Floor Statements

Mr. President, I am here on the floor of the Senate today to talk about our economy, talk about the new massive tax hikes that Democrats in the House of Representatives have now proposed to pay for the $3.5 trillion spending spree that is called ``reconciliation.'' I want to talk about why it is bad for American workers, why it is bad for our economy, bad for small businesses, and bad for American families.

They call it the Build Back Better plan, but it is really tearing down what helped us to be better and what helped to make us a more fair economy and an opportunity economy, by getting rid of the positive aspects of the 2017 tax reform and tax cut legislation and, instead, putting in place massive new tax increases.

By the way, these tax increases go even beyond eliminating the tax relief that was provided in 2017. In many cases, it provides additional tax increases even higher than we had before 2017.

We had a historically strong economy leading up to COVID-19, in large measure because of this 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which focused on expanding opportunities for businesses to grow; for families to take home more of their hard-earned cash; and for the United States, as a country, to be able to compete globally. It made us more competitive.

As a result, before COVID-19, we saw record growth in jobs and wages. In February of 2020, as we were getting into the COVID-19 pandemic, we had 19 straight months of job growth and wage growth of over 3 percent annualized. For 19 straight months, we had seen wages go up every single month. We had wages above inflation for the first time really in a decade and a half in my home State of Ohio.

This benefit in wages went mostly to lower-income workers and middle- income workers--exactly what you would want. This follows a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, that found that 70 percent of corporate tax cuts end up going into workers' wages--70 percent goes into workers' wages and benefits.

So it all made sense. As we made America more competitive, as we made our businesses more competitive--small businesses and large businesses--what we saw was wages going up and wages going up for everybody. But, again, the highest percentage increases were actually among those who were at the lower end of the income scale, or middle- income workers.

During that time period, just before COVID-19 hit, we also tied the 50-year low in unemployment. We had 3.5 percent unemployment. We had historic lows in unemployment, by the way, the lowest ever for certain groups in our economy, including Black workers and Hispanic workers.

We had, in 2019, a median income for U.S. households that had the largest inflation-adjusted gain going back to at least 1967. So you had to go back to the 1960s to find incomes rising that much.

And before the pandemic, we had the lowest poverty rate ever recorded. So for the 60 years we have been recording the poverty rate in this country, it was the lowest it had ever been, going into the pandemic. That is good news. We should be celebrating that.

And, again, what Democrats are now talking about doing is going back and changing that very law by increasing taxes in a massive way that created so much of that opportunity.

Those 2017 reforms also helped the U.S. compete globally by stopping what were called corporate inversions that were a recurring problem during the Obama administration and during the first year of the Trump administration. This is where U.S. companies actually said: You know what, our tax laws are so bad in this country, we are going to invert, meaning we are going to become foreign companies.

So we had companies in my State of Ohio and other States around the country actually say: We are not going to be American companies anymore because we can't compete with the Tax Code we have got here. We are going to become foreign companies.

A lot of us criticized that and strongly urged these companies not to do it, but the reality was our Tax Code was driving it; and that is one reason we changed the Tax Code in 2017, to stop this movement of jobs and investment overseas and to say we would rather have you invest here in America, and it worked.

Prior to that time, there was something called the lockout effect, where companies would keep their earnings overseas. They made money overseas, they kept it overseas, and they never brought it back to America. After this law, $1.6 trillion in overseas earnings came back home to America to invest here and create jobs here.

As a result of these changes, by the way, the largest U.S. companies increased their domestic research and development spending--R&D spending--by 25 percent, to $707 billion, and increased their capital expenditures by about 20 percent, to $1.4 trillion.

That is good. We like that. We want more money to come back into America, invest in America, and increase research and development to make us more efficient and more technological and, therefore, more competitive and more productive. And we like the fact that there were capital expenditures going up because the Tax Code worked to create that incentive.

All of this should make it clear that the opportunity economy we had in those couple of years before COVID, thanks to the 2017 tax reform changes, largely worked for everybody. Workers took home larger paychecks. The average American family saved at least $2,000 on their tax bill.

But this tax plan before us now would throw all that out. Again, it tears down what makes us better. The massive tax hike being pushed by President Biden and congressional Democrats would be the largest tax increase since 1968, and almost no aspect of the Tax Code is left untouched.

This include increases in estate taxes. Now, this is a problem because if you are a business and you want to pass along your business to the next generation, you got to be sure the estate tax isn't so high that the government, in effect, has a confiscatory rate where you have to sell the business in order to pay the taxes.

Capital gains taxes go up. This is taxes going up on investment. We want to encourage capital gains because that is assets you hold for a while. We want to encourage more investment in this country. That creates jobs and makes us more productive.

It increases taxes on retirement accounts. It increases income taxes. It increases small business taxes. So if you are a small business owner in America, watch out. It increases corporate tax. We talked about how we lowered corporate taxes to make them more competitive, and the result was they created not just more jobs but higher paying jobs, and they brought the money back from overseas. And the list keeps going from there.

American workers and families will find themselves losing more of their hard-earned cash from all sides. Each of these proposed increases will be harmful. But as one of the people involved in the 2017 international tax reforms, I am particularly concerned about the effects of undoing the reforms we put in place there to make us more competitive, and, specifically, the issue of raising the corporate tax from 21 percent to 26.5 percent, as proposed.

Some, including here in the Senate, would like to raise that tax even higher.

What is the problem with that?

Well, it is pretty simple. Once again, America would have the highest corporate tax rate among all the developed countries in the world. That is not a good thing because it makes us less competitive. And it is about our workers. Ultimately, they are the ones who bear the burden, as we said.

At 26.5 percent, we would have a national average on the corporate side of 31 percent when you take into account the fact that we have State and local corporate taxes here. Other countries, for the most part, don't do that. They have a Federal tax only. This means, again, we are going to have the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.

By the way, our rate could also be higher than China. So it is not just developed countries; it is also countries like China, who we are competing with, that would have lower rates than us. It creates an unequal playing field and making it really hard--in some cases

impossible--for U.S. workers to compete against rivals in places like China, but also the European Union and elsewhere.

It also makes costly and complicated changes for U.S. companies to operate outside the United States, punishing American workers who have jobs here in support of those international sales. Remember, we are only about 5 percent of the global economy, and we are about 20, 25 percent of the GDP. The economic mass of our country is something that, you know, we want to grow because that creates more jobs here.

If you are a company in America that sells overseas, that is something we should encourage because it creates jobs here in America.

I will give you an example. In my own hometown of Cincinnati, OH, the Proctor & Gamble Company is there. They are a global company. They sell all over the world. We like that because it creates a lot of jobs in Cincinnati. About 40 percent of the jobs in Cincinnati--I don't know if they have maybe 13-, 14-, 15,000 jobs now in our area--40 percent of those jobs are there only because of the international sales. They support the international side of the business. So this notion that we are going to raise our taxes so high that you can't compete internationally because other countries have such lower rates that their companies are going to beat you in the marketplace every time, that takes away jobs in America. We want to be a country that does business overseas, that sells stuff overseas because that creates jobs here.

Under the Democrats' plan, investment in the United States will slow, and companies will begin, once again, saying: I am going to just become a foreign company. I hate that. We want more American companies here. They tend to take their jobs and investment with them when they do that, by the way, which makes sense.

As I said, according to multiple studies, including the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office here in Washington, it is the workers who are going to bear the burden of higher taxes in the form of lower wages and benefits and lost jobs.

There was a 2017 study by another group called the Tax Foundation that found that 70 percent of corporate taxes are borne by workers. It is no surprise, then, that the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation here in the Congress found that two-thirds of the Democrats' corporate tax hike would fall on lower and middle-income taxpayers, which includes the small businesses that file taxes as individuals.

Meanwhile, because of the huge tax increases we are talking about, companies are going to raise their prices. American families are going to feel the pain in the form of higher prices at the store, on top of the surging inflation we are already seeing, thanks to the Biden administration's spending policies they have already put in place. That $1.9 trillion, almost $2 trillion in spending, so-called stimulus, that was one of the reasons, according to economists--right, left, and center--including Larry Summers, who is a prominent Democrat economist, that we see these huge inflation numbers, because when you throw that stimulus money out there, it increases inflation, which makes it more expensive to buy everything from gasoline to clothes and food. It makes the wage gains that we have been able to see recently much smaller than they would otherwise be because inflation is eating up those gains. So this is not what we want to do for our economy.

On the small business side, the vast majority of small businesses pay their taxes on their individual tax return. So about 80 or 90 percent of the businesses in Ohio or around the country don't pay their taxes as corporations. They pay their taxes as individuals. So think about the small businesses in your community. They are probably partnerships or what is called subchapter S companies, passthrough companies of some kind. They might be sole proprietors. But their tax bill comes due on their individual tax return. Unfortunately, the Democrats are increasing the taxes on those people too.

A lot of those people will be lumped into the expanded top bracket of the income tax code, and, therefore, they will be paying 39.6 percent income tax, plus a 3.8-percent surtax on small business income. So that takes them into a tax rate that is well above what they are paying now. They will be in the twenties now, and they will be in the forties under this new proposal.

You might say: Well, that is for people in the top bracket.

Well, those people in the top bracket are often small businesses. If you are a small business, all that revenue in the business is counted toward your revenue. You may take nothing out of the company. You may just take a dividend to just pay your taxes. That is what a lot of small companies do.

I grew up in a small company like that. You know, we would issue a dividend to pay the taxes, but our income included all the income of the company. And that is the way America works. That is the way our Tax Code works. Some have argued that it shouldn't work that way, but that is the way it works. So when you raise taxes on individuals, you are also raising taxes on a lot of these small businesses.

Adding to this, Democrats say they now want to eliminate the really important 20 percent deduction on qualified business income for small businesses.

So for all the passthrough companies in America, pay attention. You know, that 20 percent deduction that is out there, Democrats are now saying they want to eliminate that altogether.

That was designed to enable smaller businesses to be able to compete, to be able to have a level playing field between the corporations--the C corporations--that just tend to be the larger companies, and the passthrough companies.

Additionally, small businesses that earn over $5 million will be saddled with an additional 3-percent surcharge under the Democrat plan. This means that so many of these small businesses that drive our economy, that are successful, that are employing so many people are going to have a harder time hiring workers or paying them competitive wages. Again, they tend to be smaller businesses, but they are the backbone of our company.

About half of the workers in America work for businesses like this. So they may be 80 or 90 percent of the businesses, but because they are smaller, they employ about half the people. But this is where we get so much of our innovation. This is where we have so many opportunities for lower income workers to get a start. This is where the American dream is found.

Under current policy, the Congressional Budget Office suspects that as the economy continues to recover from the pandemic, tax revenues will grow--and I quote them here--to ``18.1 percent'' of the economy, ``GDP in 2022.'' So next year, 18.1 percent of the economy will be tax revenues, and then ``fluctuate between 17.5 percent and 18.1 percent'' of our economy ``through 2031.'' So they are saying taxes as a percent of the economy will be somewhere between 17.5 and 18.1 percent between now and 2031, over the next 10 years; next year, 18.1 percent.

This is interesting because Democrats are saying, well, taxes need to be higher. The historical average is 17.3 percent. So the estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says we are going to be between 17.5 and 18.1, and next year, already, at 18.1 percent; whereas, the historical average is 17.3 percent. Even this year, as we are still recovering from the pandemic and tax receipts are less, it is expected to be 17.2 percent, based on the Congressional Budget Office.

So you have to think about this. Why is there this great urge to raise taxes right now? Why tear down what worked? Why put America in a position where we are paying higher and higher taxes as a percent of our economy?

Contributing to this revenue growth, the Congressional Budget Office projects that corporate tax receipts are going to climb to $379 billion in 2023, or 1.5 percent of GDP. According to the Tax Foundation, this will be ``a record high in nominal terms''--so that $379 billion will be a record high in corporate tax receipts--``and nearly matching average corporate tax collections as a share of GDP'' prior to the 2017 tax reform. So, again, I just ask people to think about this.

They say: Well, we need to tax companies more. Remember, you are taxing workers, according to the analysis of the Tax Foundation and the Congressional Budget Office. But, also,

those receipts are going to be at record levels and very close to, as a percent of the economy, where they were before the 2017 tax reform.

What we should take away from these findings is that the economy is growing as we come out of this pandemic. We know this to be true. We have known it for months, really.

The Congressional Budget Office projected way back in January that without any additional government help--no new COVID-19 packages, not including the $1.9 trillion spending package that Congress passed in March--that the economy would fully recover by midyear. And they were right, even as much of that spending has not gone out yet from the $1.9 trillion.

Payroll tax revenue has risen by about 4 percent, suggesting that workers are taking home bigger paychecks than before.

So the economy is beginning a nice recovery. We need it to continue. The last thing you want to do is to slap a bunch of taxes on the economy right now and have the economy go down and have workers, in particular, bear the brunt of that.

My question is: Why would you want to throw out a tax code that has helped fuel this unprecedented economic recovery we saw prepandemic and brought in more money in the process?

In 2017, with this tax reform, we helped usher in an economy powered by workers and powered by small businesses and powered by more competitive larger businesses. It wasn't powered by big spending here in Washington, DC. The results worked. It was truly historic.

Moving ahead, let's stay the course instead of hiking taxes and putting a damper on American prosperity and American opportunity for everybody to get ahead. A massive tax increase won't make us build back better. A massive tax increase will tear down what makes us better.

I yield back my time.

Madam President, I am here today on the floor to remember the life of Navy Fleet Marine Force Hospital Corpsman Third Class Maxton Soviak. Max was a 22-year-old native of Berlin Heights, OH, a young patriot who died far too soon in service to all of us.

Max was one of 13 brave American service men and women who were tragically killed when an ISIS-K suicide bomber in Kabul on August 26 exploded a bomb that wounded dozens of others and killed many Afghans. He was there working to evacuate Americans and Afghan allies from a city that was suddenly overrun by the Taliban.

Max was a special guy. They say he was quick to make friends and quick to earn the respect of those he interacted with. As a student at Edison High School, Max was a member of the wrestling team that won the 2016 State championship and a football team that made it to the semifinals 2 years in a row. He was an athlete and a leader. He achieved the rank of Life Scout, the second highest rank a scout can reach. He was a lover of the outdoors, spending his free time doing rock climbing, skiing, scuba diving, and other extreme sports.

And he was one of those rare individuals who, at a young age, had that drive to defend his Nation as a member of the U.S. Armed Forces. He joined the Navy and was signed as a Fleet Marine Force hospital corpsman, serving side by side with the infantry marines of the Second Battalion, First Marine Regiment.

Affectionately known as a ``devil doc,'' a takeoff on the Marines' ``devil dog'' nickname, Max was a member of a select group of medical specialists trained to operate side by side with the men and women of the U.S. Marine Corps on the frontlines, just as he was doing in Kabul the day he died, helping evacuate Americans and our allies who were fleeing the tyranny of the Taliban.

In his far too short time with us, Max did his duty, and he did it with distinction and valor. He took care of his marines and, while in Kabul, cared for innocent Afghans who were fleeing the Taliban.

