Floor Speech: Delaware priorities in the CJS-THUD-Ag appropriations bill

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon because this week the Senate has a chance to take another crucial step away from the political cliffs and manufactured crises of previous years and to get back to the regular order – to get back to the considered, measured, orderly process on this floor that for so long was characteristic of this body, in the past considered the greatest deliberative body on Earth, but in recent years it has ground to a halt.

It is critical that we return to regular order and that we return to the steady consideration of appropriations bills in a way that will move not just the Senate and this Congress but this country forward. 

I thank the chair and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, Senators Mikulski and Shelby, for their leadership and their steadfast determination to work in a bipartisan manner and bring us back to regular order.

We are considering today a collection – or what is called today a “minibus” instead of an omnibus – of three appropriations bills: Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration; Commerce, Justice, and Science; and Transportation and Housing and Urban Development – an unbelievable scope across these three appropriations bills that could in combination make a real and significant difference for our communities, our States, and our country. This is an opportunity for this Congress to carry out its duties to provide oversight and direction and to help all the different agencies I just named move forward and address some of our most important priorities.

As a member myself of the Appropriations Committee, I have advocated for some of what are our Nation’s top priorities embedded in these three important bills. So I wish to speak for a few minutes about how these bills will, first, help my home State of Delaware; second, help our country; and then, third, the important obligation we have as Senators to return to regular order and to use the appropriations process for oversight and for management of this whole Federal project.

For Delaware, these three bills invest in a number of areas. I could talk about literally dozens of matters critical to my home State, but let me focus on two – public safety and infrastructure.

When we think about it at the local level – where I served for a decade in county government – these are the foundation of what government does and does well: Keep our people, homes, communities, and families safe, and provide for the sewer water, drinking water, and the highways and tollways and bridges and ports that are critical to moving commerce and our country forward. 

This bill extends children’s advocacy centers. Let me talk for a few minutes about what children’s advocacy centers are and why it is so vital to public safety.

Children’s advocacy centers allow communities to bring child abusers to justice without re-traumatizing their victims. Children’s advocacy centers are unique because it is a model that brings together, under one roof in one place, law enforcement, prosecutors, counselors, and child service professionals – all focusing on how to best care for and move forward with a child who has been a victim of abuse. 

In Delaware we have three centers – one in each of our three counties. And although I wish we didn’t need them, the fact is they are indispensable. In my experience in a decade of local government, I was exposed over and over to the critical role they play in helping law enforcement secure critical evidence and move forward to conviction against the monsters who commit abuse against our children.

Since the creation of these centers, they have transformed our Nation’s response to child abuse, giving families hope and guidance in their darkest moments and delivering justice to those who have endured the worst. 

As we work together to continue to try our best to keep our children safe, this bill allows us to continue to fund child advocacy centers so we can have a more efficient, more effective, more federally sponsored and coordinated way to deliver at a very modest cost this vital resource for our children. 

Second, as we work to keep our children safe, this bill also allows us to protect those who protect us. Every day more than 1 million law enforcement officers across this country accept risks to their personal safety. As they leave their families at dawn and head off to their jobs, they know that what they accept as part of their mission is the risk they may not come home that night. That is why it is so important this bill also funds the bulletproof vest partnership. 

In Delaware we know its value all too well. Last February at the New Castle County Courthouse in my hometown of Wilmington, DE, a gunman unleashed a hail of bullets into a courthouse lobby, tragically killing two. On what was a difficult morning in Wilmington, two lives were also saved – those of Sergeant Michael Manley and Corporal Steve Rinehart – members of the Delaware Capitol Police – officers who were wearing bulletproof vests funded by the Federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership. This is a partnership launched by my predecessor, now-Vice President Biden. It has been sustained on a bipartisan basis for many years, but without this appropriation, this vital Federal-State-law enforcement partnership would grind to a halt.

Vests work. They save lives. They save officers’ lives, and with this bill we will be able to ensure even more officers all across this country have lifesaving bulletproof vests.

Those are two areas where in law enforcement and public safety this bill continues critical investments in partnership from the Federal Government to State and local governments.

In recent weeks in Delaware we have also been reminded of just how critical our infrastructure is – our bridges, our roads, and highways.

There is a bridge on I-495 that goes across the Christina River. This is a vital highway for Wilmington and for the whole mid-Atlantic region. It carries 90,000 drivers a day, but 2 weeks ago it was closed indefinitely when workers nearby noticed four of its pillars were off plumb, were slanted, and then upon further investigation discovered there were cracks in the very foundation holding this bridge 50 feet in the air. Its closure is hurting families, businesses, and commuters, and it is just one in a string of recent emergencies all across our country that demonstrate the need for investment in fixing America’s roads and bridges.

The funding we are considering this week in this bill recognizes that and takes steps to address some of our most urgent needs across this country. It continues to invest in two innovative funding vehicles: One called TIGER grants and another called TIFIA loans. These are acronyms, but they are inventive ways to mobilize private capital in partnership with States and the Federal Government, to get us moving again in repairing and upgrading the roads and bridges of America. They help State and local governments pay for new highways and bridges, public transit projects, railways, and ports.

In Delaware, the Port of Wilmington – a critical economic engine for our State and region – secured a $10 million TIGER grant last year to renovate facilities built in 1922. On U.S. 301, a little south and west of Wilmington but still in Delaware, TIFIA grants are helping us to do critical work to relieve congestion. 

In southernmost Delaware at Georgetown, at the Sussex County Airport, we have also seen the vital role and the value of Federal investment. Since 2012, the Sussex County Airport has received $4 million in airport improvement grants to expand its runway and improve safety and to help grow manufacturing jobs at that Georgetown Airport. With this week’s bill, we will be able to continue making these kinds of critical improvements at airports in Delaware and across our country. 

I relatively rarely get to fly, but I commute virtually every day back and forth from Wilmington, DE, to Washington, and I ride on Amtrak when I do so. Today, ridership levels are at a record high, and Delaware’s region in the Northeast corridor brings in $300 million in profits alone. So it is good this bill maintains Amtrak’s national operations and investments in its capital needs, but I believe we need to do more. We need to step up and do more federally to invest if we want to keep these results, not just in the Northeast but across the country.

We have a more than $6 billion backlog to reach a state of good repair for Amtrak. As our bridges, tunnels, and rail lines get older and older, fixing them will only become more expensive. That is why I intend to offer an amendment to this bill to further increase our investment in the capital needs of Amtrak. This is critical. It is something we need, and we need to start chipping away at this long overdue debt we have, this unaddressed infrastructure debt, if we are going to continue to serve our communities.

There are many other great provisions in these incredibly broad bills that are of national and international importance. Let me just briefly reference a few.

At home manufacturing continues to be critical to our economy and our future, and bio-manufacturing plays an increasingly important role; the manufacturing of products and materials from renewable sources, from plant-based sources rather than petrochemicals. For the first time, through this bill, we will dedicate $15 million to the National Science Foundation’s budget for new bio-manufacturing initiatives that will allow us to deploy in the marketplace new inventions and innovations.

Our competitors aren’t holding back on doing so. Countries from the United Kingdom to China are ramping up their investments in new bio-manufacturing. In my view it is time for the United States to refocus our research, to reprioritize our investments, and to stay competitive in this vital field. 

Finally, I am proud these appropriations bills also support in the housing area funding for Community Development Block Grant – CDBG – Programs. We used them when I was in county government in Delaware to help rehabilitate homes, to help provide for affordable homes, and to help strengthen and sustain jobs in our communities. 

In 2013, so-called CDBG, or Community Development Block Grants, helped 225 families. Some in this body have tried to cut CDBG, but I am thrilled we have been able to successfully move forward and sustain its support in this bill.

While we invest at home, these appropriations bills also make important investments abroad. One I would like to briefly highlight is in our international food aid program, where we feed millions but can do more. This bill provides for flexibility of our food aid that will allow it to be delivered more efficiently, more quickly, and to feed more who hunger around the world.

As businesses also look abroad from the United States, we are doing more to open new markets for them. One of the investments I most value that is in this bill in this regard is the expansion of the Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce – in particular, its expansion in Africa, where 7 out of 10 of the fastest growing economies in the world are currently growing but where the United States isn’t doing enough to take advantage of these burgeoning export markets for our products.

As chair of the African Affairs Subcommittee, I have had a chance to see up close the great opportunities for growth and partnership that Africa offers. There will be four new Foreign Commercial Service offices in Angola, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Mozambique, as well as expansion in Kenya, Ghana, Morocco, and Libya. Now we can make investments in them jointly so our growing partnerships in the Sub-Saharan countries I listed can thrive.

