Investing In America

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I compliment my distinguished colleague from New York on his remarks. I would like to add a few observations of my own, but first I want to echo very much what he said. What the President did last night was to point a finger toward the future, and some people were just capable of seeing the finger. But for most people, they saw where he was pointing, and he has pointed us toward an important future for our country. These are the issues we are going to have to address in the decades ahead, and we have to be prepared now. I want to touch on about three areas he pointed to. The first, of course, is infrastructure. I am not the only person in America who has noticed our crumbling infrastructure. Everybody who drives on our roads, everybody who goes across our bridges, everybody who has been to our water and sewage plants knows we have underinvested in those areas for decades.

As the President pointed out last night, America's own engineers give America a D for the status of our infrastructure. The Environmental Protection Agency has estimated that we have $662 billion in total capital needs for clean water and drinking water investments over the next 10 years--$662 billion that we need to put into our water and water treatment system in the next 10 years. By contrast, in the so-called stimulus bill, we put in $6 billion; 1 percent of what we need. We have a lot of work we still have to do to make sure America has the clean water treatment and drinking water it needs.

The infrastructure question is not just about infrastructure the Romans could have built. It is not just about roads and bridges and waterworks. The President referred to a Sputnik moment many years ago and President Kennedy's drive to get us up into space and to accelerate our space program.

When President Kennedy pushed to put a man on the Moon within 10 years and bring him safely home, what that delivered was not just a man on the Moon. What it delivered was the technology that allowed a company called COMSAT, a public-private corporation, to put up into space the satellite technology that became the infrastructure of our modern communications system. That was done because of that call to action.

It is not just our communications system that is core infrastructure, as well as our roads and our bridges and our waterworks, it is also our information technology system, particularly in health care. When we build a robust health information infrastructure--so that as an American you are no longer carrying your cardboard file-covered records from appointment to appointment, no longer having to explain who you are and what you have and what medications you are on and why you are there for the umpteenth time because the doctor has not seen your file because it is not available to him electronically--when we fix all that so your pharmacy, your specialist, the laboratories you go to, the hospital, if you have had to visit one, are all connected to your primary care provider who is directing the care for your condition, that is a piece of infrastructure that, like our health care infrastructure, will enable enormous growth in the private sector.

That is what infrastructure does. Roads are not valuable because people go out with picks and shovels and bulldozers and asphalt pavers and make them. They are valuable because once they are made, commerce runs across them and the private sector expands. That is just as true of communications and information technology and broadband and our energy grid. We need to invest in infrastructure, and we need to think about our modern infrastructure, not just the infrastructure the Romans could build.

The other point the President made that was critically important is that American manufacturing is not now competing on a level playing field with our foreign opponents. Many people have said this was a very ``America first'' speech; that the President seemed more nationalistic than he has been before. I suspect that is because in his years as President, it has been driven home to him how many disadvantages our foreign competition puts our manufacturers at. It is not fair. It creates immense disabilities for them and real handicaps, and we have to put American manufacturing back on a level playing field with their competitors around the globe.

I can go to the Cranston Print Works Company in Rhode Island, which is one of the last remaining vestiges of the vaunted Rhode Island textile industry. It was Rhode Island's textile industry that started the industrial revolution. Rhode Island's textile industry propelled Rhode Island to have more millionaires per capita than any other State in the country. Now it has winnowed away, winnowed away, and companies such as Cranston Print Works that has been able to hang on and survive and be successful keenly know how bad the disadvantages are.

You could have their CEO, George Shuster, give you a speech about how in almost every dimension of their operations they are at a disadvantage, and very often a disadvantage that America has created, against their foreign competition. I just want to mention one.

I have introduced the Offshoring Prevention Act because if George Shuster were to take his facility in Rhode Island and move it overseas, he could choose the year he declared his profits and defer them to the most advantageous tax year. When he stays in Rhode Island, he has to declare his profits in that year no matter what. There is no reason on Earth we should reward an American company that moves its processes overseas with a tax deferral advantage that they do not get when they are here at home. My Offshoring Prevention Act would prevent that.

The last thing I want to say--because I see my distinguished colleague from Arizona on the Senate floor and I want to make sure I leave him time--is just a word about our long-term debt. I was immensely gratified the President took a firm position to defend Social Security. We who are familiar with the actual facts know that Social Security has never contributed a dime to our deficit, never contributed a dime to our debt, and that it is solvent for more than a quarter century ahead of us. It is not an immediate problem, and with very small adjustments it can be never a problem.

In States such as Rhode Island and New York, and I suspect Arizona as well, we have people who count on Social Security. Social Security gives us freedom. Social Security gives our seniors freedom from want and freedom from fear. It gives them freedom from privation and freedom from poverty. It gives the younger generation freedom to pursue their own dreams, knowing their parents will have a dignified old age because of Social Security, and they can take risks and seek opportunities they would never otherwise be able to take if they knew they were the only support for their parents in their old age, if the only thing that stood between their parents and penury was them. Thankfully, Social Security gives that liberty to young people across this country, as well as the freedom it gives to old people. So I am delighted he took this stand and that Social Security will not be improperly thrown under the bus of the important debt and deficit reduction work we need to do.

With that, I will yield. I see, again, Senator McCain on the Senate floor. He is a distinguished Senator and a great friend, and I do not want to take time from him.

I yield the floor.

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