Transcript of Press Conference on Infrastructure Funding at Broken County Bridge in Delray
West Palm Beach – Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark, Congresswoman Lois Frankel, Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Congresswoman Frederica Wilson for a press conference highlighting the need for infrastructure funding. Below are the Speaker's remarks:
Speaker Pelosi. Thank you, Katherine Clark. I hear we have some accompaniment back there. That doesn't bother me – as a mother of five, I have always made my voice heard. I'm so thrilled to be here today with all of you.
Let me begin by saluting Kiki again for giving us the flag to remind us that children are suffering, that people are fighting for democracy in Ukraine. Kiki, come up so we can see you. Come here, Kiki. Tell them what you are doing, Kiki.
Kiki Casale. So we are gathering, or – well, yes, we still are gathering donations for the Ukrainian children going through funding programs. We are giving out flags today to spread the word, but we don't need donations today since we are – have been very successful. And we're just hoping that we can get out of this humanitarian crisis, because it's very horrible and nobody should be going through this, especially not children.
Speaker Pelosi. Thank you, Kiki. From the mouths of babes, the wisdom of it all. And our children are our future. All of America's children. All the world's children. And For The Children, we wanted to Build a Better America.
This is pretty exciting today, for me, because as a personal friend of President George Bush, I can't wait to tell him that we all gathered here to fix a bridge in his name. A bridge much older than he is, but nonetheless a bridge that we all care very much about. And this is – what are bridges, but to connect us? To connect us – and when that connection comes down, it affects so many people.
I want to thank the mayors. Mayor Weinroth, thank you for your welcome, for your leadership in transportation and medicine, in so many ways and seeing the connection of all that — and bringing your private sector experience to the public arena, so that we can have great solutions that are sustainable. And Mayor Petrolia, thank you for your leadership, as well, as the Mayor of Delray Beach. It's lovely to be welcomed here. I wish I could stay longer. I can't wait to come back.
But in addition to your work on transportation – all matters of civic, thank you for your interest in climate issues, which are infrastructure issues, and the arts, which are connecting issues which unify us. Thank you, Mayor Petrolia, for that.
I'm very honored to be here with my colleagues. They have gone through it to say what is in this legislation. I won't repeat that, but I do want to break down the $19 billion: $13.1 billion to repair highways, $2.6 billion to improve public transit, $1.2 billion to upgrade airports, $100 billion to expand broadband, $1.6 billion to put – for cleaner drinking water, to get the lead out of the water that our children drink. Cleaner water.
So this legislation is really very important to the sustainability of our communities – and again, as we Build Back Better. And one other point I want to make that was important – that has been and continues to be important to President Biden, is that this legislation is building infrastructure with equity and with justice. To raise pass – dividing up community by building a highway through a neighborhood. This instead reverses that. And to do so – and with environmental justice, so that everyone can be healthier because of what we do. And building infrastructure is pretty exciting.
It started with Thomas Jefferson. He started with his Gallatin Plan over 200 years ago to build the Cumberland Road, the Erie Canal, into the Lewis and Clark Expedition and Louisiana Purchase. One hundred years later, President Teddy Roosevelt celebrated the 100th anniversary of that by building his infrastructure proposal for America, the National Park Service. The green infrastructure of America.
So here we are, 100 years later, in great need. We know that the most expensive maintenance is no maintenance. We see that here. Sometimes we don't have all of the information we need, because we don't have all the money we need to check on our infrastructure to make sure that it is – and I'll use this word again and again: safe. This is about safety.
It's about commerce, getting product to and from market. It's about health, about clean air, so that we have more people spending less time on the road, more time either in mass transit, or just more quickly going from one destination to the next because of improvements in infrastructure. The quality of life, saving of time, but also helping keep the air clean. So it's about safety. It's about – it's about commerce. It's about health care. It's about a better America.