As I close, I also make one brief point about why this whole process is important – why we need to pass these appropriations bills rather than just continuing resolutions, which go on from year after year, that sustain funding but do not engage the minds and skills of the Members of this body in doing oversight of the Federal Government.

As the Federal Government changes, as our Nation’s needs change, we need to be able to ensure that our spending and our focus adapts as well. 

A great example from this particular minibus bill that is on the floor today is the Crude By Rail Safety Initiative. Within the last year there have been a number of accidents on our rail networks that demand our action. America is moving more and more oil and hazardous products by rail every year, so we are putting in place an approach to do it safely.

The Department of Transportation and Transportation Secretary Foxx have done a great job responding with the resources and tools they have, but Congress needs to do more. That is why this bill adds 20 new rail and hazardous materials inspectors, adds $3 million to ensure that oil routes are safe and sound, creates a new short-line safety institute, improves classifications, and extends training for first responders. 

Without this appropriations bill and regular order, new and timely investments such as these that are responsive to conditions of the world wouldn’t happen. Thus, if I might say in closing, while our economy changes, we need to change, and we need regular order and regular appropriations bills to be able to do that.

I again thank the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senators Mikulski and Shelby, for their leadership and their efforts to shepherd a bipartisan process forward. It is critical to our country, our economy, and our future.

Floor speech: Urging Congress to act on climate change

Madam President, I come to the floor of the Senate today to speak about an issue that is of urgent concern to me and should be of urgent concern to all of us.

That issue is global warming, or climate change.

This is a personal issue for me. As the father of three, along with any other parent, I say that my kids are never far from my mind and my heart. This is true for me as a father as well as a United States Senator, where every day I have to ask the question, what kind of example am I setting? What kind of a world are my actions going to lead to, and what sort of a world will I leave my children, and will it be better than the one my parents left to me? 

Madam President, last summer I experienced one of the great joys of parenthood, a family trip. My wife Annie and I took our three children, Maggie, Michael, and Jack, and we went to visit one of our nation’s most spectacular places, the mountains and glaciers of Glacier National Park in Montana. There was one hike in particular on our summer trip that I’ll never forget. It was our hike to visit historic Grinnell Glacier. Now if we had taken this hike more than 60 years ago, here’s what we would have seen. Mountains deep in glaciers, thick with ice and snow, covered in the glaciers that gave this national park its name.

Yet, last year as we took a long and winding hike up the trails, we came up and over the last rise, what we saw was noticeably different, strikingly so because most of what is left today of the iconic Grinnell Glacier in the summer is really a chilly pool of water and a largely empty valley floor. You can see the difference in these two pictures, and this is just in one lifetime. Since 1966, Grinnell Glacier has lost half its total acreage. And as we continue to warm our planet, these changes will only accelerate. And my children – our children – won’t just lose the chance to see beautiful glaciers in an iconic national park, but the chance to live in a world as robust and safe and healthy and vibrant as the one their parents were born into.

Madam President, as our global population keeps growing towards nine billion and developing nations keep seeking higher living standards, and climate change accelerates, this is the foundational challenge of the 21st century.

Climate change impacts everything. Human health, agriculture, national security, migration patterns for animals and fish and birds. As parents, as a nation, I think it is both our responsibility – our challenge – and our opportunity to lead the way, to show that prosperity does not need to mean doom for our future.

I also think, in my view, that simply put, there is no alternative to action.

The world where we don’t act isn’t a world of vibrant economic growth. It’s a world with more frequent and extreme natural disasters, with increased droughts and famine, with displaced populations, and cities, even regions – in a few cases even nations – plunged under water.

I represent the lowest mean elevation state in America, the state of Delaware. And rising sea levels, it’s been documented in a broad study led by our Governor’s Department of Environment and Natural Resources; rising sea levels could put up to 11 percent of my home state of Delaware under water by the end of this century.

We know these changes are coming. They’re slow, they’re gradual, they’re cumulative, and so at times hard to perceive, but they’ve already started and will only get more extreme and more expensive the longer we wait to act. The cost of our inaction will be borne by our children in generations to come. 

We’re not the only one seeing these impacts. And although the debate over science raged for many years and I think is settled, I’ve also had an opportunity to hear from folks who live well outside the western scientific world but had a profound insight as to what these impacts are and how they’re seen in the world.

Several years ago along with a senior senator friend of mine, our Senator Pro Tem Senator Leahy, I visited the Kogi tribe in the remote Santa Marta Mountains of Colombia. These equatorial mountains have massive glaciers up in the very top of the high mountains but are also right on the edge of the Caribbean Sea. The folks who make up this pre-Colombian tribe, the Kogi tribe, well they don’t have sophisticated technology that monitors and tracks climate change, but as they sat with us, they shared with us what they see as starkly as our best weather monitoring satellites. By observing changes in migratory patterns, in weather, in the snowpack on the glacial mountains that they worship, they see more every year that there is a fundamental change happening in our environment, in our climate, and their purpose in calling us to meet with them was to warn us that climate change is impacting the way of life that’s passed down from generation to generation for centuries in their people, and it’s moved them to speak out to the world, to tell their story, and to urge the rest of us not to hurt Mother Earth and to understand the consequences of the changes we’re making.

Well whether the voices we listen to come from our own children, from our science community, or from remote corners of the world, all of them call us to act, to act in a way that prevents the worst from happening and to ensure that the benefits outweigh the costs.

You know, this isn’t just wild-eyed or rosy-glassed thinking. It is possible for us to make meaningful change in a bipartisan way.

We’ve done it before. Back in 1990, when acid rain was a real and pressing challenge that was threatening the vitality, the vibrancy of many of the lakes and the mountain places in the American West, I remember well that under then-Republican President George H.W. Bush, Congress came together in a bipartisan way and passed the Clean Air Act Amendments.

These were designed to reduce the contributing elements to acid rain, power plant emissions that produce sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that in combination caused acid rain, damaging private property, historic monuments, injuring forests and lakes and ecosystems all over our country. So Congress came together to create a novel, market-based, flexible cap-and-trade program that allowed power plants to find cost-effective alternatives, solutions to limit pollution. And rather than tanking our economy, that cap-and-trade plan to fight acid rain ended up finding new ways to power our country and to improve energy efficiency without so much pollution.

We adapted. We changed. And in some ways, we thrived.

As a study done 13 years later showed, the standards, those standards adopted in 1990, have saved lives at a cost well worth it. $70 billion in health benefits every year cumulatively compared to $1.7 billion in costs. A 40-to-one trade-off that I think most Americans would take any day of the week as a return on investment. 

More recently my own state of Delaware and eight of our northeastern neighbors showed how we can act together to begin to curb climate change and grow our economies at the same time. In 2003, a bipartisan group of regional leaders, this time led by New York State’s Republican Governor, George Pataki, built a regional cap-and-trade system similar to that acid rain prevention program I just referenced. But the one in our region was called the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative or RGGI for short. 

It’s flexible, market-based, and it’s been effective. States choose to cut pollution in a number of ways, from closing old coal-fired power plants, or opening new renewable energy projects, or investing in important and valuable energy efficiency. As the New York Times reported just last weekend, since that program started in 2009, our economies in these regional states have actually grown more than the 41 other states not part of RGGI by several percentage points, while we’ve cut our emissions over four times more than the rest of the nation. We’ve created jobs, we’ve invested in innovation, we’ve cut pollution, and saved millions of families money on their energy bills.

That’s why I think we should feel optimistic about the important steps the Administration has just taken.

The President’s strong standards for vehicle fuel efficiency were a great start. At first, many argued pushing car companies to make cleaner, more efficient cars would end up costing a huge amount of money with little to show for it. But the opposite has happened. We set more aggressive national standards, engineers have gotten to work – they have innovated, they have invented – and America’s leading car companies have met the challenge. And the improvement in fuel efficiency has been dramatic.

Although there is a cost in up-front research and development, it’s really worth it. As drivers save money at the pump, America becomes less dependent on foreign oil, and we all get to breathe cleaner air.

Just last week, the Obama Administration took another step and proposed our nation’s first rules to limit carbon pollution from existing power plants. Although they won’t be final for another year, these limits represent the most significant action that any country has taken to halt the devastating warming of our planet.

They will have real and lasting health benefits.

By cutting power plant pollution over the next 15 years, we’ll prevent 100,000 asthma attacks by children. 2,100 heart attacks. And thousands of premature deaths. That will mean nearly 500,000 fewer missed days of school and work, and will save $7 in health costs for every dollar required of new investment. 

Over the long term, curbing climate change will make large, lasting, and meaningful differences, from reduced hunger and heat waves to reducing the spread of infectious diseases or conflict over scarce resources.