Kathleen, Max's sister, said it well: ``In Maxton's final days, he spent his time helping others stay alive, as he had developed a passion for saving the lives of others, so much so, that he was willing to risk his own life and made the ultimate sacrifice.'' So true.

Before the attack in Kabul, Max was able to FaceTime his mom, Rachel. As they said their good-byes, his mom told him to be safe.

Max replied:

Don't worry, mom, my guys got me. They won't let anything

happen to me.

That was the last time she spoke to him before Max and his fellow marines and soldiers gave their lives in service of keeping so many others--moms, dads, kids, and fellow servicemembers--safe. He didn't want anything to happen to us.

For his bravery and sacrifice, Max was awarded the Purple Heart and a Combat Action Ribbon. When he came home to Berlin Heights, OH, he was greeted with a hero's welcome that he richly deserved. Families lined the streets as his casket, draped in the American flag, was brought home to his family.

When I visited his hometown over the weekend to deliver an American flag flown over the U.S. Capitol in honor of his service, there were flags in every yard and posters and flowers; you could sense the love and support for Max and for his family from his grateful neighbors. Yesterday, hundreds came to the Edison High School football stadium, where Max had helped lead the Chargers to victory time and time again; they came to pay their last respects to an honorable American life taken too soon in service of all of us.

Max's sacrifice, along with that of the other marines and soldiers who died or were grievously wounded that day, reminds us of how blessed we are to have such courageous and selfless fellow citizens willing to stand guard for us. We must be grateful for the sacrifices our troops make every day to keep America safe. My thoughts and prayers are with Max's parents, Kip and Rachel Soviak, and his entire family, as well as those he knew and who loved him. May God comfort them in the days and weeks ahead.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the 100- year anniversary of the founding of State Auto Insurance Companies.

Founded with $30,000 in borrowed funds by Robert S. Pein in 1921, the State Automobile Mutual Insurance Association had three employees in a rented room at 257 East Broad Street in Columbus, OH.

Pein believed that the insurance industry at the time was ripe for improvement to customer service and increased affordability. The company's early mission statement was ``Prompt and Satisfactory Service in the Settlement of All Claims and operated by a golden rule of ``do unto others as you would have them do unto you.'' Those guiding principles remain to this day.

State Auto's geographic footprint expanded as the company entered new States and acquired or affiliated with companies throughout the country. Today, the company offers products in 33 States. State Auto has grown steadily and now is among the 40 largest property and casualty insurance companies in the United States.

Throughout its history, State Auto has been an innovator in the insurance industry. The company introduced the industry's first auto insurance payment plan and recently transformed into an entirely digital provider of auto, home, and business insurance.

This required a transformation not only of its technology but also of its products and culture. State Auto's culture is open and inclusive, with a belief that every voice is important. Feeling comfortable, even obligated, to speak up, challenge, and disagree is critical.

It is an impressive feat for a company to reach its 100th anniversary. State Auto has reached this milestone while being a great community partner in central Ohio.

I wish State Auto Insurance Companies a future of continued success.

Mr. President, let me start by commending my colleague from South Dakota, Senator Thune, for his explanation of what is before us next after the vote that we are about to take, and that will be getting into the budget resolution leading to a reconciliation package. And he is absolutely right, these taxes and this high-level spending is not something that our country can sustain, and I appreciate his outlining the very specific impacts it would have on the people we represent.

But this morning, I am also here to talk about how the Senate will do something very good today prior to getting into the budget resolution. The Senate is about to make history.

And we have heard over the years--in fact, over the decades--about the need for us to fix our infrastructure. Every President in modern times has talked about it--President Bush, President Obama, President Trump, President Biden. We have talked about it a lot here. There is a joke around town that infrastructure week has come and gone so many times that people are a little cynical when we talk about it.

Well, today is infrastructure day. We are actually going to see what we have been talking about, which is the Senate, on a bipartisan basis, saying: You know what, it is time to fix our roads and bridges. We can do so in a responsible way, not by raising taxes on the American people, but by making important investments in long-term capital assets that will last for years.

So it is an investment in fixing up our roads, our bridges, our water systems, our railroads, our ports, our electrical grids, our broadband network, and expanding that, and more.

We have had a number of procedural votes to get us to this point; and based on those procedural votes, I think it is clear that we will have the votes today, on a bipartisan basis, to do this important work. The Senate will have done its job, and we will have achieved a real lasting bipartisan victory for the people we represent.

The bill, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, will improve the lives of all Americans by making this long-overdue investment of $548 billion over the next 5 years in new spending to repair, upgrade, and replace the crumbling infrastructure all of our constituents rely on every day.

That doesn't mean the money is going to be spent, by the way, over the next 5 years. It is authorized for that period, but we spend over the next 5, 10, 15, maybe 20 years on projects all over the country.

We know we need this investment. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our American infrastructure a grade of C-minus. They also project that our economy stands to lose more than $10 trillion in economic growth in GDP by 2039, should we fail to invest in repairs.

There is an international organization that looks at all the countries in the world, who says who has got the best infrastructure in the world and, by the way, we are number 13 or 14 on that list now. So many countries are ahead of us.

China spends about four times more than we do on infrastructure as a percent of their GDP. Why? Because they know that will make their economy more efficient and they want to beat us in the economic fight that we have globally.

We want to win. That is one reason this is so important.

The American people, by the way, understand the need for this investment. In two of the more recent polls from CNBC and CBS News, 87 percent of the American people back bipartisan efforts to fix our roads, our bridges, and our water systems.

We know that this targeted, long-term investment in core infrastructure is good for the economy. Building out hard assets make us more competitive in the global economy and will create hundreds of thousands of good jobs for builders, plumbers, electrical engineers, coders, and so many other fields.

Economists, including Douglas Holtz-Eakin of the American Action Forum and Michael Strain of the conservative American Enterprise Institute, have pointed out that this type of spending on long-term spending on hard assets does not further inflation but, in fact, is counterinflationary.

To me, not only does this investment make sense, but, importantly, what we are doing here today also demonstrates to the American people that we can get our act together on a bipartisan basis and get something done. We can do big things on a bipartisan basis if we put our minds to it.

Again, after years, even decades of talking about the need to do this, we are finally getting it done.

Is it exactly the bill I would have drafted?

No. It is not exactly the bill any Senator in this Chamber would have drafted because it represents a true bipartisan effort. Each side made concessions to find that common ground.

I want to take this opportunity to briefly thank my colleagues who have gotten us to this point. We spent a lot of long nights and long days working to write this legislation, and there has been a group of members who have been particularly committed to it.

One is Shelley Moore Capito, who is on the floor right now. The work she did with President Biden early on laid the foundation for this. She is also the ranking member of the EPW Committee that produced some of the legislation that we incorporated on the surface transportation front.

But there are so many others. And I would like to start with my counterpart, the lead negotiator on the other side of the aisle, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The two of us began meeting more than 4 months ago to have discussions that would then lay the foundation for our path forward. And it was in the context of President Biden having proposed a huge package, $2.65 trillion--so-called infrastructure package--and we believed we could pull out real infrastructure from there, take the high taxes out, and get something done for the American people. I

commend her for her leadership, for her courage, and for her ability to keep us on track during some tough times during this process.

From there, it truly became a group effort, particularly among five Republicans and five Democrats, who spent a lot of long days and nights negotiating the framework of this legislation. Some of us had worked together before at the end of the year in putting together the so- called 908 framework for the COVID-19 bill that passed late last year, that was also bipartisan.

To my friends and colleagues, Senator Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Bill Cassidy, Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Warner, and John Tester, thank you for your efforts these past few months.

I also want to give special thanks to our colleague, Kevin Cramer, who joined our group late but was instrumental in finalizing this agreement.

I want to thank the White House and especially Steve Ricchetti and Brian Deese and Louisa Terrell for their support of this effort and their commitment to trying to work in a bipartisan way to get it done.

I also want to thank Senator Tom Carper, who just joined us in the room. Along with Senator Capito, he was the EPW chair. He was the ranking member that laid much of the foundation for this legislation, particularly with regards to our roads and our bridges.

I want to thank my other colleagues in the so-called G-22, who helped in the 22 different working groups that were formed to help put this legislation together: Richard Burr, Lindsey Graham, Mike Rounds, Thom Tillis, Todd Young, Jerry Moran, Chris Coons, Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper, Mark Kelly, Angus King, Jacky Rosen--11 Democrats and 11 Republicans.

And then to my colleagues who voted with us repeatedly to advance this bill toward final passage and helped us to get to this point by giving us good input that was incorporated in the legislation--Mike Crapo, Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, John Hoeven, Jim Risch, Deb Fischer, Roger Wicker, John Cornyn, Dan Sullivan--thank you for your input, your encouragement, and your support.

I want to give a particular thank you to my friend and colleague our Republican leader, Senator Mitch McConnell. I want to thank him for his encouragement and his support throughout this process, for sticking his neck out. I know he is probably the only person who is as happy as I am in this Chamber to see us move forward with this legislation that will help us find a long-term solution to a major bridge, the Brent Spence Bridge that links our home State of Ohio and Kentucky.

I want to thank the committee staffs, who did so much to lay the groundwork for this legislation. About 73 percent of the pages in this final 2,700-page legislation are legislation that either passed the Senate or cleared committees in the Senate in this Congress, and that is a tribute to the quiet bipartisanship that goes on at the committee level every day that allows us to get these things done with the requisite knowledge and expertise.

I also want to thank all of the nonpartisan staff here in the U.S. Senate for their work as well. I know that over the past few weeks, especially, the legislative counsel has worked closely with my staff and the staffs of other offices to help formalize this proposal into final text before us today. They worked weekends. They worked late nights.

The same with the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office, they have worked around the clock to get us to this point.

And the staff here on the floor, they have been here just as early as we have and stayed just as late as any of us, in fact, later, to ensure that this could be possible. I thank them.

I also want to thank the more than 100 industry associations, unions, and trade groups that came forward to endorse this Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. That includes business groups, like the chamber of commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the National Association of Manufacturers. It also includes labor groups, like the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the Laborers International Union of North America.

It also includes supporters from all levels of government, including the National League of Cities; the U.S. Conference of Mayors, who endorsed it; the National Governors Association.

It includes more than 30 agricultural groups, including the American Farm Bureau.

These organizations, and so many others like them, have been critical to encouraging Members of the Senate to do the right thing.

And, finally, I want to, again, thank my staff and the staffs of all the Members who worked for months to get this bill to the finish line. We would not be here without them. There is no question about that.

On a personal staff level, I want to thank Kevin Smith, Sarah Peery, Avery Pierson, Anne Gordon, Mike Sinacore, Lydia Denis, Adeline Ewing, Connor Rabb, Connor Hinson, Kalyn Swihart, Matt Lloyd, and our entire comms team: Angie Youngen and Nate Dehmlow, Stephanie Mertz, and Chris Mitchell.

On my Homeland and Security Governmental Affairs staff, I want to thank Pam Thiessen, Amanda Neely, Sam Mulopulos, Cara Mumford, Trey Hicks, Liam McKenna, Jeff Post, and Emily Benavides.

Again, we wouldn't be standing here and about to have this vote without them working their hearts out, staying late, getting in early, and ensuring that every single part of this bill has been looked over carefully to make sure we got it right.

Everyone involved in this effort can be proud of what this body is achieving today. The Senate is doing its job. It is doing its job by helping the American people we represent through a historic investment in our Nation's infrastructure that will serve the American people for decades to come.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciated the comments from my colleague from Connecticut. And he talked about both the bipartisan infrastructure bill that is on the floor of the Senate and will be voted on tomorrow morning, and he also talked about the budget proposal that is also going to be considered by the Senate this week.

I want to start by just being sure that those two are distinguished because there is a big contrast between them. The bipartisan infrastructure package, I believe, is a sensible approach to restoring our Nation's infrastructure, as we will talk about in a moment. And that legislation, again, is meant to be voted on tomorrow morning.

The other proposal is the $3.5 trillion, or more, budget resolution that will be partisan--not bipartisan--that is being proposed by the Democrats, which is a tax-and-spending extravaganza.

And my concern is, not only does it spend a lot of money we don't have--and not on long-term assets, like infrastructure, but on social programs--but, also, it raises taxes substantially. In fact, it raises taxes more than taxes were cut back in 2017, which created such a strong economy going into the pandemic. And I really do worry about what is going to happen to our country should we do that.

The bipartisan infrastructure package has no tax increases. The $3.5 trillion budget resolution has these huge new taxes. I will tell you, most economists believe that the tax reform and tax cuts back in 2017 led to not just an incredibly strong economy, but an inclusive economy.

Going into the pandemic, February of 2020, we not only had historically low levels of unemployment for certain groups in our economy--Blacks, Hispanics, and others--we had a 50-year low on unemployment overall. We had the lowest poverty rate ever recorded in the United States of America. We started recording it back in the fifties

We also had wages that were going up consistently, more than 3 percent annually for 19 straight months going into the pandemic. That was fantastic.

In my home State of Ohio, we had seen flat wages or even declining wages when you take inflation into account for years, probably a decade and a half. So things were working. And even coming out of this pandemic, most economists had thought that, Wow, we have a pretty darned resilient and resurgent economy here.

And you see the economic growth numbers. Last month and this past quarter--I mean, the economy is doing just what we had hoped it would do coming out of the pandemic. To raise taxes now and to get rid of these tax cuts and tax reforms--importantly, tax reforms as well that created this strong opportunity economy--is a huge mistake.

So I would just draw a very distinct contrast between what my colleague and friend from Connecticut was talking about because he kind of mixed the two--one is infrastructure that is bipartisan, no taxes; the other is a different kind of spending--social spending--that we cannot afford and on top of the huge new tax increases.

So I hope that we will choose to vote tomorrow on the infrastructure package in a bipartisan way because it is landmark and needed legislation in fixing our Nation's roads, bridges, railroads, our ports, our waterways, our electrical grid, our broadband network, and more.

And I am proud of the work the Senate has done on that. It will be a lasting bipartisan achievement to help the people we represent. It is going to improve the lives of all Americans. It is long-term spending to repair and replace and build assets that will last for decades.

In doing so, it makes life better for people. It improves the life of the mom or dad who commutes to work and gets stuck in rush hour every day and would much rather be spending that time with their family. It improves the lives of people who are tired of those potholes. We all want to fix those potholes. We all hate them.

One quick story there. When I am asked how I got into public service, I often relay a story that when I was 7 or 8 years old, I remember driving with my mom on a rough road and telling her: Someday, Mom, I want to fix those potholes.

And she loved to tell that story.

That was my first exposure to what it could be like in public service, being able to fix potholes. Unfortunately, I then went on to public service at the Federal level in the House and the Senate and two Bush White Houses, and I never got to fix any potholes.

Maybe this legislation is taking it full circle because it will be fixing potholes, and it will make driving more safe.

There is a story I want to relate. Recently, in Cincinnati, OH, a guy named Howard Krueger was driving along I-75 South, and a big piece of concrete fell down from a bridge called the Western Hills Viaduct, which is in terrible shape. It is one of our crumbling infrastructure projects we have to fix. A big piece of concrete hit his windshield. Thank God it didn't come through his windshield or kill him, but it shattered part of his windshield. He actually pulled off the road to go try to find the concrete, to get it off the road for someone else, and to talk to the work crew that he assumed had dropped it. He went up and looked up, and there was no work crew; it was just concrete falling from the bridge.

