I have been saying that one of the problems we have is a big attrition rate for firefighters. They go out for a season, and then the job is over, and they have to find other jobs. When they find those other jobs, well, they are not there to fight the fire the next season. Crew bosses are essential. You don't want to lose these experienced crew bosses.

So what is the answer? Well, part of the answer is, let's create year-round jobs with decent pay so that when you are not doing firefighting directly, you are doing fire prevention by working on forest management projects, and I think that idea is starting to gain some traction.

We also have funding in here to increase the collaborative forest landscape restoration projects, CFLR projects. A CFLR collaborative brings together the stakeholders from every perspective--from the environmental side, from the timber side, from all sides in between-- and they work out what they refer to as a prescription for a specific forest.

They go out, and in the beginning, when they don't really have a great trust relationship, they go out together, and they will go through the acreage and mark the trees. Then later on, as the trust grows, they write the prescription, and they know it will get implemented as they desire, and they can get a lot more work done. Do you know what? It means this thinning operation, this forest treatment operation, stays out of the courts. That is very important because if we are just treating forests through timber sales that are always hung up in disputes in the courts, we are not getting the job done.

This effort to increase the role of these collaboratives puts people in the room who have been traditional opponents. They are talking to each other, and they are working out plans together. They find out they actually sometimes like each other. So we need a lot more of these collaboratives.

We have in Oregon close to two dozen collaboratives. Only four are federally funded. So by increasing the funding, we enable more collaboratives to do a lot more work, and that would be a very good thing.

I spoke to the billions of dollars, but you know what--these couple billion dollars is not enough. I will be introducing legislation modeled on the Great American Outdoors Act to fund $30 billion in hazardous fuel treatments across our public lands over the next 5 years. That is closer to the scale we need to undertake to manage these forests.

It used to be you thought about, well, when do I want to go out and hike on the Pacific Crest Trail? Well, August has the least chance of rain. Now it is like whatever you do, think twice about going out in August because you will be dodging forest fires. It has happened to my wife Mary and me a number of times now. We planned to hike in the southern part of the Pacific Crest Trail, and twice we had to move to the northern part. We hiked in the northern part twice and had to dodge forest fires. One time, it was the fire that erupted and put the whole Columbia Gorge on fire. They had fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Just last year, we were hiking starting on the Warm Springs Reservation, and other hikers said: Hey, did you know that there is already a fire on the Warm Springs Reservation--right where we were. Well, the wind was blowing the other way. We hadn't smelled the smoke. You are out of cell phone range. You are up in the mountains. We hadn't heard that. But it reflects the fact that you have to worry now when hiking because the forest is so vulnerable. It is so dry. It so easily turns into a fire that can move very quickly, especially if there is a wind.

I have worked to get funding for the National Guard to be able to help fight fires over the last 4 years, including 1,500 members of the Oregon National Guard who have been trained. They have been out helping on this Bootleg Fire, so that is great. We have been working to enable FEMA to deliver disaster assistance more quickly to the communities impacted by catastrophic fires.

And we have sat to recognize that we need to tackle the issue of smoke. We didn't used to talk about smoke in Oregon, but it was smoke from burning our grass seed fields, because the way to get grass seed very pure was to burn fields every year. So we had this haze

throughout the summer. Well, it was very unhelpful to people's health to be breathing that smoke. So eventually we said: No, no, no, we are not going to burn the fields in that fashion.

But now we have the smoke from the forest fires, and--wouldn't you know it--when I was home last weekend, I expected to see a lot of smoke. There was a previous moment where I drove 600 miles during the Labor Day fires last year, and I never got out of the smoke for 600 miles. This time, I was in blue skies. And then I looked and saw that the weather patterns were driving the smoke from our fires into Montana, and it was going up in the jet stream. It was swirling around. There was a lot of smoke here in DC from the fires out West.

Well, so it is a national issue. In fact, I guess the index for air quality in New York City surged to 157, and anything above 100 is pretty dangerous. But that just shows the level of challenge that we are addressing.

So we need to tackle the smoke, and that is why I am introducing the Smoke-Ready Communities Act and the Wildfire Smoke Emergency Declaration Act. We need to recognize the threat not just from the fires but also the impact of the smoke on communities. So we need to have a way to respond and create a national emergency related to it. We need to prepare our communities to be ready for the smoke, to have some kind of air-filtered locations where people with asthma and other healthcare conditions can escape and get to clean air when the air quality drops so dramatically.

And we need to protect our farm workers. So I will be introducing the Farmworker Smoke and Heat Protection Act. We lost one of our farm workers due to heat when this heat dome struck Oregon a couple of weeks ago. There in Portland, where my house is, it was 116 degrees, plus a wind that was blowing that turned it into a hairdryer. You stepped outside, and you were just watching the plants just shrivel up.

And we were fortunate. We converted our gas furnace to a heat pump so that we could heat our house with renewable electricity rather than fossil fuels. The side benefit is we got air-conditioning. So we had air-conditioning for the first time. But so many houses in Oregon don't have it. Think about the impact of 116-degree heat in a place where it is rare to have a single day ever break 100 degrees during the summer.

So we need Federal standards related to smoke. We need to work with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to ensure that farm workers get the assistance they need to be able to work safely.

I can't underscore enough the importance of us coming together as a nation to tackle these western fires. At this moment, the fire season is just beginning in Oregon. It feels like we have been in it forever. It is just July. We have August, September, October. Well, we just turned the calendar onto August--August, September, October. We had fires starting early in the year, as early as March, burning late in the year. In California, it is a year-round proposition already, and Oregon isn't far behind.

My fervent hope is that with fires engulfing Oregon and California and Idaho Montana and others, it will be a wake-up call that we need in this Chamber to realize that we have a responsibility to act and to act quickly.

We have an opportunity to make an impact, but we have to have the policy knowledge and the political determination to take that quick action