Cynics will argue that even with these limits, we won’t stop climate change, and that’s true. They will point out that renewable energy technology isn’t yet ready to fully replace fossil fuels. They will say that America acting alone can’t solve the problem, and that’s true. We need global action, especially from large developing nations like China and India who are on pace to pollute the most going forward.

As an exercise in cynicism, they get a lot of things wrong.

These rules alone, yes, won’t halt our rising seas, but then again no one is claiming they will, alone.

But they are a crucial step, and we owe it to posterity, to our country, to our future to take what action we can, to send a powerful signal to America’s entrepreneurs and engineers, our innovators and inventors, that this is a challenge we intend to take on. 

By acting now, we can begin to birth the innovations that will be at the heart of our planet’s clean energy future.

Innovation in America has never stood still. We have done incredible things that even a few years before we might not have predicted.

Remember, just a few years ago, natural gas prices were volatile and unreliable, and solar power was too expensive for most households. Yet in just the last few years, new technologies have flipped those on their head. And we’re seeing remarkable changes. Solar prices have fallen 60 percent in just the last three years, and natural gas is today cheaper than coal, and there are dramatic changes in our energy future going on because of a huge resurgence in natural gas production in this country.

We have every reason to believe that by focusing our greatest minds on this challenge, American ingenuity can change and even save the world.

Madam President, if the United States is going to lead the 21st century, we have to be at the forefront of climate change, of combating climate change, for although we know that meeting this challenge will take global action, the U.S. needs to lead the way. 

This is our responsibility. We can’t expect other poor nations to act if a leading, wealthy nation like the United States isn’t willing to take even the most minimal, responsible actions. We are the second largest polluter of greenhouse gases on the planet, only just eclipsed by the Chinese in the last decade.

For more than a century, our economic growth and our strong middle class – built on American innovation and industry – made us the envy of the world, but they have also contributed to putting our planet in a dangerous position. As developing nations work to lift hundreds of millions of people out of desperate poverty, they are looking at us to show that it’s possible.

Also a great but urgent opportunity here lies before us. We have a moral obligation, I believe, to lead because others are looking at competing examples and aren’t waiting around. China, our greatest economic competitor, now and into the future, is itself choking on the byproducts of coal and investing heavily in cleaner air and cleaner energy. 

The country that figures out how to prosper without deadly pollution is the country that will dominate the technologies that our world uses and depends on in the decades to come. Are we really going to miss out on this chance to be the country that makes the clean cars, the clean power plants, the clean technologies of the future? I hope no. 

We in Congress have the opportunity and the obligation to pull together and to act responsibly as well.

We can pass the bipartisan Shaheen-Portman energy efficiency bill today, create great jobs and make it easy for families to spend less on energy and save money while they are at it. 

We can put clean energy on a level playing field by passing the bipartisan Master Limited Partnership Parity Act, of which I am a cosponsor, to stop giving coal, oil, and natural gas a leg up without an even playing field for renewables and energy efficiency.

We can invest in the research that will unlock the energy innovations of the future.

All of this, these are actions we could take today. 

There will be costs, but if we act now, they will be far outweighed by the benefits, today and into the future. If we wait, these costs will only grow.

I understand this is a difficult issue politically for us to take on. Many of the most dire consequences of global warming are still into the future. And as I know, as a person who struggles to make long-term delayed decisions, whether it’s investing for retirement or losing the weight my doctor keeps suggesting would help improve my long-term health, humans aren’t really good at taking the small but powerful steps today that over time will lead to a healthier, more secure future. 

Even if the costs are low, when the benefits are farther out, it is so hard for us to take action.

But Madam President, what will we say? What will we say when our children ask what did we do when the science was clear, when the options were before us, and when we had the chance? Just as we rightly worry in this chamber about the financial debts we are going to leave to future generations, leaving this debt, leaving the burden of unaddressed, unresolved global warming and climate change to our children and future generations is a debt too deep for us not to address.

We are in danger, if we don’t act, of leaving behind not only a worse off world, but of leaving ourselves a future where we cannot look our children in the eye and say that we stepped up to the greatest global challenge of this century.

What will it mean when my own daughter at some point in the future goes to Glacier National Park with her future family? Will it even have glaciers? How will she explain to them how that amazing national park has changed and what will she say about what this Senate and her own father did to take action?

It is my hope, my prayer, that on that future trip they will reflect on how we found the will, we found the determination, to act together and to change the trajectory of our future, to save it for everyone’s future.

Floor Speech: Calling on Congress to tackle America’s infrastructure debt

Mr. President, in my home state of Delaware, today, we have a problem.

Just this week in my home state, the critical I-495 bridge over the Christina river in Wilmington, which carries more than 90,000 drivers each and every day north and south on this critical artery of the East Coast of the United States, was closed indefinitely. While engineers and workers were on an unrelated project in the area, they noticed that four of the key pillars holding up the bridge were alarmingly slanted, causing widespread concerns about the bridge’s safety and prompt action to shut it down. Now, as the Delaware Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration do everything they can to get to the bottom of this problem and to work to make this bridge safe again, tens of thousands of commuters are forced onto already crowded streets and highways, creating even worse traffic for everyone in our area, hurting our economy, and taking people away from where they need to be. 

It is sadly just yet another example, one that hits particularly close to home for me, in a string of major infrastructure emergencies, some due to unforeseeable events and some due to a long-term critical lack of investment, that signify why investment in our infrastructure is so important. 

You know, every day when Americans drive to work or drop off their kids at school, they make a simple bargain, an unconscious bargain with their government. They assume the roads will be safe to drive on. They expect that if they drive safely, they’ll be able to get where they need to go in a reasonable amount of time. 

And unfortunately, Mr. President, it’s become quite clear that while Americans continue doing what they can to move our nation and our economy forward, we here in Congress aren’t holding up our end of the bargain. We aren’t meeting our responsibilities to invest in critical areas that we all know need work. We have a lot of infrastructure needs that we know about, but we simply aren’t keeping up with them today. 

This is about the end of the school year for most families with kids in school around the country, and like many other parents, I was sitting down and going over with my kids what they think their grades are at the end of the year. Well, the country also gets a grade, Mr. President. We get a grade from the American Society for Civil Engineers. These are the folks whose job it is to manage and supervise and survey the health and the capabilities of our infrastructure, our bridges and roads and highways. And this group, the American Society for Civil Engineers, well, they gave our roadways a “D.” A “D.” 

And the Federal Highway Association estimates that we are dramatically behind in investing in keeping our highways and bridges and tunnels up to speed. They say we need $170 billion more in capital investments every year to improve road conditions and performance. That group of civil engineers, the ASCE, has also determined a quarter of our bridges are functionally obsolete or structurally deficient. In little old Delaware, that comes to 175 bridges that fail to meet what we would all expect of our government, that we maintain bridges, federal and state and county and local governments, that we maintain bridges to the highest level of safety that we would expect. 

Well, we won’t always face unforeseen crises and challenges, but this is one that we can see coming. There may be hurricanes like the great superstorm, Hurricane Sandy, that wiped out a lot of infrastructure in my region, or there may be other unforeseeable events that impact our transportation infrastructure. But this one we’ve been seeing coming for years. This inconvenience in Delaware, this closing of the critical bridge on 495 that has put so many at inconvenience, was nowhere near the biggest transportation disaster we’ve had in recent years. 

Just last year in Washington State, the Skagit River Bridge, built in 1955, literally collapsed after a truck drove into its framework. 71,000 drivers were using that bridge on a daily basis. 

And I think many of us remember that way back in August of 2007, tragedy struck Minneapolis when its I-35W bridge, which extends over the Mississippi River, literally collapsed under the rush-hour traffic weight. More than 100 cars were thrown into the water. 13 people lost their lives. 145 injured. 

Mr. President, if we don’t act soon, together, we’re going to face many more such tragic incidents like these. And we have to address this problem and get over our unwillingness together to invest in infrastructure that we all depend on and value.  

The simple fact, as I’ve said, is that current federal investments are not keeping pace with our needs. We are, sadly, months away from exhausting the federal Highway Trust Fund – the trust fund that finances much of the highway and bridge and tunnel work around the country on the Interstate Highway System – because the gas tax that funds it hasn’t risen in 20 years but the amount of gas being consumed and, thus, gas tax revenue generated, has gone down. 

Yet we don’t seem here to have the political will to implement a solution to this basic problem, that folks have been saying is coming at us, hurdling like an oncoming truck, for years. 

You know, we talk a lot in this chamber about our children, about the kind of world we want to leave them, about our hopes for the future, and it’s just one of the reasons I’m so concerned about our nation’s long-term balance sheet. Many of us talk about our nation’s deficits and our potentially crippling federal debt. It is irresponsible of us to continue to rack up debt on our national balance sheet and leave it to our children and grandchildren. 