Infrastructure--it matters to people. It is about safety. That truckdriver, who leaves his family to go on a long haul, he wants to have a road and bridge that is safe.

We recently had another accident in Ohio. It was on the Brent Spence Bridge; two trucks colliding. There is no shoulder left on that bridge because it is carrying twice the number of vehicles it was meant to carry--twice. It is functionally obsolete, and yet we have talked about it for 20 years and nothing has happened. After 20 years of talking about it, it is time to get something done.

Here in this town, we have talked about infrastructure being improved for a long, long, long time--longer than 20 years. In fact, every President in modern times has proposed a big infrastructure package, and yet we never seem to get it done.

Donald Trump actually proposed a $1.5 trillion infrastructure package. This one we are talking about today is $548 billion. He is a developer. He understands the need for infrastructure, to make investments in hard assets, because it comes back to help the economy.

So whether you are that truckdriver, or whether you are that mom or dad, or whether you are somebody who lives in a rural and underserved area of our country because you don't have access to broadband and you can finally now get it for your schoolwork or your work-work or for your healthcare, this is going to make a difference.

It improves our overcapacity ports. Right now, at our seaports, ships are backing up. If you are trying to get a product and you are a consumer and you are wondering why you are not getting it, that might be the reason.

And guess what. It also invests in our overwhelmed southern border land ports, with $3.85 billion to GSA and Customs and Border Protection. So for those of you concerned about the southern border and what is happening there, this infrastructure bill does help. It helps with our land ports and our seaports and, therefore, helps Customs and Border Protection.

We also have more for water infrastructure in this legislation--clean drinking water. Lead pipes is a big issue in my home State of Ohio, as it is in other States. That is dealt with here--remediation of the lead pipe danger and risks.

There is a lot in here that helps people, helps make their lives better.

Very importantly for me, it also makes our economy more efficient by fixing that bridge, by fixing that port. When you make the economy more efficient, the economy becomes more productive. When the economy is more productive, you have higher GDP. When you have higher GDP, you have more taxes coming into the economy than you would have had otherwise. That is what happens with infrastructure spending, if it is done right.

It has been made clear in poll after poll this is something that actually brings our country together. According to a CNBC poll, 87 percent of Americans think it is important that we invest in improving our crumbling roads and bridges. A month or so later, a CBS poll found 87 percent of Americans support more Federal spending on repairing roads and bridges. And an Associated Press poll found 8 in 10 Americans--80 percent--favored plans to increase funding for roads, bridges, and ports and for pipes that supply drinking water.

So, of course, it is popular because it affects their lives, and they know it.

And we need the investment right now. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our infrastructure a C-minus and projects our economy stands to lose more than $10 trillion in GDP by 2039 should we fail to invest in repairs. We have fallen to 13th in the world in a report card on infrastructure while China continues to spend much more than we do as a percent of their GDP on infrastructure. Why? They want to have a more efficient economy. We want to be able to compete and win the global competition. We, too, should be sure infrastructure is up to speed.

The need for fixing and repairing our Nation's infrastructure is clear. It is no surprise, again, that these Presidents, through the modern times, including Donald Trump, have suggested it. Frankly, I believe Donald Trump's advocacy in infrastructure helped changed the way many in the Republican Party view these kinds of investments. This investment in repairing and upgrading our infrastructure will also have a real and lasting impact on our economy long term.

There is a lot of discussion about infrastructure right now. Again, making the economy more efficient, more productive, growing the economy, that is what economists would call, by investing in hard assets and jobs, the supply side. These are supply-side investments. This is why economists have said, including Michael Strain of the Conservative American Enterprise Institute, this will be counterinflationary. That is important to note too. By the way, this money is not going to be spent next year. It is not going to be spent hardly at all the next year. It is going to be spent over 5, 10, 15 years on these long-term projects.

There is one recent study by Association of Equipment Manufacturers finding that this legislation will create about half a million new jobs by 2024. So it is also about new jobs in industries ranging from construction, plumbing, electrical engineering to software development.

Importantly, it accomplishes these goals while avoiding the tax hikes that will kill our economy, destroy jobs, and undermine our competitiveness around the world.

That is why I started talking about the $3.5 trillion package that is wrongheaded, in my view, in part because of the spending, but in part because of what it would do to our economy at a time when we are trying to get back on our feet postpandemic.

We are going to provide billions in funding for some of our most pressing hard infrastructure needs, like $110 billion in new spending over the next 5 years to construct, rebuild, and maintain our roads and highways.

I heard one of my colleagues say only 24 percent of this money goes into roads and bridges and ports. That is just not true. The number actually is about 42 percent into roads and bridges alone. This is going to make a big difference in my home State of Ohio. We have 123,000 miles of roads. Traffic congestion costs motorists an estimated $4.7 billion each year in lost time and wasted fuel, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. The same group, the Society of Civil Engineers, says there are currently more than 46,000 bridges in our country that are considered structurally deficient and in ``poor condition.'' Yet 178 million trips are taken on these deficient bridges every single day.

Ohio is No. 2 in the Nation in the number of bridges. We have a lot of them, but nearly half of those are not in good condition. That is why I am pleased this legislation does provide for new funding for our bridges. It will work competitive grants to improve the bridges that would help with all of our bridges but particularly a huge problem in Ohio, which is the Brent Spence Bridge--this dangerous bridge I talked about where there are no shoulders anymore. It is bearing twice the number of vehicles per day as it was constructed to do. It was considered structurally obsolete for years, for two decades. It is time to fix it

We also do something here that is very important to stretch that Federal dollar and to take out some of the inefficiency in the way we construct our roads and our bridges and other infrastructure. We make needed reforms to the Federal permitting process and give project sponsors more certainty to help them create more jobs and develop our Nation's infrastructure with less costs. This was a priority of the Trump administration that was never codified into law.

But in this bill, we actually expand and improve what is called FAST- 41, which was in the last highway bill--not the one currently but before. But it has a sunset on it, and these permitting reforms have worked. They lowered the amount of time and saved billions of dollars for key permitting projects. We make this a permanent part of our law.

Also, the surface transportation bill itself has additional permitting reform in it. This, frankly, is better permitting reform than we have been able to get for years, even when we had a Republican President, Republican Congress. I am very pleased that that is part of this legislation, and it should be. All Americans should support that.

Taking the average from 2 years--from currently 6, 7, 8 years down to 2 years for a project, why doesn't that make sense? Everybody should be for that.

We also made necessary investments in the future of our economy on the digital side by increasing access to broadband services. In Ohio, that is really important. We have a bunch of counties and about 18 of them are unserved and we have probably another 20 that are underserved.

In Appalachian Ohio, we need internet. We need it fast enough so people can start a business, so kids can use it for school, so veterans can use it to get their healthcare and not have to drive into the big city.

These are only a few highlights. And I could go on, but the bottom line is we are dedicating this $548 billion in infrastructure spending over the next 5 years toward a wide range of projects that will collectively have a positive impact on our economy and on the American people.

This has been a different sort of process, I acknowledge that. And, frankly, a lot of this, I think, should have been done directly through committees, particularly with regard to transit, with regard to broadband. In other areas, we simply picked up the work of the committee--surface transportation, as an example, much of the work by the Commerce Committee, the EPW Committee, and others, the ENR Committee, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Many of us worked hard to ensure that this was a truly bipartisan project but also that we got the best input from all the experts here in the Congress. I would have drafted this bill a little differently if it had been just me. I am sure everybody feels that way about it. It was a true bipartisan project and, therefore, there were concessions made on both sides.

But I am proud of the broad support it has received in this Chamber. I am proud of the broad support it has received from the outside. More than 100 industry associations, unions, and trade groups have already come forward to endorse the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Among them

are the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers, the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council, the American Farm Bureau, the Conference of Mayors, and National Governors Association, on and on and on. They comprise advocates for businesses of all sizes, workers, farmers, Governors, mayors, engineers, conservationists, truckers.

I think it is safe to say we have an impressive coalition that wants this legislation passed for all the right reasons. They want to see this investment in our country. They know it is the right thing to do for our economy, for our future. I thank all of the stakeholders who have endorsed this legislation for their support. Because of all these combined efforts, tomorrow, I believe, we will be getting it right for the American people, for our economy, and for the future of our great country.

I look forward to seeing this legislation pass the Senate tomorrow, and I urge the House to pass it soon so that it can move to President Biden's desk for his signature.

I yield the floor.

I just want to say briefly to my colleague from Wyoming and my colleague from Pennsylvania, and also to our other colleagues who worked with us over the past week or so to come up with a good approach to this issue that is vexing, that we need to figure out how to get this into the legislation. So I support the amendment, of course.

I think there is a general consensus that information reporting is a good thing, and that particularly for our constituents, who are everyday holders of digital currency, they want to have that reporting in order to be able to pay their taxes properly.

The vast majority of them are good, hard-working taxpayers who just want to be able to get what their basis is or what their information is from a broker, just as they would for a stock or a bond.

So what we have done here through this language is ensure that, while doing that, we are not putting a sweeping provision in place that includes people who shouldn't be included.

As an example--and my colleague from Pennsylvania said it very, very well--we are not trying to bring in people who are involved in validating distributed ledger transactions through proof of work, commonly known as miners.

We are also not trying to bring in ``proof of stake'' validation or stakers, and we are also ensuring that we are not bringing in people who are involved with hardware and software selling for digital wallets. They wouldn't be subject to these rules as well. And I think that was very important to make that clear. I think the language needed clarification.

So I am pleased with the amendment. I would hope that we would be able to get it passed because I think it is very important to have it as part of this legislation, and I want to thank, again, my colleagues, from Pennsylvania, from Wyoming, as well as Senators Warner, Sinema, Ossoff, Wyden, and others who have worked with us in this process, and thank you for bringing this amendment to the floor today.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter into a colloquy with Senator Warner of Virginia.

Mr. President, I rise today to clarify the provisions in the underlying bill text we are working on this evening.

As we know, cryptocurrency is a digital asset that more and more people are investing in, and we should want that to continue in a healthy and sustainable way. I would like to discuss the provisions in the bill that address information reporting requirements for digital asset brokers.

Under IRS rules, sales or exchanges of assets, like digital assets, give rise to gain or loss in the same manner as sales of securities. Taxpayers who sell stocks or other securities through a broker receive an information return, IRS form 1099-B, that provides information on the gross proceeds and the basis of those sales. Those information returns are prepared by their brokers or custodians or other agents involved in the effecting of the sales.

Today, there is lack of clarity on how these reporting rules apply to digital asset transactions. The underlying bill has two simple provisions to address that.

The cryptocurrency provision in the bill makes it clear as to who counts as a broker within this market. Under the bill, a broker is defined as ``any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person.'' For tax purposes, this means a sale on behalf of someone else.

The concern has been expressed that some in the cryptocurrency industry who are not brokers would be caught up in this definition. The Treasury Department, the nonpartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, and others believe that the current language is clear enough that the reporting requirements only cover brokers. The purpose of this discussion is to further clarify that is the actual intent of the underlying bill. I think that is important.

That is the goal we had in our discussions over a compromise amendment, but, unfortunately, we have been unable to consider and adopt that amendment thus far in this debate.

Some of us were on this floor today, including Senator Lummis, Senator Warner, Senator Toomey, myself to try to get that amendment passed, and we were not able to do so.

The purpose of this provision is not to impose new reporting requirements on people who do not meet the definition of brokers. For example, if you are someone who is solely involved with validating distributed ledger transactions through proof of work--commonly known as miners--if you are solely mining, you will not be considered a broker. The same would be true for proof of stake validation and other validation methods now or in the future associated with other consensus mechanisms that are developed and might come into the market as the technology evolves. If you are solely staking your digital assets for the purpose of validating distributed ledger transactions, you will not be considered a broker.

We want to be sure that miners and stakers and others who play a key role in validating transactions now or in the future, or hardware and software sellers for digital wallets, will not be subject to the rules or those activities.

Again, you will need to provide the information reporting only if you are functioning as a broker.

It is my understanding that that is true, and I ask my fellow Finance Committee member and colleague from the bipartisan working group, Senator Warner, if this is his understanding as well.

Mr. President, first of all, I appreciate the clarification by my colleague from Virginia, and, Senator Warner, you are correct in your understanding.

I would also ask Senator Warner to clarify the intent of the proposal with respect to the application of the bill to persons solely engaged in the business of validating distributed ledger transactions through proof of work, often called miners.

Am I correct that under our provisions it is our understanding that Treasury and the IRS will not treat these miners as brokers?

Mr. President, I would ask Senator Warner to clarify the intent of the Senate in this legislation with respect to persons solely engaged in the business of selling hardware or software that allows people to access their private keys.

Am I correct that these persons would not be treated as brokers under the underlying legislation?

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from Virginia for those comments.

Our provisions are designed to bring more clarity and legitimacy to the cryptocurrency industry by more closely aligning the reporting requirements with those of more traditional financial services, and we believe it does just that, and in doing so, will help provide more certainty for people looking to invest in digital assets.

I thank my colleague Senator Warner for coming to the floor to discuss this important provision.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I appreciate my colleague from Delaware. He is the chair of the committee that produced a lot of the work that went into this package. Roads, bridges, the highway bill, and the surface transportation bill comes through his committee. He and Senator Capito from West Virginia worked together, on a bipartisan basis. And my recollection is the underlying bill that we pick up in this broader bill that has to do with roads and bridges and so on passed with a vote of 22 to nothing out of this committee, and that is because they did good work in finding out where there was common ground. And, frankly, you know, the American people deserve to have good roads and bridges and infrastructure to drive on and travel on. So it is a big part of this bill, and I thank him for his work on that.

We have now voted twice to proceed to this very important legislation, to finally, after a lot of years of talking about it, making major improvements to our Nation's roads and bridges and railroads and ports and waterways and water infrastructure, electrical grids, our broadband networks, and more. It is overdue.

And I am delighted to say that twice now we have voted to proceed to final passage. One was a vote of 66 to 28, and the other was a vote of 67 to 27. And, frankly, there were a couple of people on our side of the aisle who were not able to come vote, one of whom has COVID and the other, in both cases, somebody had travel difficulties. So we would have had two more votes on our side that were positive votes as well.

So this is a supermajority, and it is because the legislation makes sense for the States represented here in this Chamber and for the American people. It will improve the lives of all Americans. It will make life better. So the mom who is stuck commuting, who would rather be spending time with her family every day, you know, is going to have the ability, through better transportation infrastructure, to have fewer minutes and hours every day in gridlock.

The truck driver who leaves the home, you know, and says goodbye to his family and goes on a long haul and thinks, ``You know, am I going to be safe?'' it will be safer, thanks to this legislation.

We had two trucks collide on a bridge in Ohio recently. It is not safe. There is no shoulder on the bridge anymore because the traffic is bearing twice the number of vehicles that it was designed for.