And it's pretty exciting to be here today, in Delray Beach, where we come together with a challenge that is doable. You have analyzed the problem. I've read some of the details about the broken shaft, maybe there are other – other things that have to be put to the test. But pretty soon, people will have a direct route, not have to go miles around. And that's really important, because it's about time. It's about clean air. It's about commerce. It's about everything that we do. I want to just say that Lois Frankel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Katherine Clark – three of the Members who are here are Members of the Appropriations Committee. Charlie Christ, as well. And what happened with the bill that the President signed two days ago, in addition to the infrastructure bill, is that the appropriations bill freed, freed billions of dollars, so that it could be spent. Thank you, appropriators, for that.
[Applause]
Our sister, Frederica Wilson, she said she was a leader, one of the top primary authors of the infrastructure legislation as a Member of the Infrastructure and Transportation Committee, which she insisted on being on when she came to Congress. She also insisted on being on the Education and Labor Committee, where she heads a committee that is about workforce development — and you cannot separate workforce development from what we are doing here, where we're training new people with apprenticeships and having more women and people of color and others participate in Building America Back – America Better. So thank you Frederica for being on both sides of who builds and what is built. Thank you, Frederica Wilson.
[Applause]
And Representative Cherfilus-McCormick wasn't there for the infrastructure bill. But she came in time to free up those billions of dollars in the appropriations bill. And she has been effective from the start on the Education and Workforce Committee, but also there from day one for America's veterans. Thank you. Thank you for that.
[Applause]
So again, there's so much to say about the bill – others have said it. We have questions further — we have handouts that describe this even more than we heard today. But this is really important. It was important to us that it was, for some part, bipartisan. And we hope to continue that. The bill that we did that the President signed Tuesday was bipartisan, that freed up this money. So to this extent, infrastructure has always been bipartisan. Apparently not quite – but bipartisan in the country, and we want to keep it that way, because we've only just begun to Build a Better America. Thank you.
[Applause]
I also want to thank all the other local officials and leaders in the community that are going to be Building Back Better, whether that's how they characterize it or not. I want to just say this: in the Congress – in a bill that we passed one year ago – we observed the one year anniversary this week. It was called the Rescue Package. American Rescue Package is ARP. That bill is over $150 billion to state and local government. I'm particularly proud about the money to the local governments, municipalities, cities, towns, counties, because it was a recognition that so much of the work that meets the needs of the American people is done at the local level. And because your local officials have done their jobs so well, to make it easier for us to make the case that this money should be coming directly – not through the – at the discretion of the governor. Hopefully the governor will get money to the localities, but we wanted to make sure that they had their own, shall we say, opportunities afforded, for funding.
But it could – I mean, I'm very proud of the work that our Members have done, but inside maneuvering can do just so much. The outside mobilization – I thank all of you for what you did to make sure we kept that in the package and that it remains intact. Thank you to all local officials. To Build Back Better.
[Applause]
***
Q. Hi, Madam Speaker, will you take a question? We're the local CBS station.
Speaker Pelosi. I'd be happy to. But, and I'll – whatever it is I want to – answer before I respond. But what I want to say is, first we'd like to stay on the subject of this bridge and infrastructure if anybody has a question about that.
Q. It's about that ma'am.
Speaker Pelosi. Okay.
Q. My name is Mike. Hi, nice to meet you.
Speaker Pelosi. Hi, Mike.
Q. So, the question comes from some critics of this package – are concerned about the way this work will be funded, that it's debt financed and that it's coming from unused COVID-19 funds. I wonder if you could speak to that concern.
Speaker Pelosi. Let me just say that those concerns – those allegations are coming from people who did not even support the funding. It's just ‘vote no and take the dough.' And then to explain – to explain why they didn't vote for it, they tried to make an excuse, but that's not the reason. It is paid for. And that is – I'm glad you brought that up, because what we have been doing has been paid for, whether it's what we have in the BBB – which we still want to get some of that done – is paid for.