But I wanted to highlight today that when we neglect our transportation infrastructure – our highways, our tunnels, our roads, our ports, our bridges – these are things that we use every single day in transporting our families or ourselves or goods to and from work, or to and from home, to school, to soccer, to vacation. These are critical pieces of the American infrastructure. We’re also racking up a huge debt there, too. 

These investments have to be made one way or the other, and I know we value these systems because we depend on them every day. 

So if we can’t come together in the short term on fixing this Highway Trust Fund, I’m left to wonder how we’re going to come together on the much larger problem of meeting our broader infrastructure needs of which that trust fund is just one small, but crucial part. 

We face short-term, medium-term and long-term problems. 

As I said, we have to fix this Highway Trust Fund before it runs out of funding just this summer. It’s what funds often 80 percent of state highway work. It is a critical part of lots of construction projects already scheduled to go on this summer. We have kept it funded by transferring money from the general fund for the last few years, but that’s not how it’s supposed to work. So we’ve got to come to terms with a solution that’s responsible and meets this challenge. 

We’ve got a range of options, but none of them are appealing. Increasing the gas tax, putting a surcharge on vehicles, charging for vehicle miles traveled. All of these are unappealing politically, but it’s essential that we come up with something to solve this long-term problem. I want to thank Chairman Wyden of the Finance Committee, who’s working hard with other members of that committee even today to find a path forward and a solution. 

Second, in the medium-term, we have to reauthorize, we have to approve ongoing work for highways and roads and bridges, and we need to have a reauthorization for surface transportation by this fall. The Chair and the Ranking Member of the relevant committee, Barbara Boxer of California and David Vitter of Louisiana, have shown, as has my senior senator, Tom Carper from Delaware, who also serves on this committee, that federal infrastructure investment is a bipartisan value. They’ve been able to come out of that committee with bipartisan reauthorizations a number of times over the last couple of years, and that’s encouraging to me. We also, just earlier today, just a few minutes ago, came out of the transportation subcommittee markup on appropriations, the committee that says, here’s how much we will spend. That came out with a very strong bipartisan vote earlier today and will come to the floor in the next few months. 

This progress is encouraging, but it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t have a way to pay the bill when the bill comes due. 

Long term, we need to figure out how to finance infrastructure in this country. There are several bills, good ideas that have been put forward in this committee, in this chamber. Two bills that I have supported, one called the BRIDGE Act and the other called the Partnership to Build America Act, would take critical steps to bring private sector money in off the sidelines and to facilitate a real partnership between government money and private sector money. These bills have been led by Senators Warner and Blunt and Bennet, are genuinely bipartisan, and enjoy support from groups that don’t often work together, from industry to labor, from the AFL-CIO to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers. 

There are several strong bipartisan bills that show the way forward, but we don’t seem to be able to get them to the floor, to get them approved and to get them moving forward. 

Right now, the truth is that the debate on this floor comes nowhere close to matching the reality of the scope of the problems in front of us. We have an enormous infrastructure debt, as I mentioned earlier. By one estimate, by 2020, in just the next six years, our nation needs $3.6 trillion of new investment. This is to fix, to maintain, to upgrade our roads, bridges, rail, transit, drinking water, ports, sewers, waste water treatment, and beyond. This is an enormous debt. Unpaid and for which we currently have no path forward. 

I know many of us who serve on the Budget Committee, who pay attention to the balance sheet of our country, are concerned about our structural national debt, but I wanted to take a minute today, on a day when everyone in my hometown and my home state is concerned about how we will tackle the problem of the I-495 bridge, and remind all of my colleagues of the scale of this national infrastructure debt.

At the heart of this problem, at the heart of so many of the problems we have here, is our unwillingness to pay for what we want, to pay the bill that is long overdue, for our long overdue improvements to the infrastructure of this great country.  

Fixing this problem is going to take a great deal of revenue. We can reform taxes. We can involve the private sector. We can reprioritize funding. We can reform the way government works. We don’t lack for innovative ideas, but at the end of the day, we lack currently for will. 

The people of the United States need through us to step up to the challenge of paying the bill, and in my hometown just in the last few hours, just in the last few days, we have become more engaged in this debate than we have been in a long time, because a bridge that is critical, a vital artery for our community has stopped. It is indefinitely closed, and we need to work together to find the resources to fix this bridge and to get America moving together again. It is my hope and plea that my colleagues will step up to this challenge, which I know every community in our country faces.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons calls on Senate to pass job-creating tax extenders

   I come to the floor to speak about a real opportunity that we have this week, in this Congress, and in this Senate, to come together in a bipartisan way to adopt measures that will actually create jobs and help grow our economy.

   This week we are considering tax extenders, a package of bills that can do a lot of good for the middle class, our economy, and our Nation. Together, various proposals in the tax extenders would spur investment in manufacturing, clean energy, and innovation; make it easier for families to afford a home or to send their children to college; open career pathways for veterans; and bring investments in jobs to communities in need. They recently passed by a voice vote out of the Finance Committee in the Senate, sending an important signal that we can come together, Democrats and Republicans, to move our economy forward.

   I mentioned innovation and manufacturing in particular as two of the policies this broader package helps promote. I would like to discuss two important bipartisan policies in this package, bills that have been rolled into the extenders package that can do a lot of good for startups and for innovative small manufacturers, and for firms that invest heavily in the research and development that is needed to yield groundbreaking discoveries and steadily grow manufacturing employment in the United States.

   R&D, research and development, is the cornerstone of any competitive company, and I would suggest country. In the 21st century, for us to have and sustain an innovative economy, it is certainly the cornerstone of our Nation’s future. That is why, for a number of years, bipartisan majorities in Congress have supported the R&D tax credit so innovative companies are incentivized to keep investing in critically needed R&D, in new ideas, and in new products. But there has long been a problem with the structure of the R&D credit. It doesn’t reach early stage startup companies, those that are most innovative and those that have the greatest promise to grow.

   As the GAO has reported, over half of the current R&D credit goes to firms making over $1 billion. Although they are important as well, it has become clear we are missing an opportunity to incentivize the most innovative, smallest startup companies, especially in manufacturing, an industry that I know invests a huge amount in R&D but has had a challenging environment competitively and globally in the past decade. Because the R&D credit is a credit and not a tax–and is a credit only if you have a tax liability, only if your company is profitable. A pre-profitable company can’t access it. 

   If you are a small business that pays AMT, while there are many credits you could claim, the R&D isn’t one of them, even though it is so important to our commitment. This leaves out firms at the early stage, where they are facing the highest risk of failure but who are also the kind of technology-focused, early stage, high-growth, high-potential businesses that have generated more net jobs than any other area of our economy in this century.

   These firms, that are sometimes called gazelle firms, are young innovative businesses with the potential to explode in size and create hundreds or thousands of jobs. Think of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in a California garage starting what would become Apple or think of Rick Birkmeyer or Ray Yin in Delaware, my home State.

   Rick Birkmeyer is an entrepreneur who has started a number of successful biotech companies in the Delaware region. He is someone with a reputation as a leader in his field. Even so, raising capital for a new startup venture is always a challenge. Rick today is the founder of CD Diagnostics, a leader in biomarker research and biochemical test development that makes tests to tell if a joint is infected or merely irritated. These tests would help orthopedic surgeons determine if surgery is needed and avoid a great deal of expensive and sometimes unnecessary exploratory procedures. The company is only a few years old and began with one employee. Today they have 82 and believe they will have well over 170 in just two more years.

   Exponential hockey stick-like growth such as this is great, but if he and his company were able to use the R&D credit before they reach profitability, they would be able to hire more people, grow more quickly by investing in equipment, and get products to market faster.

   Another young Delaware company that would benefit from the tax credit is ANP of Newark, DE. I sat next to its CEO Ray Yin at the Wesley College graduation this weekend, where he gave the keynote address. Ray’s company, ANP, began with just one employee–him. Today it is a leader in making nanotherapeutics and in biodefense technology that is affordable, wearable, and easy to use, whether testing against biochemical agents in the war setting or food-borne illnesses or water contamination at home. 

   Both of these two companies make terrific, compelling, technology-based products, have managed their cash well, and are great examples of how to run a startup. But for each of them they went through a very demanding period from their first capital investment to when they had reliable revenue coming in. That is often called the valley of death or the gap between launch and sustainability. They would be farther along, more mature, and more robust if they had been able to access the R&D credit with their early expenditures.

   Over the past few years I have been working diligently with a group of fellow Senators, Republicans and Democrats, to find ways that we could work together to reshape and target a portion of the R&D credit to make it accessible to these sorts of early stage companies. 