The mom who has been taking her daughter to the public library parking lot 30, 40 miles from their home to get internet access in order for her daughter to do her homework will now be able to have internet and be able to have broadband in her community right up to her home because of this historic investment in ensuring that the digital infrastructure is put in place. So you don't have this divide.

We have got counties in Ohio that just don't have internet, period, and others have very slow internet. We have got about 30 counties that are a part of Appalachia. We have got about 18 of those counties that are unserved and another large group that are underserved.

And that digital divide makes a huge difference because, again, those kids are going to fall behind, certainly during the pandemic, when they had to be accessing the internet to just stay up with school. But even postpandemic, you know, we want to be sure that that learning opportunity is there.

And then in terms of telehealth, you know, there are veterans in southeast Ohio who aren't able to make the drive to the VA clinic in Columbus or elsewhere, but they can take advantage of telehealth; and they have, to the extent they have access to it during the pandemic, and it has been actually quite helpful. But if they don't have access to the internet and high enough speed internet, they can't get the healthcare at home that they need for appointments.

It is also important for business. If you are a small business owner in these parts of the country that don't have internet access, it is really tough to get off the ground. And these are the very areas of the country where we want to have more economic development, so that is in this legislation as well.

And in terms of water infrastructure, Ohio has got a lot of aging water infrastructure. I saw someone wrote a story recently, saying that only about a quarter of this bill goes into hard assets. That is just not accurate. In fact, a quarter of it goes to roads and bridges and even more, I guess. But water infrastructure is a hard asset.

Ask the communities in Ohio that have been told by the EPA, in Republican and Democrat administrations: You got to fix your sewer system; you got to fix your drinking water system; you can't have combined sewer overflow.

And they just can't afford it, particularly in these mid-size cities. They are really excited about water infrastructure

Our ports, that is hard infrastructure too. So ships are lined up at some ports right now, including out West. And so if you are a consumer, you are trying to buy something and you are wondering why you can't get it, including, you know, maybe an electronic device you want, or maybe it is a part to an automobile that you want, a lot of it is it is stuck. Stuff is stuck right now because our ports are not efficient enough and capable enough to handle what they should be able to do.

Our land ports, if you are concerned about the southern border and the ability to screen trucks and cars coming in to try to keep some of this deadly fentanyl and other drugs from coming over our southern border, you should want this legislation because it is going to provide more infrastructure for our ports.

So there is a lot in here that will make people's lives better, and that is obviously one reason that this is so popular, because people do expect it here in America. This great economy we have, we should be able to also lead

the road in infrastructure, and we don't. There is a study out saying, in fact, we are not even in the top 10 in terms of infrastructure around the world.

It also will make our infrastructure more resilient to natural disasters and other crises. It will make our Nation safer and more secure. It will grow our economy in a million small but meaningful ways. What the economists say when they look at this legislation--and by the way, again, every President in modern times has proposed this big infrastructure package for this reason. They say it will make your economy more efficient.

So we have fallen behind on infrastructure, and if we can catch up, the economy is more efficient; therefore, we are more productive; therefore, the economy grows; therefore, more tax revenue comes in from infrastructure. So it is a good long-term investment. It is not money that is going to be spent next year. Think of the projects in your community that might be helped. That project may last for 10, 15 years, even before it is finally completed.

So this money goes out over time for hard infrastructure. That is one reason it doesn't affect inflation in a negative way. In fact, it is counterinflationary because it invests in hard assets and in jobs over time. If you are in business, think about your capital expenditures. Your capex budget is going to be different than your day-to-day spending than you probably thought of from your capex.

It is going to also take some important steps to repair, replace, and build assets that will last for decades. Again, that makes life better for people. It makes the economy more efficient. It also is something that, as economists look at it, they believe will be counterinflationary.

It has been made clear in poll after poll this is something that brings this country together. So, unbelievably, there is a poll by CNBC showing 87 percent of the American people think it is important that we, here in Congress, invest in improving our roads and our bridges.

Within a couple of months, another poll by CBS found exactly the same number, that 87 percent of the American people support more Federal spending on repairing roads and bridges.

An Associated Press poll found that 8 in 10 Americans favor plans to increase funding for roads, bridges, and ports, and for pipes that supply drinking water. That is what the bill does.

And we need the investment. Let's be honest. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our infrastructure in America a grade of C-minus. That is not very high. And they project our economy stands to lose more than $10 trillion in GDP--$10 trillion in our economy--by 2039, if we fail to invest in these repairs. We have fallen to 13th in the world in infrastructure while key foreign competitors, like China, spend now four times more on infrastructure than we do.

China is spending four times more as a percent of their economy on infrastructure than we do. Why? Because they want their economy to be more efficient. They want to compete with us and win. We want to compete with them and have American workers win.

Thirteenth in the world is based on a study that is done periodically. To ensure that we are comparing apples to apples, they look at all kinds of things. America has a very strong, competitive economy, generally, but infrastructure is a weakness for us.

So this is the World Economic Forum. They put this study out periodically. I follow it. I look at it because it has a lot of different things in it--not just infrastructure--as to how our economy is working.

How are we doing on permitting?

Not so good. Guess what. We have permitting reform in this package, and the permitting reform will allow the Federal dollar to go further.

So think about it: If it takes 6, 8, 10 years to permit a project, the enormous cost involved in that. But if you can do it in 2 years, which is the goal of our permitting reform, that makes a huge difference. And a lot of it is because you have a lot of different Federal Agencies that are requiring permits. If you have an energy project, whether it is a fossil fuel project or whether it is a renewable energy project, you can have as many as 30--I am told, in 1 case, 35 different permits. By the time you finish the first 30, you have to go back to the first one again to get fit in. It is crazy.

We had a project in Ohio actually shut down because they just couldn't handle the permitting. It was actually a hydropower along the Ohio River.

So that is in this legislation, too--historic permitting reform--and that should make sense to every taxpayer. Yet we want to go through the environmental studies. That is fine, but let's do it quickly and efficiently and require one Agency to be in charge and accountable. That is what this does. It requires that there be a dashboard that anybody can look up and find out where that project is. That keeps it moving, very transparent. That is in this proposal.

So there are some good things in here that ensure that the money that is spent is spent more wisely than it has been in the past.

Let's be sure people can't come back and sue after the fact. We take the amount of time that someone can come back after the fact and sue on a project from 6 years to 2 years. That is very important to developers. That is very important to our workforce. That is very important to the building trades in this country.

You look at the list of supporters of this project, and, I mean, it is unbelievable. The American Farm Bureau and over 30 farm groups have now come out for this proposal. So for those in Big Ag States, I would say, listen to your Farm Bureau--you usually do--and they will tell you this is very good for the farmer who wants to get his crops to the market.

In Ohio, we have a lot of soybeans. We want to get them to the elevator in order to be efficient, but we also send them all over the world. So we want our ports to be efficient.

But it is not just the Farm Bureau. You have the National Association of Manufacturers supporting this, the American Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, and the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council. The men and women who do the work strongly support this legislation. So it is going to help in terms of jobs, competitiveness.

And, again, it is no wonder that so many people over the years have said: We need to fix our infrastructure.

Every President in modern times, by the way, has had a proposal to do so. The joke here in Washington is, ``Oh, it is infrastructure week again'' because, frankly, administrations over time have had infrastructure week--``We are going to get infrastructure done this week''--and nothing has happened. Congress has been stuck.

We have been in gridlock on this, kind of like the gridlock during rush hour in so many of our cities today that we want to fix with this bill. Well, that gridlock here has kept us from doing what we are trying to do in this legislation.

Five hundred and fifty billion dollars in additional funding over the next 5 years is what this is. Others have said it is a trillion. I don't--it is $550 billion. It is actually a little less: $548 billion is what the final number was over 5 years, as a shot in the arm to help get these projects going, not just in the next year or 5 years but over the next 20 or 30 years. This money will be spread out over time.

But this is part of how we get America on a track where we have good- paying jobs and more efficiency in our economy long term.

Every President, as I said, has tried to get the infrastructure bill done. One of those Presidents is our most recent President, President Donald Trump, who pushed to pass a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill during his time in office in his budget. As a developer, he gets it. He understands the importance of infrastructure, and I applaud him for that.

And, honestly, I think he changed the discussion a little bit on my side of the aisle. I think he got more Republicans thinking. One of my colleagues told me recently the two things government ought to do and do well is national defense and infrastructure. I think there are other things that government does as well, but that is not a bad list for what the priorities ought to be for the Federal Government. Look at the Interstate Highway System as an example of what needs help now.

So I appreciate the fact that President Trump got the discussion going

among Republicans who might not previously have focused on that.

Here are just a few highlights of what we secured in this legislation.

We are going to provide billions in funding for some of our most pressing hard infrastructure needs: $110 billion in new spending over the next 5 years to construct, rebuild, and maintain our Interstate Highway System, our roads, and our bridges.

That is going to make a big difference for us in Ohio. We have 123,000 miles of roads. And where traffic congestion occurs in Ohio, we have an estimated $4.7 billion lost each year--lost time, wasted fuel, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers--$4.7 billion because of traffic congestion in Ohio alone.

They also say there are currently more than 46,000 bridges in our country that are considered structurally deficient and in poor condition. Think about that: 46,000 bridges considered structurally deficient and in poor condition--46,000. And yet, 178 million trips are taken across these deficient bridges every single day. One hundred and seventy-eight million cars or trucks go over these same structurally deficient bridges.

Ohio, by the way, is No. 2 in the Nation for bridges. We like bridges in Ohio. We have lots of creeks and rivers and railroad tracks to go over. We have over 40,000 bridges, but nearly half of those are not in good condition. That is the reason I am pleased this bill provides $12.5 billion to fund the bipartisan Bridge Investment Act that will award competitive grants to improve our Nation's bridges based on whether they are major bridges of commercial activity, based on their condition, based on their safety.

We have $60 billion total to help State and local government fund major construction projects, like the long-awaited Brent Spence Bridge Corridor in my hometown of Cincinnati, OH. We have been talking about replacing the Brent Spence Bridge as long as I have been in elected office, and that has been a while. It has been probably 25 years of talking about this. Let's get it done.

We are going to make immediate reforms to the permitting process, as I said, because that will help with regard to that bridge and others to do it more quickly, more efficiently, with less cost to the taxpayer dollars

Again, I want to commend the Trump administration because they prioritized that issue. But the legislation that we had passed here to help with speeding up permitting sunsets. So this legislation that we are voting on here actually ends that sunset and, therefore, ensures we can continue that permitting going forward.

If we don't do it in this bill and don't do it soon, we are not going to have projects signing up for this interagency council on permitting because they will have the sunset. They know that they are not going to be able to take advantage of it. So that is really important.

We also strengthen the provision, make it cover more projects, and ensure that, again, we are going to get these permitting reforms to make this dollar--this Federal dollar--go further.

And we are going to make a necessary investment in the future of our economy by providing $65 billion to increase access to broadband services to connect more Americans to the internet.

In Ohio, it is estimated that about 300,000 households lack access to the high-speed broadband that many of us just take for granted. We assume everybody has it. People don't. It is holding folks back from being able to get the schooling they need, the healthcare they need, or to have the economic opportunities that come with being connected to the internet.

These are just a few highlights, and I can go on. But the bottom line is that we are dedicating almost $550 billion to new infrastructure spending over the next 5 years to go toward a wide range of priorities that will collectively have a positive impact on the people I represent and all Americans.

Importantly, we have funded our bill through a number of responsible pay-fors without any new taxes on working families, on small businesses, on large businesses, on anybody. This is being done without tax hikes.

That is significant because, remember, when we first started talking about infrastructure, it was in the context of a proposal from the Biden administration for a huge increase in taxes. It was a $2.65 trillion package and included incredibly steep tax increases. In fact, taxes increased to much more than taxes were cut back in 2017 in that proposal, about four times more. Some say five times more.

But we decided: No, let's not do that. Let's pull infrastructure from this package--really core infrastructure, because infrastructure is being defined in ways that it had never been defined before, including so-called soft infrastructure: social spending for nursing homes or for healthcare or for electric car companies outside of infrastructure.

We said: No, let's just pull the core infrastructure out of it, and let's take the taxes off. And that is how we got down to, again, $548 billion and without taxes.

So from the start, we have said some of our pay-fors will not be fully reflected in the formal CBO score that came out on Thursday. But, instead, it will be reflected in CBO estimates.

What is CBO? CBO is the Congressional Budget Office. It is the group up here that we have to rely on in terms of our legislation to say how much something costs.

Republicans and Democrats alike love to complain about CBO. In fact, often, it is my Republicans complaining about them on my side of the aisle because they don't give enough credit to the feedback effect from tax cuts.

Democrats are kind of just the opposite. They think there should be more feedback effect--in other words, a dynamic score as relates to spending.

And we disagree on their calculation of scoring. But that is who we have to rely on.

So the CBO estimate that just came out, including what they said about their official score, was disappointing to me because they didn't follow what we wrote in the law. We have had this discussion, and, you know, they are the arbiter. So my same Republican colleagues who have complained about CBO over the years in other contexts are now saying: Well, look, the CBO score isn't high enough. You know, you said about half of it would be paid for by official CBO scores. Well, it is, but they didn't give us credit for it.

One example is CBO's limitation that they can't account for States returning to the Federal Treasury the money that we dictated they had to return in our bill. They just won't do it.

Fifty-three billion dollars was in our legislation for unused funds from the enhanced COVID UI supplemental put in place during COVID-19. Recouping this outdated supplement is a win for the American taxpayers, and everyone should support sending it back toward projects like infrastructure that help move our economy forward rather than for other purposes. And yet CBO gives us no credit for that.

CBO is not fully able to reflect the funding streams that will help pay for our legislation in other ways as well. I will give you, perhaps, the two most striking examples of this.

One is that working with the White House, working with the Office of Management and Budget, working with the individual Agencies, we were able to determine that some of the COVID-19 funds that this Congress had sent back to the States through Agencies was not being spent, and so we wanted to repurpose that money through this purpose. Remember, we spent a lot of money, including $1.9 trillion recently. But even before that, four different pieces of legislation were sending money out to the States for COVID-19 purposes.

And so we said: Well, if it is unused COVID funds, let's return it to the Treasury and apply it to this. And it makes sense. Infrastructure is something States and localities are eager to have--better infrastructure--and it is appropriate to use some of that funding.

So we said in our proposal that $41.8 billion would be rescinded based on what we got from OMB, from the individual Agencies on their unobligated funds. The White House signed off on it. We all signed off on it, Republican and Democrat. Unfortunately, CBO chose to give us credit for just $13.4 billion rather than $41.8 billion. It is frustrating. It is a difference of $28.4 billion in savings.

Now, what they say is that we are not convinced that even though these

are unobligated balances--which we have been able to prove, by the way, and we have documents from the White House, now, after the fact, showing this again. But they have said: Well, we don't believe that these Agencies that have extra money are going to spend the money. That is one of the reasons they gave. We think they will just keep the money.

When has an Agency not spent the money that Congress provides them, I would ask my colleagues?