Now, if they don't like the way it's paid for, many of those suggestions were bipartisan – came from the Republican side of the aisle – but that is a false claim.
Q. And a follow up to that is about the allocation of these funds. You touched on that a little bit in your comments, that you think this is best decided by the state. We give the state the money, they figure out how to use it.
Speaker Pelosi. I said the exact opposite.
Q. Okay.
Speaker Pelosi. Mike, I said the exact opposite.
Q. Okay. I guess I'm confused on that. You guys decide?
Speaker Pelosi. No. We have two pots. There's a pot that the state has, and there's certain things for transportation and issues that states deal with primarily. But when we did this in the CARES Act, we had a small amount of money in the CARES Act only going only to the states. But many of the states did not give any of the funding to the localities. Counties do a lot of the health – deliberate health care services. Cities and municipalities do much of the education, police, fire, first responders, transportation. So many things are done at the local level. And we wanted localities to have their ability to show how they meet the needs of their constituents.
And it's worked very well. What did you get in this last pot? 200? 209 million – $290 million. That's a lot of money that the counties would not have had without this legislation.
Any other questions, or are Mike and I just going to have a conversation?
[Laughter]
Thank you, Mike.
Q. Speaker Pelosi, bridge safety – including the death of a woman not far north from here. Several bridge-tenders have actually been fired as a result.
Speaker Pelosi. You're asking a local problem. I'm going to have to defer to local folks about that.
Q. My question is, will federal dollars come to specific safety and equipment issues like that (inaudible).
Speaker Pelosi. It's really hard to hear you. But if you are talking about localities and allocation of local funds, I am going to defer to the localities. That's the beauty of it. It's up to their discretion.
***
Q. There are a lot of supply chain issues. And some of these improvement proposals are supposed to help supply chain issues. Can you give us any idea of timeline on that?
Speaker Pelosi. I'm so glad you brought up the supply chain because that is the issue that we are dealing with now. None of this is the end. It's all a process of doing more.
And we – right now, we passed our bill in the House a couple weeks ago. And the bill has passed in the Senate – will go to conference — on supply chain.
We want to have America to be independent, America to be self-sufficient, and America to not be dependent on supplies from countries that may not be friendly or may have standards of environment and work with pay and treatment that is so below our standard, that we could not compete with that. And we don't want to race to the bottom – have a higher standard.
So this legislation – since you asked, maybe more than you want to know – is called the America COMPETES Act of 19 – of 2022. The America COMPETES Act of 2022. This is the President's vision about how we have our supplies so that we can be more self-sufficient.
The first piece of it is $52 billion, just to address the supply of chips. Do you know how many chips are in a car? One thousand. Do you know how many chips are in an electric car? Two thousand. So our auto industry is not able to compete and just produce effectively unless we address the supply of chips. $52 billion for chips and semiconductors.
Then we go to the supply chain piece of it – has over $40 billion in how we bring jobs and production back to the United States. It's very exciting. It's very innovative. It's very entrepreneurial. It's fresh thinking about keeping America independent and self-sufficient.
And the third piece of that relates to – so much that our colleagues, they're involved in all of this – but the piece about the surge in education. And having many more people participate – no brain going to work. Many more people participate in how we go forward, in that independence and that self-sufficiency.
And the supply chain is directly – when supply is down, costs go up. So increasing supply will lower cost. That's very important to us. Pay for the legislation, as we do – again, does not increase the national debt. Does not increase cost. So all – every measure that we have is, how do we lower cost to the consumer? How do we lower the cost to the taxpayer? To the national debt? It is a very, very exciting time, and the chips bill will be bipartisan.
[Applause]
Q. Speaker Pelosi, are you at all worried about the four Congressional seats opening up in Florida this year?
Speaker Pelosi. You want to talk politics? Here we are – you don't even have your lines yet. You get your lines, then we'll talk. Well let me just say – I may be allowed, since you asked the question – Democrats have absolutely no intention of losing the House.