   I want to give particular credit to Republican Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming, who has been tireless and thoughtful. We have not always agreed–we come from quite different political perspectives–but his investment of time and thoughtfulness in crafting the final outcome of the Startup Innovation Credit Act is worthy of thanks and a compliment.

   Senator Schumer on the Finance Committee has helped move the R&D credit revision forward into the tax extenders package.

   Manufacturing Jobs for America is a broader initiative that more than 26 Senators have participated in that includes more than 33 bills. This bill, the Startup Innovation Credit Act, is one of them, one of many bipartisan bills that can help manufacturers to grow, can help them to invest, and can help them get through a critical, early stage period.

   Pat Roberts, Republican Senator of Kansas, has also worked with me, as well as with Senators Enzi and Schumer, on a revision to the R&D credit that isn’t available to firms, mostly small businesses, that pay the AMT, so we changed that as well. Both of these provisions have been adopted into the tax extender package. 

   I also wanted to mention the first one I referenced, the Startup Innovation Credit Act, was also supported and has been moved forward with contributions by Senators Rubio, Blunt, Stabenow, Moran, and Kaine. 

   This is a terrific way for us to find a path forward for companies that are still too early in their development to pay employment taxes but to use a fix that allows them to claim the R&D credit against employment taxes when they aren’t yet paying income taxes.

   This kind of credit has been used before in States such as Iowa, Arizona, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. And they have been game changers–helping new firms to open their doors, to hire more workers, and to keep their doors open. By allowing companies to claim the R&D credit against either the AMT or their payroll tax obligations, we don’t pick winners and losers and we don’t focus on a specific area of the economy or technology. What we are doing instead is supporting any private sector firm that invests in research and development. It means cash in the pockets of small startup companies, which can make a critical difference, especially when financing and credit are tight.

   Together, these bipartisan proposals can do a lot to put more Americans to work today unleashing the innovations that will create the jobs of tomorrow. I believe the Federal role in research and innovation is fundamental. It is also bipartisan.

   I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for their partnership and collaboration. I specifically thank the chair of the Finance Committee Senator Ron Wyden for his leadership in ensuring that the tax extenders package is available for us to consider now on the floor, that these provisions were included, and for his support for moving forward on these vital job-creating proposals.

   Now let’s work together in this Chamber to move across the finish line and get the job done so America can get more of our best people to work.

Floor Speech: Senator Coons recognizes National Police Week

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to recognize the men and women of law enforcement across this Nation in the annual police week ceremonies. From last night’s candlelight vigil to tomorrow’s wreath-laying ceremony, we here in the Capitol offer our gratitude, our thanks, and our support to the men and women of law enforcement and their families.

   I wish to comment for a few moments today on how difficult it was earlier today to be a Member of this body as two different Senators, who are strong supporters of law enforcement, came to this floor in an attempt to move forward important pieces of legislation only to have that effort blocked.

   Earlier today Senator Patrick Leahy, the President pro tempore and the chair of the Judiciary Committee, came to the floor to seek unanimous consent to move forward the Federal bulletproof vest partnership reauthorization bill that came out of the Judiciary Committee, and Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland came to the floor to seek unanimous consent to move forward with the bipartisan Blue Alert bill. I am a cosponsor of both bills. Both have very broad support within the law enforcement community, and both are bipartisan bills. Yet, in each case, one Senator–one Senator–objected to our proceeding to consideration of these bills.

   I want to share with those of us here in the Chamber that earlier today, at a hearing in the Judiciary Committee considering again the value and the impact of the Federal bulletproof vest partnership, we had a chance to hear from Officer Ann Carrizales from Texas, who gave riveting, moving testimony about how a bulletproof vest, provided to her by her small-town department in Texas, saved her life when she was shot at point-blank range in a routine traffic stop very early in the morning. Today her husband would be a widower and her daughter an orphan were it not for this vital Federal-State-local partnership that has provided more than 1 million bulletproof vests over the many years it has enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

   With us this morning were two Delaware Capitol police officers, Sergeant Mike Manley and Corporal Steve Rinehart. With them as well was Chief Horsman of the capitol police department. Both of these brave officers were on duty in the lobby of the New Castle County Courthouse last year when a gunman entered the chamber and started firing at random. They were both shot, and they both survived because of bulletproof vests provided to them in part through this Federal-State partnership.

   We cannot let down the men and women of law enforcement. We should not let partisan politics and ideology in this Chamber prevent us from moving forward in a bipartisan way to deliver the officer-safety investments and improvements that have already cleared the Judiciary Committee, that already have bipartisan support from both sides of the aisle, and allow one individual to continue to hold up these important bills.

   It is my call to my colleagues that we work tirelessly together to make sure we overcome this needless obstruction and move forward this week to honor the service and sacrifice of those 268 law enforcement officers whose names have been added to the memorial this year and the hundreds of thousands of others who even today, even tonight, will be on patrol keeping America safe.

Floor Speech: Calling on Republicans to stop blocking Bulletproof Vest Partnership reauthorization

Madam President, our nation’s police officers work fearlessly and tirelessly every day to protect our families and to keep our communities safe.

As we get ready to honor their service on National Police Week, the least we can do is stand by them and ensure that as they’re doing their job, they’re able to do it as safely as possible.

Every day, more than a million law enforcement officers across this country accept risks to their personal safety. As they leave their families at dawn and head off to their jobs, they know and their families know that they accept as a part of their mission of public safety service the risk that they may not come home that night.

We owe it to them to do what we can to make that service just a little bit safer, to ensure that more of them come home safely week in and week out, year in and year out. And providing officers with bulletproof vests is one of the most effective ways that we can contribute to that desired outcome.

Madam President, I come to the floor today because I share the deep frustration of my good friend, Chairman Patrick Leahy, over the continued inability of this body to overcome the objection of one senator and move forward to renew on a bipartisan basis the federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership.

Yesterday Chairman Leahy gave the Senate another opportunity to take up and reauthorize this partnership through a unanimous consent request. He is trying to move forward a bill we have already voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan basis. Yet, it was blocked again by objections raised by a colleague, the Senator from Oklahoma.

Madam President, for 14 years the federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership has been an important way for our nation to equip local police departments with one of the most effective ways to keep our officers safe. But this needs to be a lasting commitment. This needs to be an enduring partnership. As new officers join, they need to be fitted for new vests. Because vests wear out and don’t last forever, we need to ensure they can be replaced.

We know, Madam President, that bulletproof vests work. Since 1987, bulletproof vests have saved the lives of more than 3,000 police officers across this country, and I am proud to continue in the tradition of my predecessor, now Vice President, Joe Biden, in supporting local law enforcement and in supporting this initiative. In my home state of Delaware this partnership has provided our officers with thousands of vests over the last 14 years, including more than 3,800 over just the last five years.

The Delaware community has unfortunately seen up close why these vests are so important. It was 13 years ago that Dover Police Sergeant David Spicer was trying to make an arrest, an arrest he successfully completed when the suspect with whom he was wrestling pulled out a gun from a hidden pocket and shot him at close range four times. As Sergeant Spicer bled out, he lost nearly half the blood in his body before effecting the arrest. But because he was wearing a vest provided to him through the Bulletproof Vest Partnership, his life was saved. I was honored, Madam President, to welcome Dover Police Sergeant David Spicer here two years ago on a previous effort at reauthorizing this long bipartisan bill.

More recently, just last February, 2013, at the New Castle County Courthouse in my hometown of Wilmington, a gunman unleashed a stream of bullets into the courthouse lobby, tragically killing two. In what was a devastating morning in the courthouse lobby, two lives were also saved, those of Sergeant Michael Manley and Corporal Steven Rinehart, Capitol Police officers who were wearing bulletproof vests funded in part through this federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership.

Madam President, the very real results of this federal-state partnership, of this investment in keeping the men and women of law enforcement safe in the line of duty are hard to ignore. With many police departments at the local level facing shrinking budgets, this Bulletproof Vest Partnership makes vests – which cost more than $500 – more affordable, ensuring officers are outfitted with the most current and effective and appropriate protection possible.

In fact, the program specifically prioritizes smaller departments that often struggle to afford vests and don’t provide vests or require vests of their officers. And it is exactly in these smaller and more rural agencies and departments where line of duty deaths due to gunfire had historically been high. This is critical. As a County Executive, in my previous role in local government in Delaware, I saw firsthand how officers in smaller agencies often struggled to have current, up-to-date, and effective bulletproof vests. In addition, this is a program that is a 50-50 match – federal and local money.

How could anyone oppose this program that saves thousands of police officers’ lives; that extends the reach of the federal-state partnership in keeping our communities safer; and that is such a wise investment in saving lives that matter so much to our communities?