I will give you a real-world example of this. As we started to look for these unused COVID funds, it turns out that the U.S. Department of Agriculture, USDA, had some extra funds that they had not sent out to anybody and weren't planning to. When they heard that we were nosing around with the Office of Management and Budget and with the White House to pull back some of those funds for this purpose, for a good purpose, for infrastructure--guess what--they came up with another program. They had the discretion to send the money out under another program. So they came up with one and said: Oh, now we have got this money covered. You are not allowed to touch it.

So I am just telling you that is one of the challenges with these CBO scores. They took $28.4 billion in savings and just decided, because they knew best, that this was not going to be available because the Agencies were going to spend it, even though they haven't spent it, they had no reasons to spend it, they had no plans to spend it. And, again, the Office of Management and Budget at the White House had confirmed that.

Another example: We went from a savings of $65 billion from the next auction for spectrum down to $20 billion in response to concerns by colleagues on our side of the aisle that this might affect our national security. So $65 billion in savings, CBO-scored savings, in this legislation, went to $20 billion--working with the Department of Defense, carefully; working with the Office of Management and Budget; working with the Armed Services Committee here, ensuring that we weren't going to touch any spectrum in that future sale that had a national security implication.

So that reduced our CBO score. We understood that, but we wanted to be sure that we weren't taking any risks by having any issue with regard to DOD spectrum that they didn't want to provide.

CBO then, in their report on Thursday, decided that they weren't going to give us credit for that $20 billion. They took it down to about $10 billion. We lost $9.8 billion on a CBO score there.

And, again, when we pushed on that, they said: Well, we just need to know that the White House is going to move ahead with a spectrum auction.

Well, they are, and they have sent us a letter saying they are.

So, again, this is a little arbitrary, don't you think? How can CBO decide?

So just as they took $30 billion away from the CBO score with regard to repurposing COVID money, which is based on the unobligated balances that the White House agreed to, that OMB agreed to--but CBO is saying somehow the Agencies aren't going to spend that money. I mean, all the records, if you look at what happens, is that they will spend the money.

So we are saving the money. We are pulling it back and applying it to a good purpose: infrastructure.

So I would just caution my colleagues who, again, traditionally are skeptical of CBO and somehow, in this case, think CBO is perfect, to look a little closer at these scores and look at the fact that they are not necessarily accurate.

What this legislation does not do--the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act--is it does not include the grab bag of massive new social spending that Democrats included in their first package and certainly that they are now including in their $3.5 trillion spending proposal they unveiled earlier this month.

And this is an important point that my colleagues shouldn't miss. The President has said that the package--the $3.5 trillion--will not include more core infrastructure spending. Now, remember, that was pulled out of his original package, the $2.65 trillion. We took about half of the core infrastructure out of there and took out all the taxes, so we are at $548 billion.

And he made a commitment, both privately and publicly, as have Democrats up here, that that is the negotiation on the core infrastructure. So the roads and bridges we have talked about earlier, the water infrastructure, the rail, the ports--that can't be double dipped in terms of also including that in the $3.5 trillion.

Now, they will have a lot of other spending in there that is social spending, that is not this capital expenditure spending we talked about. Many of my colleagues know what capex means, that you typically borrow for your capex, and it is long-term spending for hard assets. But that is not what the $3.5 trillion is about, and that is why I strongly oppose it, as do my colleagues on this side of the aisle.

The President having said that the package will not double dip, that we won't have that in there, is very important to remember because we have saved taxpayers not only huge tax increases by finding a bipartisan solution here, but we saved taxpayers from a lot of additional spending that otherwise would have occurred.

This investment in repairing and upgrading our Nation's infrastructure will have real, lasting benefit for our country through building out hard assets that improve productivity and improve efficiency without adding to inflation. It will create hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs in industries ranging from construction and plumbing to electrical engineering and software development, with one recent study from the Association of Equipment Manufacturers finding that the legislation could create around half a million jobs by 2024.

This is why every business group in America is supporting this legislation, as well as all the ag groups--over 30 ag groups--including the American Farm Bureau. It is why the AFL-CIO Building & Construction Trades Council is supporting it, because they are going to provide a lot of the workers for this.

Even more importantly, given the recent economic news we have seen, is this proposal will not cause inflation to increase. As Democratic economist Larry Summers on the other side of the aisle and many of us here on the Republican side of the aisle had been warning about for months, including me, inflation is here, with prices for consumers up 5.4 percent over this time last year.

And this rate of inflation, in my view, could well go up even further. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO Director, now head of the American Action Forum, a conservative economist; Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, AEI, also a conservative scholar, has said that our bipartisan infrastructure package will slow down inflation.

They said: ``Improving roads, bridges, and ports would make it less costly for businesses to operate, allowing them to increase their output per hour, and putting downward pressure on consumer prices.''

So I know some of my colleagues want to conflate these two, the $3.5 trillion extravaganza with huge tax increases and immediate social spending and this long-term spending we have talked about here, where very little money is going to go out the door even in the next year or two. But they are not the same, and I think it is irresponsible to say they are the same.

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 that would hurt our economy, destroy jobs, and undermine our competitiveness around the world.

And importantly, for the sake of future bipartisanship here in Congress, it is an infrastructure plan that allows us to avoid the repeat of the COVID-19 spending bill, the $1.9 trillion that passed under this partisan process of reconciliation.

It is also the alternative way that we ought to operate around here instead of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package that is coming next. It demonstrates to the American people that we can, in fact, work together to get big things done in a responsible way.

President Biden promised to govern in a bipartisan manner, in his inaugural address and in his campaign. Unfortunately, he hasn't done that with

regard to the COVID package, the $1.9 trillion under reconciliation, the $3.5 trillion that they are now going to attempt to pass here in this Chamber. But this bipartisan package is an opportunity for all of us to fulfill that pledge, to figure out how to work together to get big things done.

It is a genuine compromise. It is not the bill I would write. It is not the bill my colleague Kyrsten Sinema would write on the Democratic side of the aisle. But it is good for the country. It builds our core infrastructure. It doesn't raise taxes on the American people. It will grow the economy. It will lead to more tax revenue coming in to the Treasury, and yet it includes responsible pay-fors.

Soon, I hope we will all be able to vote on final passage of this legislation. As I indicated, we have already had two votes to proceed to final passage. One was 66 to 28; the other was 67 to 27. I think it is time for us to come together and to enact this bipartisan achievement for our Nation, for our economy, and for the people we represent.

Cryptocurrency

Madam President, I want to address a specific part of the legislation that is before us. It relates to cryptocurrency. As we know, cryptocurrency is a digital asset that more and more people are investing in, and we should want that to continue and continue in a healthy and sustainable way.

There is consensus here in Washington and around the country that there should be better and more consistent reporting on cryptocurrency transactions. By the way, this would be a good thing for honest, taxpaying holders of cryptocurrency, which is the vast majority of them who, today, have to figure out their basis and sometimes their gross proceeds when filing taxes because they don't get a 1099.

The form 1099 that a financial institution would give you if you invested in stocks or bonds or other financial instruments often is not available for holders of cryptocurrency, which creates problems.

Standardizing this basic information reporting by crypto brokers for tax purposes is going to help provide more certainty for everyday Americans looking to invest in these digital assets.

The experts at the nonpartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation and the Department of the Treasury say that this would lead to better tax compliance as well. So the information reporting would lead to better compliance with the Tax Code.

The question is who should issue that 1099 in a cryptocurrency context. Again, the consensus is that it should be the brokers of cryptocurrency, just as it is for stocks and bonds and other financial instruments.

In the underlying bill, a broker is defined as any person responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets by cryptocurrency--which, for tax purposes, means a sale--on behalf of someone else.

Some crypto brokers already comply with these standard information- reporting obligations, but for those who have not yet adopted these practices, this rule change is going to make it easier for their customers to pay their taxes due.

The concern has been expressed that some in the cryptocurrency industry who are not brokers could be inadvertently caught up in this definition. The Department of the Treasury, the nonpartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, and others believe that the current language is clear and that the reporting requirements only covers brokers.

But my view is that we should work to clarify this, given the potential for confusion on an extremely important issue. In particular, we want to be sure miners and stakers and others, now or in the future, who play a key role by validating transactions, or sellers of hardware or software for digital wallets, or node operators, or others who are not brokers are clearly exempted.

While it is not the intent of the underlying bill to include them, I believe we can do more to make this clear, which is why I will continue to work with colleagues to clarify the intent of the information- reporting language.

There have been a number of amendments that have been filed to try and make this provision more clear, and I have been working with my colleagues Senator Warner, Senator Wyden, Senator Toomey, Senator Lummis, Senator Ossoff, and Senator Sinema on a potential solution that I believe will help reassure stakeholders that these individuals will not be considered brokers, while maintaining the information reporting in this bipartisan legislation.

Today, we will continue these important discussions, and I am hopeful we can come to a solution that will provide certainty for taxpayers and avoid any potential loopholes for bad actors.

With that, Madam President, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank the majority leader for allowing me to say a few words tonight, and I want to commend him and the Republican Leader, Mitch McConnell, for allowing us to have this series of amendments.

The Senate has worked its will and will continue to work its will tomorrow. As was said, there have been 22 amendments on the floor. About half of them are Democratic amendments, and about half of them are Republican amendments.

I will say, also, there has just been a lot of discussion that has ensued because of this amendment process. So a lot of people have had the opportunity to discuss their issues to try to improve the bill in certain ways, and, frankly, a lot of these amendments were accepted; they were voted on positively--well, one just recently with regard to a safety issue that was just discussed--and improve the bill. So that is the way this place ought to work, and I think it is consistent with what we tried to do in this process from the beginning, where we saw an opportunity to pull out core infrastructure from a much larger package and deal with it without raising taxes but by focusing on bipartisan solutions, and that is exactly what the underlying bill does.

The next step in that, then, was to say: Let's try to have an open amendment process too. And sure enough, we have.

I had some colleagues of mine come up to me tonight and say: You know, it is nice to see the Senate working its will again, because these are colleagues who were around in previous decades where, you know, they saw this more often.

So, again, I want to thank my colleagues for going through this process. It requires some patience. It requires some consensus. Some amendments had to be altered in some ways to be sure that both sides were comfortable having votes on them. But at the end of the day, we are able to say that people's voices are being heard.

This will continue tomorrow. I just saw a list of about 10 amendments, and I know there are others as well that people would like to offer tomorrow, and I am all for it, as is Senator Sinema. Senator Sinema and I are very pleased that Members have the opportunity to express themselves.

I also want to talk a little about what this bill does and why it is so important for our country.

For the past 2 days, we have been working through this amendment process, and sometimes we lose sight of the bigger picture here. The bigger picture is that we as a country have an infrastructure system that is badly in need of repair. We are consistently rated as a country with an infrastructure system that, frankly, hasn't kept up with the rest of the world.

There is a group called the World Economic Forum, and they give a report card every couple years, and America ends up, you know, 13th or 14th in the world in terms of infrastructure. That is not where we want to be.

By the way, on a broader gauge of competitiveness, we are right up at the top in terms of our trade system, our tax system, our economic system generally, but with regard to infrastructure, we are not.

As some of you have heard me say before, this is about competitiveness too. Think about this: China spends three or four times more as a percentage of their GDP than we do on infrastructure. The reality, as I have looked at those numbers, is that it is even higher than that, but let's say three or four times higher. Why? Because they get it. They are trying to outcompete us in every way, including having better ports, better rail, better airports, and the ability to both buy and sell their products overseas, and we here in America want to be at the top of that list. That is why it is very important, from my point of view, that we focus on the economic impact here.

If we get this bill passed, it will make our economy more efficient; therefore, more productive; therefore, the economy will grow; therefore, more tax revenue will come into the coffers.

There has been a lot of discussion about the pay-fors in this legislation. We will know more as the CBO report tells us very specifically how it is paid for. But the bottom line is, much of what happens in this bill, which is spending for capital assets, this long- term spending--it is not going to be spent next year. It may be spent in 5 years or 10 years. It may be a bridge in Georgia. It may be a port in Alabama. Those take years and years and years. The funding we are providing, the $550 billion in this bill, will be spent over that period of time. It will add to those hard assets. It is, as a result of that, on the supply side of the economy, creating jobs, creating hard assets, like the bridges and like the ports, and as a result of that, it is actually counterinflationary.

I know there has been concern on the floor, including raised today in one of the amendments, about the fact that more spending leads to more inflation. Not this kind of spending. The kind of spending that would lead to it is more what is called the demand side of the equation--you know, as an example, the stimulus checks or even the unemployment insurance benefits. That led to more demand in the economy. Yes, that did drive up our inflation over the past several months and continues to. This is not that. This is spending over the long haul. It will create these capital assets that will make our economy more efficient and should be counterinflationary.

We have a number of economists who have spoken to this: Doug Holtz- Eakin some of you know; also Michael Strain, who is at the American Enterprise Institute. The Penn Wharton study on this is very interesting. They say, actually, that our legislation, as they analyze it, will end up growing the

economy, creating more jobs, and actually reducing the deficit, meaning more money will come into the coffers than we are spending here that is not paid for with CBO-certified official scores because of the economic impact of this.

So this is very important for all of our constituents. It is also important for our broader economy, to make sure America stays at the forefront and that we can be competitive for our kids and our grandkids.

Let's take the State of Ohio as an example since I happen to be from Ohio and why it is going to help my State.

Ohio is a big infrastructure State. We have a lot of roads and a lot of bridges. Ohio's roadway network has a lot of congestion also. It is estimated that the congestion in Ohio costs motorists an estimated $4.7 billion each year in lost time and wasted fuel. That is according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, which scored Ohio's roads at a D in their 2021 infrastructure report card--a D. Now, the Nation as a whole is only a C-minus under their analysis. Ohio is a D. So we are a little worse than the Nation as a whole. As a whole, again, we are falling behind but Ohio particularly.

We are second in the Nation for the number of bridges. We have got a lot of little rivers and railroad tracks in Ohio, so we have got a lot of bridges. We have 44,736 bridges in Ohio.

By the way, they have looked at these bridges. Their analysis is that nearly half of them are not in good condition.

Our farmers, who are working to plant crops in their fields, want to be able to then get those crops to market. They want to get them to the elevators. They want to be able to export them. They care about infrastructure.

The moms and dads across Ohio who commute to work every day would heck of a lot rather spend their time with their kids than sitting in a car in a traffic jam on, you know, I-71 or 75 or I-270 or I-70.

We have got a lot of great roads in Ohio, but, frankly, they can't keep up with the demand, so we have got a lot of traffic jams during rushing hour. Those are some of the people who care a lot about infrastructure.

Our manufacturers in Ohio--we make everything in Ohio. We make cars. We make washing machines. We make tanks. We are proud of what we make in Ohio and what we export all around the world. We have got to be sure to get those products to market, too, so infrastructure is really important.

Today, I talked to a company in Ohio that has trucks all over Ohio and the country, for that matter. It is the Cintas Corporation. They are the uniform company, but they do a lot more than uniforms. They are excited about this bill because it is going to help them be more efficient in their delivery of their services.

That is the same with our truckers. I talked to a trucking company person yesterday who was interested in how this would affect the truckstops and wanted to know about, you know, electric vehicle charging stations and so on. But the bottom line was, this person said this is going to help because our truckers want to have a safe road and a safe bridge. They want to be able to meet their requirements and not get stuck in traffic jams and be able to make more money on the road, frankly.

