Sen. Scott Emphasizes Importance of Local Solutions in Transportation, Infrastructure

WASHINGTON — In his opening remarks at today’s U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on infrastructure and public transportation investment, Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the committee’s top Republican, stressed the importance of pursuing local solutions to local problems that will promote targeted developments to improve infrastructure in both urban and rural communities. Noting that progressive policies have led to record-high inflation and increased costs across the board, Senator Scott pushed back on the Biden administration and Democrats’ efforts – from their climate agenda to burdensome regulations – that have made it more difficult for local communities to make improvements to their infrastructure.

Senator Scott’s opening remarks as delivered:

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to the witnesses for being with us today. Thank you for the committee members who are here with us as well.

One of the challenges I see on this conversation that we’re having today is to realize that local problems need local solutions. It’s really hard for folks in Washington, DC to understand the transit needs of folks in Charleston, South Carolina, Summerville, South Carolina, Columbus, Ohio, or Chicago, Illinois.

The most effective thing that we can do is make sure that the resourcing goes without all the red tape and challenges that comes from Washington, D.C. Getting that done seems to be too close to Peter walking on the water. Nearly a miraculous occurrence and manifestation has to happen for us to just do the simple thing.

I spent half my career in politics on the local level, understanding and appreciating transit systems, infrastructure projects, and what it takes to get those things done.

When I first became a senator, the one thing I did was, I decided that as a kid who grew up in a single parent household mired in poverty, who understood the transit needs of the poorest Americans trying to get to the job, I wanted to make sure that I was sensitive to the current state of Americans trying to get to work, so I decided I’d go back to the old bus routes and get on those bus routes and spend time talking to people waiting on the bus to come.

I remember talking to a grandmother who worked at Walmart, who wanted to spend more time with her grandkids on the weekends, but she would spend 80 to 90 minutes early in the morning waiting on the bus, seven hours at work, and 80 or 90 minutes to get back home. Three hours to work a seven-hour shift for slightly more than minimum wage to provide the resources necessary to help our grandkids have a better life and a better opportunity to experience and enjoy the American Dream. Having the conversations with folks who are struggling to make ends meet, thinking about how challenging it is as a local official to understand and then to decide the right transit routes, so that the folks who need public transportation have access to the right routes at the right times to get to the right job. You just can’t do that from Washington.

The one thing Washington has done poorly is to put on more onerous burdens on local government and state government, because somehow 535 people in Washington seem to know everything about local needs, and yet we seem to know nothing about getting the job done.

As an example, my friends on the left are always looking for a “New Green Steal.” They call it the New Green Deal, but in the end it steals opportunity and innovation, creativity, and resources from local folks to make good decisions about what they need. But it’s not just transit – it’s actually the infrastructure needs that are delayed time and time again.

I was thinking about this recently and it takes about seven years – seven years – for a project to turn the shovel on a new highway program.

I think about Highway 17 and its expansion in Mount Pleasant in South Carolina a number of years ago. The frustration I felt as the chairman of the county, waiting for all the red tape to be cut so that we could simply turn a shovel on a project that had been approved for years. And I sent some notes to my friends back on county council just to make sure that I was right about the seven-year process.

It could take up to two years for the planning and the programing just to meet federal threshold so that projects can start. And then after you do that, it can take up to three years, whether it’s NEPA or other environmental challenges through the Green New Steel. On top of all of that, you recognize that this onerous burden to start a road project takes seven years.

Now, here’s the challenging part. When you get the price of a highway project, let’s say those days, it was several hundred million dollars, $700 million. It’s not anticipated that seven years later, somehow, someway, miraculously, that same road project is going to cost the same amount of money seven years later. That’s what we call in South Carolina – ridiculous, hogwash. It just doesn’t work that way.

But none of that is anticipated in the actual price that people pay. Waiting and waiting and waiting for the federal government just to do their jobs and get out the way. But then after you get through the environmental review and compliance, which three years later, then you go to the preliminary final design – up to two more years on this process.

And at the same time of this is happening, currently under the Biden administration, everybody wants to celebrate the IJA and the I.R.A., the most ridiculously named bill in maybe American history, the Inflation Reduction Act – that actually increases inflation – and the Chips and Science Act.

What happens? Well, the cost of construction explodes to the highest level ever. It costs more money to do the same thing than it has ever cost – three or four years later.

And so when you take a seven year delay on a road, you take all of the impacts studies that is that it takes. We’re not smart enough to do them all at the exact same time. We’re going to wait for the first two years before we start the environmental impact studies, before we start the… if this was a business we would just fire everybody.

That’s what I would do. That’s what I did when I was in business. If you can’t, if it takes you seven years to get something started, I want a new – I want somebody else in charge. Americans want someone else in charge because the $2 billion problem that they have in Maryland to rebuild a road – a bridge – that’s going to take four years is ridiculous. Unnecessary.

All you need is common sense and people ready to go to work. And unfortunately, every time well-intentioned politicians made the decision that we know better than the local community, it costs jobs. It costs prices because they explode. I gotta tell you, 13 years on the local level is a really good education on what not to do.

Let’s not burden local government with the Green New Steal – that $7.5 billion in green funding that resolves to only eight EV charging stations – that takes all those dollars away from being able to have real progress on real roads for real people to get to their jobs.

Mr. Chairman, I’m glad we’re having the hearing today. But I got to tell you, most Americans would say, skip the hearing block, block grant the money, and let a brother go to work. That’s what they would say.