Well, a colleague objected yesterday and has objected before and will object again. And I’m reminded of so many times when a bipartisan bill that comes to this floor dies here due to objection after objection after objection. And at times I struggle to understand the rationale.

In his objection yesterday, my colleague raised an argument that somehow this program, which promotes public safety, does not fit within the authority granted to Congress under the Constitution. That it’s not part of the enumerated powers of Congress.

Madam President, I disagree. 

Whether you ascribe to the narrow Madisonian view of the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution, or follow an expansive, more Hamiltonian view, as our Supreme Court has done since 1937 when they affirmed the constitutionality of the Social Security Act in Helvering v. Davis, this is not a close call.

If providing federal-state partnership money for bulletproof vests goes beyond the enumerated powers of this Congress, what does that mean for public health, for investments in partnerships with state public health agencies to prevent pandemics and flus? What does this mean for the interstate highway system? What does this mean for hundreds of different partnerships where in a cost-effective way we work together with communities and states all over this country to extend and improve the general welfare of the people of the United States? 

To my colleague’s argument yesterday on this floor that this is solely a state or local responsibility, the reality is that the Bulletproof Vest Partnership doesn’t replace local action with federal action, it ensures a federal partnership, an investment to help police departments struggling to meet the safety needs, the equipment needs of their officers, to act where they otherwise can’t. 

In my view, this Bulletproof Partnership is even more important because it is about more than just handing out dollars and vests. It ensures all vests are compliant with National Institute of Justice safety standards. Only the federal government has the resources to do that level of analytical work. It’s no more reasonable for us to expect every state to have their own National Institute of Health to do cancer research, or for every state to have a National Institute of Highway Traffic Safety. Having one coordinated national program to ensure that these bulletproof vests are as effective as possible at saving the lives of the men and women of law enforcement just makes sense.

In my view, the denial of a federal role where it’s necessary and efficient would take us back to the Articles of Confederation, a very cramped and narrow view of the appropriate role of our national government, one which our forefathers found unworkable two centuries ago.

The truth is plain. Without this program, we leave police officers without lifesaving vests in the line of fire, in the line of duty. And for us to fail to stand up for them when they stand up for us each and every day I find outrageous.

This is the way the world looked before Chairman Leahy and Republican Senator Campbell created this program jointly back in 1999, and in that world, before there was a federal Bulletproof Vest Partnership, there would today be two more Delaware families without a hero at their dinner table tonight.

Not on my watch. That will not happen as long as I’m here to stand for the men and women of law enforcement and to promote the federal role, an appropriate federal role in standing side by side with state and local governments to provide the equipment that men and women of law enforcement need.

This partnership, Madam President, expired back in 2012. Fortunately, we’ve been able to fund it through short-term appropriations. And this is a tiny program in the scope of this federal government — $22 million a year. The entire federal investment in local law enforcement is less than one-tenth of one percent of the entire federal government. Yet it enables standards and leveraging of the types I described that extends the reach of law enforcement and improves the safety of the men and women who put their lives on the line for us. 

Without authorization, this program becomes unsustainable, short-term, and doesn’t allow us to improve the program year in and year out. The reauthorization bill that was passed by the Judiciary Committee this Congress extends the program another five years, ensures its consistency, but makes important reforms to save money as well. It prevents localities from using other federal funds as their matching funds. The bill would take action to eliminate Justice Department backlogs and the bill would require agencies using the program to have mandatory-wear policies and would for the first time ensure these lifesaving vests are fitted appropriately for women, at a time when there are more and more women in law enforcement and more and more at the very front lines of protecting our communities. 

This bill is fiscally responsible. And enacting this bill is a moral responsibility.

Madam President, police officers work to keep us safe every day. Congress can and should do the same for them. Congress should be standing with our law enforcement officers, not standing in their way.

I applaud the persistent leadership of Chairman Leahy and will stand with him as long as it takes to get this program back on track and ensure its long-term survival. While this program had a long history of bipartisan support and passed out of the Judiciary Committee with a number of Republicans voting in support, a few of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle now don’t seem to think this investment in officer safety is an appropriate one for this body and this government to make.

Madam President, last year our nation lost 33 police officers in the line of duty killed by gunshots. According to the National Law Enforcement Memorial Fund, there is some reason to be cheered because this is the smallest number lost in a year since the 1800s. But 33 deaths, line-of-duty deaths, of men and women shot to death while protecting their communities, is 33 too many. And while we have an opportunity to continue to provide to state and local law enforcement vests that can save these and other lives, we should. We should continue working tirelessly until those numbers come down to zero.

Madam President, in recent months I’ve been proud as this body has come together across the partisan divide, has passed a budget bill, an appropriations bill, a farm bill, has begun to deal with some of our nation’s most urgent needs. But I am distressed by this particular action. To block even consideration of so small a program with such important consequences is, to me, profoundly disheartening. I call on my colleague to stop blocking this bill and allow this body to debate and to pass this reauthorization that will save lives in law enforcement this year and every year going forward.

We owe them no less.

Floor Speech: Tribute to James Wilcox Brown

Let me last, Madam President, briefly, offer a tribute to a lifelong friend and mentor, James Wilcox Brown of Newark, Delaware. He set sail on April 24th, at the age of 65. The gentle determination and unconditional kindness with which he lived his life inspired all around him, including his family, his friends, and this junior senator from Delaware.

Jim graduated from Salesianum High School, the University of Delaware, and the Washington & Lee School of Law. He worked as legal counsel for W. L. Gore & Associates for 36 years, and as a member of the JAG Corps – U.S. Army Judge Advocate General Corps – for 26 years, retiring as Colonel.

His tireless community service was broad and deeply felt, and I was proud to be able to appoint him to the Delaware Service Academy Selection Board.

He is survived by his wife, Peggy and their four wonderful children, Genevieve, Hilary, William, and Mary Ellen and six grandchildren and I simply wanted to add my voice to so many who will deeply miss this patriot, this great lawyer, this centered, thoughtful, and kind man, and this personal friend, who helped teach me the importance of humility and of a commitment to excellence.

Floor Speech: Tribute Harry Gravell

Madam President, I would also today like to take a few minutes to recognize two great Delawareans. First, I’d like to recognize Harry Gravell.

Right now, in Wilmington, Delaware, friends are coming together to celebrate Harry, who is retiring from his long leadership role at the Delaware Building Trades after a lifetime dedicated to workers and our nation.

I first got to know him in my service on County Council in New Castle County, where he gave me very helpful, very insightful advice and was a constant source of encouragement and support.

Don’t get me wrong; he didn’t always agree with me, he didn’t always support me. With Harry, you got the straight shot, you got the exactly what he thought, and nothing less.

You always know where he stood, even if he disagreed with you. He’s transparent. He’s honest. And you know why he believes what he believes. 

He’s not only a great friend, but a great father. We were both honored in 2012 by the Delaware Diabetes Association as Fathers of the Year and Harry’s the proud father of two – Jayme and Dee – and grandfather of three –Makayla, Avery, and Lily.

Harry’s life story is one of determination and service. He never gives up, especially when he puts his mind to something.

From an early age, he knew the value of hard work. For High School he went to the Salesianum School, a great school in our community, and worked his way through school to make sure that he could afford a great education.

A Vietnam veteran, he served our country in wartime. And since he came home, he’s never stopped working for working families and veterans. And I was particularly proud to work with him in his role at the Sprinkler Fitters and then the Building Trades Council on Helmets to Hard Hats, on offering training and real job opportunities to returning veterans.

If you know Harry, you’ve seen his drive up close. You’ve seen him fight through thick and thin for his workers, his family, and our community.

But, perhaps the greatest example of his sheer will was his most recent fight.

He suffered a stroke a few months ago, doctors read him a long list of things he was never going to do again. 

Harry scoffed. Digging in as he has his entire life, he finished his physical and occupational therapy faster than doctors thought he could.

He has just finished building a house in Lewes, and everyone who knows him I believe will agree with me that he deserves the years he’ll now get to spend in the beautiful beaches of Delaware.

Floor Speech: Big spending is corrupting our politics

Madam President, I come to the floor today to speak about the corrupting power of money in our national politics and the tragic impact of a whole series of decisions by the Supreme Court that has steadily strengthened that power.

Madam President, over the last 40 years, bipartisan coalitions in this body, bipartisan coalitions in Congress have come together behind commonsense measures that actually succeeded in limiting the power of money in politics.

Most recently, back in 2002, a bipartisan coalition in this chamber, led by Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold – Republican and Democrat – took a few steps to limit the use of so-called ‘soft money’ and to ban special interests from pouring money into national elections in the month or two before Election Day.

As actual elected representatives, the perspective of the members of Congress who enacted that legislation was informed by their real experiences as public officials who have run in and won elections – and who have written, and fought for, and passed actual legislation.