So this is something that helps our constituents across the board. But it goes well beyond just our roads. This is also about water infrastructure in this legislation. Communities across our State deserve water infrastructure that is going to deliver them clean, safe drinking water. We have got a lot of old water systems in Ohio that need help and need it badly.

We also have a lot of wastewater systems in Ohio that are in trouble. Some of you may know this, but there are new EPA rules that have come out over the past couple decades about wastewater systems and particularly combined sewer overflow systems, where when you have a lot of rain, in many of our systems in Ohio, there is a combination of the sewer system and the wastewater system, and that is not safe. Yet fixing it is really expensive.

Those communities--mostly midsize cities in Ohio but some larger cities as well--have all said to me: Can you help us a little more on water infrastructure?

With the revolving loan program we have in here, the ability for them to get low-interest Federal loans to be able to expand their water infrastructure system--they will be able to do that in this legislation, as well as receive grants from the Federal Government to help them ensure that we do have water systems that work.

Folks in rural parts of our State--Ohio is an Appalachian State. We have about 32 counties considered part of Appalachia. And guess what. In most of those counties, we have virtually no internet. I mean, sometimes there is real slow internet you can get but virtually no internet. This is why, for some of our kids in those counties in Ohio-- these are rural counties that don't have access to Wi-Fi of a speed that is appropriate for school, much less work.

These kids are falling behind, and particularly, of course, during the pandemic, when they had to rely on online learning. And the stories are out there, and you know them, and the mom that comes up to me when I am out and about in Ohio and says: You know what; I had to take my kid to the parking lot of the library, which is a 45-minute drive for me across rural Ohio roads, to be able to do her homework.

That makes no sense. We want the digital divide to be closed. We want the ability for those kids in rural Ohio to have access to the internet, just as kids can get access to it in suburban or more urban settings. But even in the suburban and urban settings, we want to help be sure those kids have the hookup to their home to get that internet and to be able to afford that internet.

So this legislation is unprecedented in many ways in terms of infrastructure--more roads, more bridges, more ports, more water systems--but it is also historic, unprecedented in terms of the expansion of broadband, finally.

Again, this is about catching up. There are countries around the world that actually have better broadband than we do that are not even developed countries. They are poorer countries. You would think they might be a little behind, but they are sort of leapfrogging us in terms of technology because they realize how important having that internet build-out is.

The other issue is for telehealth. There are more and more people relying on telehealth. Part of this comes out of the pandemic, when people kind of had to do that. They didn't want to go into a doctor's office or hospital for fear of the COVID pandemic. And, frankly, right now with the variants--and the delta variant in particular--there are some people who are still now, unfortunately, not comfortable going into a healthcare setting, but they need to have an appointment. They need to have someone to check them out, and they need, perhaps, with regard to behavioral health, to have the ability to have a consult. They can do that online now, and the Federal government has been reimbursing that for the first time, because before, under Medicare and Medicaid, that was very difficult. So this is going to be a part of our system. It is a good thing, sort of a rare silver lining in a terrible dark cloud of the pandemic that we learned how to use telehealth better.

So what if you don't have access to internet? So what if you are a veteran in southeast Ohio and you have to drive 2\1/2\ hours to a VA clinic, and instead you would like to do telehealth because it makes a lot more sense for your situation, particularly during the pandemic, but you don't have internet? So, definitely, that is not fair. So telehealth is another reason for us to expand internet access.

Finally, just for our economic benefit in these communities, we want more startups. We want more companies to be able to be successful. Without the internet--let's face it--it is going to be very, very difficult. These are all part of this legislation as well.

The hard core infrastructure you think of--like roads and bridges, yes; water infrastructure, yes; ports, rail, freight--but also the digital infrastructure that ties our country together--that is part of this legislation as well.

Again, it is why economists who look at this say this is actually going to help make our economy work better, make it more efficient. We will be more productive as a country, and we will have more economic growth and then more revenue will come in. That is why this is so popular.

I mean, when you think about it, what can everybody agree on in America today? Not much. We are a country that is more divided, and that saddens me. It concerns me, particularly as we face challenges, some of which, like the pandemic, are here domestically, and some of which are global challenges brought on by some of our adversaries, like Russia or China or North Korea or Iran. But we are divided as a country. One thing that brings us together is our military. I think most people acknowledge and respect the role that our military plays. And another is infrastructure. It is an issue where traditionally Republicans and Democrats were able to come together and say: We may disagree on taxes and healthcare and all sorts of other things, but on this issue of strong infrastructure, we can come together.

Again, I think it makes sense economically, and, also, it is popular. People know when they are driving over potholes or getting stuck in traffic jams or not being able to get a product because the ports are backed up, which they are right now. Our ports are inefficient and people literally can't get products. They can't get cars or they can't get an electronic device. That is all part of this. So this is something that ought to bring us together, and it does bring us together.

The polling out there shows this, by the way. There are two polls in the last few months that both said that 87 percent of the American people want us to work on this infrastructure project on a bipartisan process and get it done. Those numbers were unbelievable, and it was exactly 87 percent in both polls, interestingly, even though one was CBS and one was CNBC.

But forget the polls for a minute and just go home and talk to people. They do want to make sure that we are not raising taxes to do this. They don't want to see us helping the economy long-term with infrastructure but hurting the economy short-term with higher taxes. And I agree. And we don't do that here. That is what is particularly great about this approach. It is that we said that we are going to pull out core infrastructure only and we are not going to raise taxes.

So we have the funds in here to be able to help with regard to our highways, our bridges, our ports, our waterways, our broadband expansion. But we also have the ability for us to do that in a way that makes sense for all Americans.

In Ohio, it is going to help us do something else that is important, and that is to help with regard to some of our big infrastructure projects. I will talk about one tonight briefly--the Brent Spence Bridge. This is in my hometown of Cincinnati, OH. It is a critical bridge because it is where I-75 and I-71 come together, and therefore it is a bottleneck. Twice as many cars drive on that bridge every day as it was built for. Twice as many cars drive on that bridge every day--and trucks--as it was built for. It is the reason that there is a traffic jam there during rush hour. But it is also the reason that it is unsafe, because over time the shoulders have been removed to create another lane. So if there is an accident on that bridge, there is nowhere to go. We had an accident 2 months ago with two trucks that collided, and we had to close it down, actually, for several weeks, and it was a mess.

And talk about the effect on the economy. Think about this. There are roughly 3 million people in the metropolitan area there, with Dayton and Cincinnati on one side, and the other side has about 1 million people in Covington, KY. And you have traffic going all the way north and south from Canada to Mexico, and all of a sudden you don't have a bridge available because of the safety concerns that led to the accident. So we need a solution with regard to that bridge, and we have been talking about it for years. For 25 years, I have been involved in the effort to try to find the funding to replace this bridge because it needs it. Finally, we will have the ability to do that. We will have the ability to help, with Kentucky and with Ohio and with the Federal Government working together with the local community, to complete this Brent Spence Bridge corridor project. Why? Because we are putting an unprecedented amount of money into not just bridges but bridges like this one--bridges that are major commercial bridges; bridges that are functionally obsolete, which ours have been for years; bridges that desperately need the help.

We also have a big aviation industry in Ohio. We support a lot of jobs through aviation, our second biggest industry after agriculture in Ohio. There is $25 billion for new spending for airports in here. That is going to help airports build on the momentum that we need right now in Ohio to be able to expand our aerospace industry.

On the shores of Lake Erie, on the north coast of Ohio, we will also have help. Lake Erie supports fishing and tourism industries that total over $10 billion. It provides drinking water for 10 million people.

It is the top tourist attraction in our State, but as anyone who visits the lake will tell you, they have some serious long-term health challenges with the lake. We have invasive species. We have a problem with toxic algal blooms. We have pollution. We have rising levels of the lake. This bill helps with regard to all of that. With regard to rising levels of the lake, there are communities on the lake that will tell you their water systems don't work because the lake water has risen to the point where the outtake valve which is next to the intake valve is now actually underwater, so the system doesn't work well. In fact, the system is incredibly expensive to replace. So this will help with regard to that.

As cochair of the Senate Great Lakes Caucus, I am very pleased to see this investment because it will support the infrastructure and infrastructure investments in communities all along Lake Erie and every one of our Great Lakes.

Finally and crucially, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act before us helps more than 300,000 Ohio households that lack access to this high-speed internet. That is incredibly important. Our legislation does everything that I have talked about in terms of infrastructure, and that is important.

Again, we have the studies out there that I talked about, including one from Penn, from the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. They talked about how the economic growth from this study will actually make our economy better and create more jobs, and they say that, actually, over time, it reduces the deficit, based on looking at our study and, specifically, our proposals. So all that is true.

The final thing I guess I want to say is that it goes beyond infrastructure. It goes to how to get Washington back to a point where Washington is solving problems for the American people. And this bill is not perfect for anybody--no Republican, no Democrat. Why? It is a bipartisan compromise.

You know, again, we started off with a product that President Biden introduced that was $2.65 trillion--a huge package called ``infrastructure,'' but most of it was not for infrastructure. It had huge tax increases in it--the highest tax increase, it would have been, in American history. It would have made our country less competitive, in my view.

We said: OK, let's find a group of Democrats and Republicans, and let's agree to pull out the core parts of this, the core infrastructure, and find a way to pay for it without raising taxes. That is what we did, and we worked hard to create a product that was fair for everybody. But that means finding that consensus, and that is not easy.

You know, we all had to make concessions, but, at the end of the day, we got a product--$550 billion over the next 5 years, which will be spread out, spent over many, many years, that will put America back on top in terms of infrastructure.

It will put us in a position where, for our kids and our grandkids, they are going to have a more productive and a more efficient economy-- one that produces more, one that has the ability for America to say to the world: Look at us again. We are back. We are back. We now have an infrastructure system with our ports and our roads and our bridges, with our water infrastructure, and with our broadband that can be, once again, a model for the rest of the world and help move us forward and ensure that every American has the opportunity to succeed.

So this bipartisan process in and of itself, I think, is an accomplishment of this legislation. The underlying bill is what is most important, I suppose, but

just being able to show that Republicans and Democrats can come together in this town and get something done that is positive for our country, that in and of itself is an accomplishment.

With that, I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the provisions of section 80603 for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included in this amendment provide clarity to information reporting requirements to improve tax administration and tax compliance with respect to trading and digital assets.

Senator Sinema has joined me in asking the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation to make available to the public a technical explanation of section 80603, ``Information Reporting for Brokers and Digital Assets,'' of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The technical explanation expresses these Senators' understanding and legislative intent behind this important legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the technical explanation of section 80603 from the Joint Committee on Taxation of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act be printed in the Record.

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 concur with the comments of my colleague from Arizona. She put it well.

This is a really important bill because it takes our aging and outdated infrastructure in this country and modernizes it, and that is good for everybody. It is good for the truckdriver who can leave home, knowing he is going to be safer on our roads and bridges. It is good for the mom who commutes to work and is sick of waiting in rush-hour traffic on the way to work and on the way back because she would rather spend more time with her kids. It is good for the factory worker in Ohio who makes things that need to be transported. We make tanks in Ohio; we make cars in Ohio; we make washing machines. They go all over the world. Our ports--our land ports and our seaports--are inefficient and backed up. It is good for our consumers who are waiting for products from all over the world because our ports are backed up.

Our infrastructure is way behind, and we will talk a lot more about that over the next couple of days with some very specific data as to how we have fallen behind, how we are not competitive anymore, how China has surpassed us in terms of infrastructure. As a percent of their economy, they spend about four times more than we do. Why? Because they get it. This helps make the economy more efficient, more productive, and, therefore, it actually returns an investment to the American people.

We are also going to hear about how it is not going to increase inflation like some of the other spending that is being talked about around here, partly because it is long-term spending for capital assets. It is spending that is going to add to the supply side, meaning it is actually going to be counterinflationary and create more jobs. We hear all about that, but one thing that I do want to make sure that we hear about tonight is the fact that this process of starting from the center out has worked.

People have talked about infrastructure in this city forever. President Trump had a $1.5 trillion infrastructure package. Ours is $550 billion, by the way. Five percent of his was paid for. Ours is paid for. We made a commitment early on that we were going to do two things: One, we were going to focus on core infrastructure. So, when President Biden introduced a $2.65 trillion bill and called it infrastructure, we said: Well, there is some good stuff in there, but let's pull out the good stuff, the core infrastructure because a lot of it had nothing to do with infrastructure. And, second, we said: You know what? We are not going to do it by raising taxes. We are not going to hurt the American worker more and make America less competitive in this; we are going to do just the opposite.

We kept to those two principles, and I am so proud of that; that tonight we can say the amendment, the substitute amendment, is going to be offered, and it is going to keep to that commitment of $555 billion--no new taxes, core infrastructure only--and it is great for the American people.

I want to thank a few people who got us here who are going to be able, over the next few days, to tell us in great detail of the role they played because it was significant on every one of their parts.

First, of course, Senator Sinema; she has been the one who has kept us on track, and that has been very important, but also to my colleagues who are here tonight on the floor, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Senator Mitt Romney, Senator Bill Cassidy--my Republican colleagues whom we have worked with over the last 4 months-- and each has made huge contributions to this.

I want to thank the White House for their work with us because they said early on: OK. We want to do this, too, in a bipartisan way.

We said: OK. If you are serious, we do too.

And, sure enough, we negotiated. It was tough, and we had a lot of differences, but we were able to get to this point tonight.

Just as important is the group on the other side of the aisle who made this work, and I see my colleague Senator Manchin here. I see Senator Warner here. It looks like he really wants to speak. I see Senator Shaheen here, who is about to speak, and I see Senator Tester wandering around here somewhere. These are the folks on the other side of the so-called G-10 who made it happen.

And then a much bigger group. So to my colleagues who also helped in the 22 working groups we had in putting this together and did such a great job, Richard Burr, Lindsey Graham, Mike Rounds, Thom Tillis, Jerry Moran, Chris Coons, Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper, Mark Kelly, Angus King, Jacky Rosen--11 Democrats and 11 Republicans.

And then, to my friends who took us over the top the other night on the first vote we had on this, I appreciate them because they were not involved as much on the details, but they know this is the right thing for the country, and many of them did help to get us where we are: Kevin Cramer, Mike Crapo, Mitch McConnell, Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, John Hoeven, Jim Risch.

Folks, we wouldn't be here without every one of them, and we thank all of the folks who have put so much time and effort into this.

And, mostly, we got to thank our staffs because none of us would be here standing tonight, doing this, if we didn't have staff who had been working their hearts out, staying here until 12

midnight, ensuring that every single thing in this bill has been looked over carefully to make sure that we got it right.

And we are getting it right tonight for the American people, for our economy, and for the future of our great country.

I yield to my colleague from Virginia.

I thank my colleague from Utah for his wise words. Yes, it is true that there was a $2.65 trillion package proposed by President Biden for infrastructure, and we are at $550 billion. So it is bipartisan. Both sides made concessions. But it is very different than what we would have seen, and again, it is an alternative with no taxes.