And since members of this chamber, members of this Congress, have seen, have experienced the corrosive effect of money every day, Congress, in my view, should be given great deference when it has been able to transcend partisan divisions and put in place commonsense protections.

Yet over the past few years, a bare majority on the current Supreme Court has in decision after decision dismantled many of those critical protections – and shows no signs of stopping.

In doing so, this court’s decisions display a significant, a stunning naiveté about how our political system actually works, how it is continuing to change, and as a result, I think, have brought us closer to a world where, as a recent New Republic piece argues, quote, “millionaires and billionaires speak loudly and the rest of us to do the listening,” unquote. 

Most recently, in a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court struck down a limit that has stood since 1971 – when Congress passed the Federal Election Campaign Act – on total campaign donations any one individual may make in the same federal election cycle.

Before this recent Supreme Court ruling, individuals couldn’t give more than $117,000 between candidates and party committees. After the ruling, that limitation has been swept away, and there is nothing to stop a wealthy donor, an ultra-wealthy donor from contributing to every federal race each election cycle.

Some here have cheered the decision as upholding the first amendment and free speech, but in my view, when you’re able to spread around hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations to dozens and dozens of candidates in a coordinated way, you’re not speaking, you’re coming dangerously close to buying.

For ultra-donors, the reality is not just about making their voices heard. Under existing Supreme Court precedent, under these recent decisions, there are no limits on anybody’s ability to spend whatever amounts he or she wishes to conduct actual speech, to buy newspaper ads, television spots, or even to make a politically motivated movie. The reality is that it’s about trying to control more and more of the legislative agenda of this Congress, and more and more of the direction of our government.

In McCutcheon, this recently decided case, the Supreme Court hasn’t just enabled speech; it’s made it dramatically easier for the wealthiest and the special interests they represent to hedge their bets by diversifying their political portfolio.

It has more in common sadly with Wall Street investment strategies than with the free speech rights envisioned by our founders at the Constitutional Convention.

Frankly, I think the founders would not recognize our political system today, and the increasingly harsh influence of big money donors in our overall national political scene. 

Together with the Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court of just five years ago, we see, I think, the truly dangerous implications of the decisions rendered.

One of the boldest decisions I’ve ever seen, Citizens United, was another 5-4 decision, and killed off nearly half of that bipartisan compromise bill from 2002 of McCain-Feingold, by allowing corporations and other special interests to anonymously fund campaign ads in the months before an election.

In doing so, as Justice Stevens wrote in a dissent, the Supreme Court, and I quote, “rel[ied] largely on individual dissenting opinions… blaz[ing] through [our] precedents [and] overruling or disavowing a body of case law.” 

Justice Stevens also noted that, to do so, the Court decided a question the parties did not present directly to it; that, and again I quote, “Essentially, five Justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before [us], so [they] changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.”

Now I understand this is a dissent, but it’s a dissent that I think should draw our attention to the direction that these two vital, difficult Court decisions are taking this nation.

Soon after, the Supreme Court extended the rules to state campaign finance laws as well.

So in combination, these two decisions, McCutcheon and Citizens United, have brushed aside important bipartisan legislation that was designed to prevent corruption of the political branches and to provide Americans some level of confidence that their voices, not just those of the ultra-wealthy and powerful, matter to their elected representatives.

We’ve all seen the impact of this decision, of Citizens United in particular, as commercials by groups nobody’s ever heard of, funded by donors who can remain in the dark, have flooded the airwaves of our election years ever since.

Now, earlier I mentioned that these two decisions show a stunning naiveté about how politics in our modern world really works.

And, let me be clear, I don’t say this because the Supreme Court overturned a law that Congress passed. It is the Court’s job to be a check on Congress, to defend our fundamental freedoms in the face of Congressional overreach or improvident action.

But in the McCutcheon decision, the court overturned a core holding of its own previous decision in Buckley v. Valeo, the case it purports to apply.

As Justice Breyer wrote in dissent, in McCutcheon, the court’s holding, quote, “understates the importance of protecting the political integrity of our governmental institutions. It creates a loophole [that]… taken together with Citizens United… eviscerates our Nation’s campaign finance laws, leaving a remnant incapable of dealing with the grave problems of democratic legitimacy that those laws were intended to resolve.” 

For instance, in the Court’s decisions, it consistently refers to traditional political corruption as quid-pro-quo corruption, corruption of the sort where a specific contribution is made for a specific vote or action, in arguing that campaign donations and political spending, or speech, have shown no signs of leading to corruption.

The Majority argues that campaign giving and the, quote, “general gratitude” that a candidate or elected official may feel is not the same thing as quid-pro-quo corruption in the sense of directly buying votes or action in the Congress.

But as Justice Breyer notes in his opinion in McCutcheon, in the dissent, the majority’s, quote, “narrow view of corruption… excludes efforts to obtain influence over access to elected officials or political parties,’’ close quote.

Every single member of this body, and every member of the House of Representatives, knows that to be true, and knows this influence to be pernicious.

Let me give an example.

As many of my colleagues would attest, hanging over everything we do is the shadow of anonymous big money ads getting dropped onto the airwaves out of nowhere in just the last weeks before an election. And it influences, in pervasive and corruptive ways, decisions made in this body week in and week out.

Of course, tough opposition ads are nothing new. Robust debates in campaign season go back to the very first campaigns of this Republic. And as politicians we all welcome the opportunity to engage with those who disagree with us. That’s an important and healthy part of our democracy, and every citizen should have the right to voice their opposition to me or to any member.

But what is a huge problem, is the fact that nobody knows who’s behind these ads, making it easier for any wealthy individual or corporation to pour an unlimited amount of money into a race behind completely false attacks.

Because the donor is often in the dark, there’s no way for the public to know who the claims are coming from or whether they’re credible. 

That’s why in this chamber, folks in my caucus, Democrats, have repeatedly argued for our taking up and passing the DISCLOSE Act, which would require third-party ads to say who funded them, so that citizens can reach their own conclusions.

This is an increasingly difficult problem for our country.

In the 2010 election cycle, Super PACs spent more than $62 million nationally.

Through the 2012 cycle, outside groups spent an incredible $457 million on House and Senate races.

So far in this cycle, they’ve already raised and spent more than $200 million.

The result is that every campaign has to do more and more fundraising so they have the resources to rebut the claims made in these negative ads with concealed donors.

That means more time on the phone or at fundraisers, travelling around the country organizing and carrying out fundraising activities rather than engaging with our constituents and diving into the details of policy. 

It’s even worse in the House where the daily demands and their two-year cycle are even more compelling.

Let me offer one brief stat, in the average winning Senate race in 2012, it cost $10 million, which means the winning senator had to raise $4,600 every single day over a six-year term.

That’s time not spent on solving the real issues facing our country.

That’s an unbelievable amount of time dedicated to fundraising, and it just doesn’t end, whether the term is two or six years.

I know I have it relatively easy, little to complain about compared to my colleagues. I come from a small state, the very modest amount we have to raise in a competitive race in Delaware pales in comparison to much larger states with much more expensive media markets. But it is a problem for this entire body and this entire country.

Let me offer one last example of, concretely, why this matters.

As we debate here, and the other party complains about the absence of opportunities to offer amendments and the lack of a robust and open amendment process, one of the reasons we often do not take to the floor and vote on competitive, compelling, difficult amendments, is the concern that they will then become the subject of last minute, aggressive, targeted campaign ads funded by undisclosed donors.

Rather than being a chamber of honest and open and free debate, the shadow of secret money turns policymaking into a beacon of risk aversion.

Policymaking gets paralyzed. And this serves no one.

Though it’s not an example of corruption in the quid pro quo sense that the Supreme Court so narrowly focuses on, money does corrode the public trust, and steadily corrupts the system in a thousand different ways. 

The irony of this all is that we badly need an honest conversation about the impact of big spending and fundraising on our political system.

At this point, Madam President, I believe we badly need fundamental changes to redirect the decisions and the attention of the Supreme Court.

Buckley v. Valeo, the 1976 decision by the Court that equated political contributions – money – with speech, in my view, needs to be revisited.

So Senator Udall of New Mexico has introduced a constitutional amendment that, in my view, restores the balance of that original law and decision, and it’s one I strongly support.

By bending backwards to declare anything that corporations or the ultra-wealthy wish to do with their money the equivalent of speech, today’s Court, in my view, rather than strengthen speech, has weakened it for the millions of Americans who can’t afford to play in this new system.

And at a time of growing economic inequality, Madam President, that concerns me more and more, because this new political inequality threatens the very foundations of our democracy.