I do want to say that there was another effort underway before we got started. Actually, Shelley Moore Capito was part of our efforts early on and then decided to try to work with the White House to come up with a proposal. They were not successful in the end of bridging the gap between where the White House was and where they were, and the bipartisan approach that we used here ended up being more successful, but we are building on the foundation that they created. So you will see Senator Capito managing this bill for our side. I appreciate her support the other day on our first vote, and I appreciate the hard work they put in to help us to be able to come to this point today.

I yield back my time.

I thank my colleague from Vermont, the President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate.

I was able to listen to some of his remarks regarding Cuba. This is a truly historic time in that island country. The demonstrations, I am told, are as large as they have been since at least 1959.

My hope is that the countries of the Americas, all of which I just visited--four of them down in Latin America--that believe in democracy, that believe in the ability for people to come together and gather and express their continues, that believe in strong human rights, would come together and support the Cuban people at this critical point.

My understanding is, there are some opportunities to ensure that internet access continues among those demonstrating. My understanding is that there are human rights abuses occurring even now as we talk with regard to those demonstrators.

I appreciate my colleague. He has spent a lot of time trying to take the Cuban relationship, which has been a fraught one, and make it better. My hope is that what we are seeing right now on the streets of Havana and elsewhere around that country will lead to a better day for the people of Cuba.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from North Carolina for his thoughts.

We are on the cusp of a vote here on legislation that would dramatically change the way we conduct our elections in this country. As my colleague said, are all elections perfect? No. But I have to tell you, I am really proud of what we do in Ohio. We make it easy to vote; we also make it hard to cheat, and that is the right balance.

This bill, S. 1, is called the For the People Act, but what it actually does is it strips away control from people in Ohio and elsewhere to build the right election laws in our own States and centralizes that control here in Washington, DC. That is not consistent with the Constitution or the Federalist Papers. In addition, some of those proposed changes attempt to undermine the First Amendment rights that we hold so dear as Americans.

I am proud of the way we conduct our elections in Ohio, in part because we have high turnout. In fact, we had record turnout last year, and that is great. And I don't want to leave it up to Federal employees here in Washington, DC, to determine how our system should work in Ohio, which is what this legislation would do.

I mentioned the Constitution earlier. It gives the primary power over election administration to the States. It is very clear about that. It also says in Federalist 59, which is Alexander Hamilton, who was the guy most interested in these Federalist issues--he said it is clear that the Federal Government should only get involved in very extraordinary situations.

Last fall, 5.97 million Ohioans cast a vote--that is a record, as I said--and it represented 74 percent of eligible voters in Ohio. Despite that and despite the challenges of running the largest election in our State's history during an unprecedented pandemic, we ran what was wildly reported on the right, on the left, by the media as a secure and successful election--in fact, I think the most successful election we have ever had. Our State-run, bipartisan county boards of election, with two Democrats and two Republicans in each county, were able to do that because they know what is best for Ohio and they are held accountable.

But this partisan bill claims Washington, DC, somehow knows better. S. 1 strips the power from accountable, democratically elected State representatives in my State and around the country to determine congressional districts and hands that over to a Federal panel, again, staffed by unelected, unaccountable third parties and a computer program. Again, I think it should be something that is part of what election representatives are held to account for, is how we draw our congressional districts.

It mandates the controversial practice of ballot harvesting. I don't like ballot harvesting. I think it makes it easier for partisan operatives on both the right and the left to conduct outright voter fraud.

It would force taxpayers to fund the political campaigns of candidates they don't support. It turns the Federal Election Commission into a tool of whichever party controls the White House. So instead of being even, it would actually be lopsided and be partisan.

It seemingly contradicts the 26th Amendment by forcing States to let individuals register to vote as early as 16 years old, and then it could allow those 16- or 17-year-olds to vote by banning State voter ID laws. The vast majority of Americans support voter ID laws. It is a fact. Republicans, Democrats, and Independents think you ought to have some sort of ID when you come vote, but this bill bans that safeguard.

I could list other serious flaws with the proposal, but the bottom line is that this legislation has been presented as a safeguard for democracy when it actually contains some radically undemocratic provisions.

I am in favor of State-level, commonsense efforts to increase voter confidence in our elections. We absolutely should do that. We need to protect democracy by ensuring, again, that people know it is easy to vote. It is accessible. That is good. We should all want that. But we should also make it hard to cheat and be sure we have security in our elections so people know they have trust in the system, that their vote is going to count, as it should. Again, that is what we do in Ohio.

I don't think this legislation furthers those objectives. Instead, I think it would amount to a Federal takeover of our election system, which has always been in the domain of the States.

Our government is built on a carefully constructed framework of checks and balances, including between the branches of government. I cannot support legislation that would run so counter to what the Framers of the Constitution intended and the election system that works well in my home State of Ohio.

I yield back.

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

Mr. President, I am here to talk about the escalating crisis on our southern border.

I am the ranking Republican, the senior Republican, on the Homeland Security Committee, which is a committee that has, among other things, oversight over what happens at the Department of Homeland Security and therefore at the border and with the Customs and Border Patrol and has other responsibilities. We have been looking at this issue carefully over the past few months. We have been trying to figure out how we can address this surge at the border that is really overwhelming the Border Patrol.

It is obviously about people, but it is also about drugs. Unfortunately, there are more and more drugs coming over the southern border as well, which, in effect, makes States like mine, Ohio--which is not on the southern border; we are actually on the northern border-- part of the border, in effect, because we are affected by what happens down there.

At one time, most of the most deadly drug, fentanyl, which is a synthetic opioid, was coming from China. Frankly, a lot of it was coming from the mail system, from our own Postal Service. We passed legislation here in this body. I have worked with Republicans and Democrats alike on it, and we have largely been able to deal with that issue, but those same drugs have now moved to Mexico, and now they are coming across our southern border. So, if you look at the amount of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids--again, the deadliest of all drugs at a time when more people are dying from overdoses in our country than ever in history--more and more of that is coming across the southern border in addition to the cocaine and crystal meth and other dangerous drugs that were already coming.

This is about the immigration system not working properly and having a huge surge of individuals--family members, unaccompanied kids. It is also about not having control of that border and having this contraband come over--in the case of these dangerous drugs--that is actually resulting in overdoses and deaths all over the United States, including in my State of Ohio.

So how can we tell that it is getting worse? I would just look at these numbers here. This is the latest from the Customs and Border Protection folks of its encounters at the southwest border.

Remember, we had a crisis in May of 2019, which was deemed to be the worst crisis of its kind, and it was pretty bad. We had a lot of unaccompanied kids coming at that time and a lot of family members as well as individuals. The high point was here at 144,000 individuals. We are now, as of May of 2021, which was last month, at 180,000.

Some of my colleagues have said: Well, it is getting better. I don't see that it is getting better, and the numbers don't say it is getting better. It is really at the point now where it is overwhelming those people whose jobs are to try to control the border. They just don't have the resources to be able to handle this.

It is also overwhelming our system all the way through. A lot of this is of families and kids coming in, as an example, and we don't have the facilities to take care of these children.

During this first period of time--here is the Biden inauguration. After the inauguration, this huge increase started to happen, and it was because policies were changed. A new President who is coming in has the right to change policies, but in my view, what a President doesn't have the right to do is to change policies without preparing for it.

It is one thing to say we are not going to have an emergency on the southern border anymore and that we are going to do away with title 42--a provision that says, if you have somebody coming over the border during COVID, he can be turned back--and immediately the President is saying: No,

we are not going to use that anymore for unaccompanied kids. They have also now not used it for most families coming over. So not having title 42 was a shock to the system. You had a situation where people were being turned away because of COVID one day, and the next day, they were not, and you can see the result.

By the way, these are people who come from all over the world, but a lot come from the Northern Triangle countries--the countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

Recently, the President of Honduras talked about this, and I know the President of Guatemala has talked about it. What the President of Guatemala has said, in essence, is that the traffickers, the smugglers, heard this. So they came down to our country and said: Let's go to the northern border and make that difficult and arduous journey--it is sometimes a very dangerous journey for these children--because the Biden administration has said that there would no longer be this title 42 in place so that we can turn you away at the border. In fact, he said: We want to reunite families and kids, and that means come to the border, and you can come into the country. That is what has happened.

Look, I believe we ought to have a legal immigration system that is very healthy in this country. I believe in immigration. I think it is a very important part of who we are as Americans. We take more people in legally every year than any other country in the world, and that is over a million people a year. I think that has been good for our country. It is part of the fabric of our society. We should want immigrants to come but to come in a legal and orderly way.

And not only is this surge overwhelming the border, but it is really not fair to all of those people who have been waiting in line for years and years to come to our country from a country like El Salvador or Honduras or Guatemala or Mexico, for that matter, people who want to come legally, people who are reuniting with their families legally here or have skills that we want in this country. We should encourage that. But this is happening in a way that is not orderly, and it is happening because there has been a change in policy.

The other big change in policy is that if you come, people were told--this is after the inauguration--then if you apply for asylum, meaning that you have a credible fear of persecution back home, so you apply for asylum, you will be allowed to come into the country. In other words, there won't be an adjudication of that. There won't be a decision made. Whether you apply properly or not, you will be told you can come into the country.

So I went down to the border a couple months ago and was able to go there with Secretary Mayorkas and my colleague on the committee, Senator Peters, who is the Democratic chairman of the committee, so it was a bipartisan group, and at that point, we were just overwhelmed with these children. At that point, the Border Patrol stations and the border detention facilities, which were primarily built, frankly, for single adults and were never built for long-term detention, were overwhelmed with children. You had children sleeping side by side during COVID--none of them being tested for COVID, by the way--and they didn't have blankets. They had sheets, essentially, that are--you know, no real warmth or padding. They were sleeping on the ground with pads underneath them. The system just couldn't handle it.

Now, at this point, most of those children are out of the Border Patrol system, and they are into the HHS system. HHS is the Agency that is supposed to take care of these kids. They can only be in the Border Patrol custody for a short period of time. That was being violated. They were staying there much longer than they were supposed to under law, but there was no place else for them to go. So now there have been HHS facilities that have been built and opened, and these HHS facilities are taking care of these kids.

I will say that some of my colleagues would say: Well, this is great news. You know, we have fewer children in Border Patrol custody; that is good. But they are still in American Government custody; they just switched from Border Patrol to HHS.

HHS has had a very hard time staffing up, and there have been, as you know, allegations of abuse. Some of these contracts that have been given to the private sector to run these HHS facilities have not been done in a proper way, and it has caused problems.

A lot of the people who were down there on the border helping with these kids do not have the right training. They are not trained to take care of kids--including, by the way, a lot of government employees who have volunteered to go down. God bless them. They are getting paid to go down there rather than do their work here in Washington, as an example, but they don't have the training.

So this creates a lot of issues, as you can imagine, when you have thousands and thousands of these kids showing up in unprecedented numbers. So that is what we are seeing on the border because of changes in policy.

Another change in policy that was made was not only were we no longer going to turn people away because of COVID without putting anything in its place to deal with all these claims, but, instead, there was a policy called the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy or the Migrant Protocol policy. Under that policy, people who came as families and applied for asylum were told: Fine, but you have to wait in Mexico rather than wait in the United States for your asylum claim to be adjudicated.

Frankly, a lot of those people ended up going back home because they were not brought into the United States, into the interior, as I said earlier, as the vast majority of people have been. They were instead told: You have got to wait in Mexico. They chose instead to go back to their home, mostly in Central America, rather than wait in Mexico. Those cases, once adjudicated, those people could come back and enter into our country if they were successful in their court case.

But this system is not working. If a trafficker or a smuggler goes to a family in Central America or elsewhere--there are a lot of immigrants now coming from other countries, including all over Latin America, Ecuador, and Nicaragua and other places. They say: Look, if you come with us, give me a lot of money as a trafficker, thousands of dollars, and if these kids come with me or you come with me as a family, we will get you into America, and you will have the opportunity to stay in America.

You know what, I have to say tonight on the floor of the U.S. Senate that those smugglers and traffickers are probably telling the truth, and that is the problem, because when they come to the border and they claim asylum, then instead of having that be adjudicated there at the border and determined--or saying: You need to wait on the other side of the border until we adjudicate this--what I would do on our side of the border, I would do the adjudications right there rapidly. Instead, they are saying: OK. Here is a bus pass or here is a plane ticket. Go to the interior of the United States. Go to your hometown, wherever it is, whoever is listening tonight--my hometown is Cincinnati, OH--go to Washington, DC, wherever, and then wait for your court case. You need to check in periodically.

Those court cases and the adjudications take years--on average, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 years, depending on who you talk to. Because a lot of these cases are appealed, that is maybe where you get to the 7 or 8 years. So that is a long period of time, right, when you are in the United States awaiting your court case. Why? Because there is a backlog--a huge backlog--of over a million cases. I think it is more like 1.3 million now. So that huge backlog and the lack of resources that have been devoted to the system and the fact that just because you apply for asylum, you get to come into the United States gives the trafficker the ability to say that, to say: Just let your kids come with me or come with me as a family member. Pay me a lot of money.

Unfortunately, a lot of these individuals, including kids, women and girls, get abused on the trip north from mostly, again, the Northern Triangle countries--Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras up to Mexico. Obviously there are a lot of issues with crossing the border itself in terms of going across the desert, and there are some terrible stories.

But the point is, they know that when they get to the United States,

they are going to be told not that ``You have to turn back,'' not that ``You have to stay here until we decide whether you actually are, you know, going to get asylum, whether you qualify for it,'' but instead ``Here is a bus ticket. Here is a plane ticket. Go into the interior and wait.''

Now, let's say that individual who goes to the interior does not show up for the court case. What happens? Well, in theory, there is a group called ICE, which is part of the immigration system that then, having kept track of that person, deports the person back to their home country. That is not happening, or at least it is not happening in the vast majority of cases.

For a while, it was that the administration--and, frankly, the previous administration had a similar policy for at least some time-- that we are going to focus on criminals. So those who are in the United States who are migrants coming up here who have a criminal record, we are going to deport them but not prioritize others who simply come here under an asylum claim and then do not show up at their court case or show up but do not leave the country.

But if you look at the deportation figures over the last several months of the Biden administration, you will see that that is just simply not happening. In fact, there were fewer deportations last month, I am told, than there are ICE agents. So I am not sure what they are doing.

But I do know that on this day, on the inaugural day, President Biden said to the world that we are going to stop deportations for a period of time. So that is added to this narrative that if you are a smuggler or a trafficker and one of these people who are taking advantage and exploiting these families and individuals and kids, you have got a narrative that is pretty strong where you can say: Hey, if you go to the border and you claim asylum, you come into the United States of America, and then we will see what happens. Unfortunately, right now we don't have a system in place to deal with that.

So that is a long way of saying we have a crisis on the border, and we are not facing up to it.

In a number of the hearings that I have been at on this topic, the administration witnesses go out of their way to say this is the fault of the Trump administration. Their argument is, as I understand it, that the Trump administration should have been prepared for this surge by putting in place during this time period a lot more of this infrastructure.

We talked about the HHS facilities, for instance, that were not ready, and therefore kids got stuck at the Border Patrol detention facilities.

Well, it is an interesting argument. I mean, they didn't have any issue here. They didn't have this surge. They did back in 2019, but they put policies in place to deal with it. You can argue whether those policies were right or not, but you can't then say: OK. They should have had all this infrastructure in place.

My point is, we need to own up to our own actions, and to blame the Trump administration for what is happening now in terms of the lack of infrastructure when the infrastructure wasn't needed, frankly, given the policies they had in place, I think is, frankly, just not a very constructive use of time. We should instead be focused on, OK, how do we take this situation and make it better and deal with it?

My own view, for what it is worth, is we start with enforcing the law, particularly along the border, and say to our Border Patrol: We are going to give you the support you need to be able to support keeping these drugs out and dealing with the immigration crisis in an appropriate way. Instead, we have done just the opposite.

So the first thing I would do is to say: Let's support those who are on the border. Let's tell them we are going to be there for them and provide them the resources they need to do their job. One of those things, of course, is to complete the fencing that was started during the Trump administration.

There are some in this body on the other side of the aisle and, of course, a lot in the Obama administration who did not support the wall; same with the new Trump administration--or, I am sorry, the new Biden administration. But the Trump administration decided to go ahead with the wall. They got the money for it. He started building it--not across the whole border but over about 20 percent of the border, which has often been misunderstood, but areas where it would make a difference, at least to slow people down.

I have always been of the view that the wall is not in and of itself an answer because if you don't have technology associated with the wall, people will go under it or over it and around it. You have to have the cameras and the sensors and so on to make the wall effective. That has not been completed.

What has been completed is most of the fencing, but then there are gaps in the fencing. And when I was down there, as everyone can testify who has been down to the border to see this, there are literally holes in the wall where they were going to put a gate in, but they hadn't completed it yet, and when the Biden administration came in, again, one of the things they did on day one, they said: Stop. Stop the construction--even though the contractors had already been paid to do this work.

So, literally, if you go to the El Paso sector, where I was, you go to an opening in the wall, there will be the construction material there on the ground, and there are no contractors there, and the Border Patrol, you can imagine, is demoralized by this. These people have already been paid to put up the gate, but they leave the gate open. So they have to be 24/7 physically present there to keep people from coming through those openings or just--which is what they do because they don't have the people to do it--just assume you are going to have a lot of crossings there when there is not Border Patrol there.

Instead, we should complete those very small sections of the wall that haven't been completed, and, again, it is mostly openings.

Then we should put the technology in place. We were told when we were down in El Paso in that sector that only 10 percent of the technology had been put in place for, let's say, you know, dozens of miles of wall--not thousands, not for even the area outside of the suburban and urban areas, but in the areas where it could slow people down to give the Border Patrol a chance to be able to respond. But the technology was stopped, again, on day one because President Biden said we are going to stop construction, stop--even though the contractors had been paid for this work.

So that, to me, is No. 1. Let's give the Border Patrol what they need in terms of personnel and equipment and specifically the technology. I think the technology is the most important part of this. And you do need the sensors, you do need the cameras, and you do need to know what is going on.

If smugglers are coming through with a bunch of drugs and they can divert the Border Patrol, which they do, with another group--let's say a group of unaccompanied children or families, where there is a lot of processing time involved--the Border Patrol will go to the one group, spend a lot of time processing, as they have to do, and in the meantime, the group coming with the drugs will sneak across. If you have the technology in place, you can avoid that, but if you don't, there is no way to deal with that crisis.

So, No. 1, let's take care of those along the border who are trying their best to do their work and don't have the support that they need.

No. 2, I think we need to reinstate some asylum policies that were starting to work effectively. Frankly, they hadn't been implemented fully during the Trump administration, so it is hard to tell. But one is allowing people who want to apply for asylum to apply in their home country or in a safe third country.

So think about this. I talked earlier--people who want to apply for asylum now are just coming to the border, and they are told, under an asylum claim, they can go into the interior of the United States. They are given maybe a notice to appear--actually, a lot of families are not even given a notice to appear anymore because they are just overwhelmed. We saw that, and I saw families who were literally given just a sheet of paper that had the addresses of where the ICE offices are in America, and they were told: We don't know where you are going in America, but wherever you go, go to this ICE office wherever, in your region, but no notice to appear in court. But whether they are given a notice to appear or not, they are going into the interior.

Instead, what if those people applied--not taking that dangerous journey north through Mexico but instead applied in their home country or applied in a safe third country?

And there were safe third-country agreements with the countries in the region--for instance, Guatemala--which, as you know, those who are in Guatemala are coming from El Salvador or Honduras or farther south. That makes a lot of sense to me. Those are discontinued for some reason. They really hadn't been put in place where they were implemented fully, but that would seem to me to be a very smart thing; that is, to tell people: If you want to apply for asylum, that is fine. Come to our consulate office and apply, or if you don't want to apply in your own country, perhaps because you do fear persecution, go to a third country and stay in a third country and apply. Doesn't that make sense?

Also, I think we should--and again, these should all be bipartisan ideas--give the Border Patrol the resources that they need. On third- country asylum applications, I know for a while there were a number of Democrats who strongly supported applying for asylum in your own home country. President Obama's administration did for some time.

But, third, I would require adjudication at the border. So when you come for asylum--and this is consistent with legislation that is bipartisan that Senator Sinema and Senator Cornyn introduced and I support--you have regional processing centers on the border. This will take some funds. It will be expensive because we don't have a system in place right now. As I said, there is a 1.2, 1.3 million backlog in asylum claims. That is when people have to wait 4, 5, 6, 7, years. Instead, have these on the border. Have these operations where somebody can come, claim asylum, and go before an immigration official, someone who can judge whether that asylum claim is credible or not.

A little background for this, if you come from these Northern Triangle countries or come from Mexico and claim asylum, only about 15 percent--that is 1-5, 15 percent--of these asylum claims are ultimately successful. Why? Because most people who are coming are coming for economic reasons, which I totally understand. If I were a father in Honduras in a rural area and I had no prospects for a job, I would want to gather up my family and come to the United States, because you can get a lot more financial security here for yourself and your family. That is totally understandable, but that is not the basis for an immigration system because, unfortunately, there are billions of people around the world in that kind of a situation. So it needs to be based on an orderly system where, yes, people can apply, as they do every day from Honduras and come through the legal immigration system, or if they have a credible fear, they can apply for asylum. But why not do it in these safe third countries or, when you come up to the border, do it at the border?

Again, let's assume 15 percent in the end qualify. Those 15 percent would be able to come in as asylees, much as refugees come into this country. It is basically the same criteria. I am not against the refugee system. I think we should accept refugees in this country, as other countries do, who have a credible fear of persecution in their own country and need a place to land. We have a successful system to do that. We have a system to resettle these people. There are agencies that specialize in that. A lot of them are private sector agencies.

So I think on the border is where we ought to put the funding. These regional processing centers ought to be there to help make the decision quickly--quickly--so that people don't have to wait 4 years, but instead they get an answer, yes or no, to be able to come into this country if they apply for asylum and they qualify for asylum.

Finally, I would say that we need to put a system in place to discourage illegal immigration that goes to the employer. And I know this is somewhat controversial on both sides of the aisle for different reasons, but to me, if an employer can hire someone who is illegal, because that person has documentation--say, a driver's license or Social Security card or something else that is fraudulent--there will be more and more illegal immigration because that is the magnet.

I know some say that people come to this country to take advantage of our social services and not to work. There may be some of that, but I will tell you, if you go to the border and talk to these migrants-- which I have done, and I did it again a couple of months ago and did it many times before--and ask them: Why are you coming to America? They are not saying they are coming to America to get on our social welfare system. They say they are coming to work because they know they can make 5 times, 10 times, maybe even from poor areas in Honduras 15 times what they can make in their own country. And they would like to bring their families and would like for them to have a better life and maybe send remittances back to their family. Well, again, that is an issue that we need to address in these third world countries, but in the meantime we need to have an orderly system of immigration, and if you allow employers to hire people without any consequence, then, this will continue to happen.

So what is the answer to that? Well, one is to have an E-Verify system that really works. That means you have to verify electronically whether someone is eligible to work in the United States. And the small business owner should not be the police officer. It should be easy to do. It should be a software system that enables them to find out immediately whether that Social Security card is fraudulent or not. That includes looking at the Social Security number online and deciding: Is this number connected to this person?

It also, I think, is going to have to require a photograph and looking at the photograph and determining whether the person is who the person says he or she is. But this can be done with the new technologies that we have. Right now we have E-Verify in place, but it is not mandatory. Don't you think it should be mandatory? Because if you dry up the job opportunities for people coming illegally, then you will not have this magnet of pulling people over the border.

Again, legal immigration ought to be encouraged. We ought to bring in refugees. Asylees who qualify ought to be given asylum in this country. That is who we are. We are a country that has always welcomed the stranger. But do it in an orderly and lawful way.

If we don't do that, we will continue to see a border being overwhelmed. We will continue to see this. There is no reason for this to change based upon current policy. These simple steps that I talk about could all be bipartisan. This is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of commonsense approaches that have been taken by Republican and Democrat administrations over the years. We can make a big difference here.

There is a small program called the Central American Minors Program, which was reinstated just this week, and it helps with regard to unaccompanied kids coming from Central America. I support that program. I am glad the Biden administration put it in place, and I have been told by Biden administration officials at the highest level at DHS that this is the answer. Well, we had something like 19,000 kids coming over the border in one month, and thousands a day. In that system in the Obama years, when it was in place, the Central American Minors Program only had 3,000 or 4,000 kids come through it over 10 weeks, or something like that. So we had more children coming over in 2 days than they did in that entire program.

I am not suggesting that the program is a bad idea. Let's do that. But if you don't do these other things, too, you are not going to make a dent in this issue.

And, again, our hearts go out to some of these individuals. They have a tough time in their countries, and we wish their countries were more like ours. We wish that they had more economic opportunities, more freedom, and that they had a democracy and a market system that actually works for the people. That is not the reality now.

I know the administration is focused on saying the answer to this question is dealing with the push-backers, dealing with, as Vice President Kamala Harris said during her trip, the source of the problem, which is the poverty in Central America. Well, I will say, No. 1, there are migrants coming from all over the world, from Central America, of course--and that continues, and that

is a very poor part of our hemisphere--but also from many other countries, including Mexico, including people from Romania, from Yemen. I am just looking here--from Ecuador, from Colombia, from countries all over Latin America. So it is a big problem.

Again, there are billions of people in the world who unfortunately don't have the kind of lifestyle that we have in this country and aspire to it. So you have to have an immigration system of some kind.

Second, I would make the point that the administration is talking about spending $4 billion in Central America. I suppose that is over the next few years. It should be noted that we just spent $3.6 billion on economic development in those same countries over the past 5 years.

So I am for that. I think we should be helping these countries develop. I was for a trade agreement with these countries to try to encourage their economic development.

I am for helping to deal with the corruption and dealing with the kind of lack of transparency and lack of opportunity in these countries. That is all good. The judicial system and the rule of law need to be strengthened--no question about it. I am for doing that.

These countries are in our hemisphere. They should be treated, in my view, differently than even countries elsewhere in the world because they are close to us. They are our neighbors, essentially. But that is not going to solve the problem--certainly, not during my lifetime. It will take decades, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. And we have been doing it. Some $3.6 billion of hard-earned taxpayer money has gone toward this in the last 5 years.

But I don't think it is honest to tell the American people: If we just spend a little more money in Central America, this problem will be solved.

Wouldn't that be nice, if we could wave a magic wand and it could be solved and suddenly those countries would be prosperous and free?

It is going to take a long time. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't be doing it, but in the meantime we have to come up with a system that is lawful, that is orderly, that is humane, and that deals with this problem. And by putting our heads in the sand or blaming the previous administration--again, here is their record--that is not going to solve the problem. In fact, it is going to create an impression that the problem is easy to solve, which it is not. It is a difficult problem-- no question about it. And broader immigration reform is something that is needed--no question about that.

But, in the meantime, let's focus on the border. Let's do these simple things. Let's support the Border Patrol. Let's be sure that they have what they need in terms of technology. Let's be sure that we are doing all we can to have asylees apply in their country, or, if not, in a third country. If they come to our border, let's adjudicate those claims at the border, because then the next group will say: Well, I am not going to get to come into the United States and wait for 4 or 5 years and get embedded in the community. I am going to have to have my case decided at the border.

It is much more likely that those traffickers, those smugglers who are exploiting these people are not going to be able to say--again, with some credibility right now: Hey, you come with me. You pay me a lot of money. I will take you not just to the border, but you will get into America, and you will be able to have a life there because you won't be deported.

That is what they can say now. We want them instead to be saying: Well you are going to have to have your case adjudicated at the border, and you may be qualified.

Again, 15 percent have made it through, and those are people who should be taken care of, in my view, as asylees. But for those other individuals, they will know that it is much better to apply legally, to go through the system, and to have the opportunity to go through an orderly, legal process.

So I hope that the administration makes some of these changes quickly because I don't see this situation getting any better. In fact, in May it got worse, despite everyone saying from DHS, with whom I spoke: Don't worry. Things are getting better.

I don't see that. There is a looming date--I think it is the end of July--when title 42 will no longer apply to single individuals. Right now, title 42, which I talked about earlier, which is where, because of COVID, the United States government is turning people away at the border. Right now, this is happening with regard to single individuals. When title 42 ends, which it will at the end of what is the COVID-19 public health emergency, which expires soon, then what is going to happen?

Well, I can tell you, the Border Patrol is very, very nervous about that. That is one question they ask me repeatedly: What are we going to do when we can't use title 42 and when people know that, when they come into this country, they are not likely to get deported?

That is a short-term issue we have to deal with. Congress could extend title 42 for now. We still have a COVID issue, not just in this country. Thank goodness we are getting over it, but it is a much bigger issue, unfortunately, south of the border, in all of these countries we talked about, including some of these countries in South America that are having a serious issue right now with COVID. You could continue with it, in my view, as a public health emergency. But, in any case, let's not do this--get rid of, as an example, title 42 without preparing for it. Let's be sure there is in place something else, something better to be able to deal with the obvious surge that we have seen.

So I appreciate the fact that this is a tough issue, and I know that some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would probably prefer that we not get into these difficult issues because they are hard.

I do see that the Presiding Officer has now arrived, with whom I have worked quite a bit on this issue, and we have a specific piece of legislation that helps to deal with this issue, that helps to deal with the surge.

That legislation is bipartisan. It creates a strategic plan and a contingency fund for immediate needs at the border when there is a surge to deal with the DHS issue I talked about earlier when the Border Patrol just gets overwhelmed.

That is another part of what we ought to do, is to be honest about the problem and to deal with it. It is called the Border Response Resilience Act, and it enables the Department of Homeland Security to respond to the worst immigration crisis that we have had in at least 20 years. I would hope that--again, that is a bipartisan approach--that we could at least pass that and then take the other four steps that I talked about to ensure that we have an orderly system that actually works and to be sure we can retain the sovereignty of our border, keeping the list of drugs out, like synthetic opioids and like fentanyl, that are killing so many Americans, and that we have an orderly and lawful and humane immigration system.

With that, I yield back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.