Floor Speech: Urging new investment in Amtrak

Mr. President, I’d like to start this afternoon by thanking Chairman Murray for her tireless work on the Budget Committee on which I serve, to develop and pass a bipartisan budget, a budget that sets us on a path to return to regular order.

Senator Murray has also been a tireless advocate for transportation and infrastructure programs and has chaired the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee on which I also serve. She has fought tirelessly to include adequate funding for Amtrak back in the FY2014 omnibus and moving forward.

The topic I’d like to take up today is the role of Amtrak in our communities, in our country, and its appropriate role as a central piece of federal transportation policy going forward.

Senator Murray has been a terrific advocate for investing across a wide range of transportation modalities and as a member of the Appropriations Committee, I look forward to working with her and with our leading full committee chair, Senator Mikulski, to make sure that we are successful in fighting ardently, steadfastly for Amtrak this year and in the future.

I come to talk on the floor today about the importance of our national passenger rail system, Amtrak, because this isn’t just about getting people from point A to point B. Investing in Amtrak also means creating jobs, making our whole economy more dynamic, and making America more competitive.

Amtrak is performing better and better each and every year and as the presiding officer knows, all too well, ridership over the last decade has steadily increased. In fact, 10 of the last 11 years have seen record numbers, and last year we broke through 31.6 million riders on Amtrak. The trains are more and more crowded but they’re arriving more and more frequently on time and the quality of the train sets and the quality of the service provided by the conductors and the other folks who work for Amtrak has steadily increased.

As the value proposition of Amtrak has increased, so has ridership, and though record ticket sales and other revenues have made this possible, Amtrak today covers nearly 89% of the cost of operating their trains, by far the best of any passenger rail operation in the United States. They are, in fact, on track to cover 90%, through revenues, of their total operating costs in 2014. And because of this success, since 2002, Amtrak has decreased its debt by more than half.

My home state of Delaware and your home state of New Jersey, Mr. Presiding officer, is part of the oldest and most critical section of our national passenger rail system, the so-called Northeast Corridor, which goes from Boston to Washington. And this Northeast Corridor produces, if it were its own separate economy, this Northeast Corridor would produce $3 trillion a year, 20% of our nation’s total economic output, which would make it the fifth largest economy in the world if it were on its own.

But it’s not.

It’s an integrated part of our nation and its passenger rail infrastructure is an integrated part of our national commitment to efficient and effective transportation. 

In this region in particular, though, Amtrak isn’t a luxury. It’s a fundamental and critical part of our economy and of moving our community and our people forward.

If Amtrak service were cut off in the region for just a day, it would cost our economy $13 million. And one-third of all the jobs in the Northeast Corridor, or seven million jobs, are within five miles of a station.

Amtrak’s impact on my home state of Delaware is particularly large because Amtrak employs over a thousand men and women in the state of Delaware. Many of them work in two maintenance facilities in Wilmington and in Bear where they repair everything from train seats to the heavy trucks to the cars themselves. And I’ve had a number of chances to visit them on a number of occasions and let me tell you, it is incredible to see the work ethic and the capabilities of the men and women of Amtrak.

These shops have been there a long time and they have worked hard to modernize and to be relevant and to contribute to the strengthening bottom line of Amtrak overall. Let me just mention ‘Irish’ John, a good friend of mine who’s been a leader in the Sheet Metal Workers for a long time. Sheet Metal Workers with Amtrak were one of the unions that worked with management to find ways to significantly save costs on overhaul work on the Acela sets that resulted in Amtrak choosing not to farm out the service work and instead do a $125 million job to overhaul 20 Acela sets in house.

This is union labor, this helps support good middle-wage jobs, this helps support good middle-class families and middle class communities in Delaware and our region. This particular work on this Acela overhaul will last more than three and a half years and sustain dozens and dozens of jobs at our Bear repair facility.

My friend Bill with the IBEW Amtrak union is another friend who has helped me understand the critical role that the employment that Amtrak provides, provides to our whole region, not just to Delaware, not just to the Philadelphia area but to the whole Northeast Corridor.

So when we talk about investing in Amtrak, we’re not only investing in new options for commuters and businesses, we’re talking about investing our communities, in workers who will build and maintain the next generation of American rail. These are as I’ve said, great high skilled jobs, and by investing in Amtrak’s present and giving them a predictable future, we’ll preserve and continue these important skills, these important workers, and their families in our communities.

Now, Amtrak’s benefits go beyond just the immediate skilled workers and their families and the communities that benefit from them. In Delaware the services that Amtrak provides helps to keep and draw in new businesses through a ripple effect in our whole economy. In fact, just last week there was an announcement of a new company that’s spinning off out of Sallie Mae that’ll be locating its headquarters and 120 jobs in Wilmington. They’ve chosen a site specifically because it is walking distance from our Amtrak station. From the Joseph R. Biden Amtrak station in Wilmington, Delaware. 

And in Newark, the University of Delaware is building a new campus, called the Science, Technology, and Advanced Research, the STAR campus, which will build partnerships between several important regional entities. Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, and what makes that partnership possible is that backbone of the Northeast Corridor, the connection between these different cities that is made all the stronger and better because of passenger rail.

I hope from these few examples it’s clear that passenger rail is also a critical component of economic development. Passenger rail tends to link downtown urban areas and tends to be absolutely essential to anchoring their revitalization as the presiding officer knows oh so well.

Now, passenger rail is critical not just in the Northeast Corridor but in communities across the country that rely on it to connect with other communities and our country’s major economic centers. State supported services have become a major source of ridership growth as well, with that ridership nearly doubling between 1998 and 2013. Long distance ridership across the great heartland of our country has also grown by roughly 20%. Without the introduction of any new services, frequencies or equipment and in FY2013 long distance ridership reached its highest point in 20 years.

We are though, at the proverbial crossroads or, I suppose I should say, crossing now, Mr. President, because ridership is soaring, Amtrak is more popular than ever before and demand will continue to grow, but we are not keeping up with the investment in infrastructure that we need to sustain this growth into the future. Right now for instance there is nearly $6 billion in outdated delayed investments that need to be made just in the Northeast Corridor to bring it to what’s called a state of good repair.

So let me focus on a few of the critical infrastructure needs in the Northeast Corridor; there are also needs across the whole country.

In Baltimore, a city I traveled through this morning on my way here to this Capitol on the Amtrak trains, in Baltimore, in Senator Mikulski’s home state, the B&P Tunnels have stayed open since 1873, and although they’ve undergone periodic repairs, none of them were built to be permanent.

We can’t be competitive if we continue to rely on tunnels that have been around since roughly the time of our own civil war. We need to invest in modernizing this infrastructure.

Between the presiding officer’s home state of New Jersey and the great state of New York, preliminary planning is underway on the Gateway Tunnel, a critical project that will ease the bottleneck under the Hudson that causes delays throughout the whole region, limits the options of travelers, and ends up costing the economy more in the short and long run. We need to invest in our infrastructure.

In Delaware we have a bottleneck around our most popular station, the Joseph R. Biden Station in Wilmington. The rail lines north and south of that station in the Mid-Atlantic slim from three lines to two, restricting service and preventing the addition of new rail service. Thanks in part to a federal high speed rail grant, construction will soon be underway to add a third track to alleviate this critical choke point, the main one just south of the station. 

But without new investment, that choke point will continue north of the station. And that’s not to mention the hundreds of bridges and tunnels and other connection points, including the overhead catenary lines that require repair and replacement on the Northeast Corridor alone. M. President, we need to invest in our infrastructure, not just in the Northeast Corridor, but across this whole country. 

We do spend a lot of time here on this floor as we should talking about our nation’s fiscal deficit and debt, but we should also focus on our physical deficit and debt.

The delayed repair of critical pieces of infrastructure that we rely on for our economy and for our communities but that we aren’t focused on, if we would invest in today would employ people in repairing them and lay the groundwork for our improvement of our economy for the long term. I recognize the reality that while the budget picture has improved, it is not yet as good as it should be. We are still facing real fiscal challenges.

But, Mr. President, as I ride between Wilmington and Washington nearly every day on Amtrak, our workers are responsible for repairing and retrofitting a lot of the trains and parts that I ride on, I’m impressed with their skill and with the caliber of their repair work. As a rider and as our state’s senator I see how critical Amtrak is to our economy, to our communities, and to our country as a whole. I hope that is clear to the rest of the members of this chamber. And I hope that anyone watching who has appreciated the value of Amtrak’s connecting power that links this country together from east to west, north to south, will communicate with your senator and convey the importance of strong and sustained investment in the Northeast Corridor yes, but across the whole reach of our country.

Only by strengthening Amtrak and ensuring the vibrancy of the entire nation’s system of passenger rail, can we really ensure that American rail will be there for years and generations to come.