and you end up doing a root canal, it is far more painful, far more expensive. That is what it is about. Do we maintain our infrastructure? Clearly, we have not. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, we should be spending about $2.2 trillion in the next 5 years in order to maintain our infrastructure.
I say to the Presiding Officer, I do not know about Alaska—I spent a very brief time in the Presiding Officer's beautiful State—but I do know in Vermont we have bridges all over our State that are in desperate need of repair. It is fair to say that the stimulus package has been very positive for my State. We are spending more money on roads and bridges. But we have a long way to go. So we are putting money into our roads and bridges. We are hiring people to do that work. That is what we should be doing all over the country.
But it is not just roads and bridges. It is water systems. I told this story, I guess a few hours ago now, about a mayor, the mayor of Rutland, VT, which is the second largest city in the State. I was in his office and he showed me a pipe, and the pipe was in pretty bad shape. He said: You know, this pipe was laid by an engineer who then, after he did this, went off to war. And he said: What war do you think he went off to fight? And he said it was the Civil War—the Civil War. So this was pipe laid in Rutland, VT, which is still being used, which was laid, I am guessing, in the 1850s, maybe 1860s. And it is not just Rutland, VT.
When I was mayor of Burlington, we had to spend $50 million, back then, 20 years ago, I think, rebuilding our wastewater plants and making sure that a lot of pollution and filthy water did not get into our beautiful lake, Lake Champlain. It was an expensive proposition. But right now, we are going to have to invest in that. It is our water systems, our dams, our levees, our roads, our bridges.
I mentioned earlier and contrasted what was going on in infrastructure in the United States as opposed to China, and I quoted from a book called "Third World America," written by Arianna Huffington, who tells us, essentially, if we do not get our act together, that is what we will become—a third world country.
She points out that compared to countries such as China, our investments in rail are absolutely pathetic and inadequate. In China, right now, that country is investing billions and billions of dollars in high-speed rail, building thousands and thousands of miles of high-speed rail. They are building over 100 new airports. And what are we doing?
So one of my many objections to the proposal struck between the President and the Republican leadership is I think we can do better in job creation than in business tax cuts. There is a time and a place for business tax cuts, and I am not against them. But I would say that at this particular moment in American history, at this particular moment, it makes a lot more sense to create, over a period of years, millions of jobs rebuilding our rail system, our subways, our roads, our bridges, and our water systems, and many other aspects of our infrastructure.
There are places in Vermont and throughout this country where people cannot today get decent-quality broadband service, cannot get cell phone service. In that area, we are behind many other countries, not wealthy countries around the world. When we make those investments in infrastructure, we not only create jobs, but we make our country stronger and more productive, and we enable ourselves to compete effectively in the international economy.
Another one of my objections to this proposal and why I think we can do a lot better is that I was really quite disturbed to hear the President and others, who defend this proposal, talk about that one of the "compromises" that was struck was to extend unemployment benefits for 13 months.
To my mind, as I have said earlier, at a time of deep recession, at a time of terribly high unemployment, it would be absolutely wrong and immoral for us to turn our backs on the millions of workers who are about to lose their unemployment benefits. If we do that, it is hard to imagine what happens to those families, for many of whom this is their only source of income. What do they do? Do they lose their homes? Do they move out onto the streets? How do they take care of their kids? I do not know. There are parts of this country where it is very hard to get a job. Extended unemployment is at the highest level I think we have ever seen. You cannot turn your backs on those families.
But I get upset when I hear that the Republican's willingness to support an extension of unemployment benefits for 13 months is a major compromise. I will tell you—I think a lot of the American people do not know this— that for the past 40 years—40 years, four decades—under both Democratic and Republican administrations, whenever the unemployment rate has been above 7.2 percent—and today we are at 9.8 percent unemployment—always, whether the Democrats were in control, the Republicans were in control, the President was Democrat, the President was Republican, what people did was say: We have to extend unemployment benefits. It is kind of common sense. It is not partisan. So when you have a program that has existed for 40 years in a bipartisan effort, it sounds to me that it is not much of a compromise for the Republicans to say: OK, we will do what Democrats and Republicans have done for 40 years. What a major compromise. It is not a compromise. It is just continuing existing bipartisan policy, which is sensible. It is sensible from a moral perspective. You cannot leave fellow American families out high and dry.
It is good economics because what the economists tell us is the people who will spend that money quickest are people who receive unemployment compensation because that is all they have. They are going to go out and buy, and when they buy from the neighborhood store, they create jobs. So it is good economics, and it is the moral thing to do.
But, frankly, in my view, this is not much of a compromise. This is just continuing four decades of existing policies.
As I said earlier, there are very clearly positive parts of this agreement, no question about it. I think almost every American will tell you that it would be totally absurd—I know there are some who disagree, but I think the vast majority of Americans believe that in a time when the middle class is collapsing, when median family income has gone down, when unemployment is high, that it would be a real horror show if we did not extend the Bush tax breaks for the middle class, for 98 percent of the American people—98 percent. That is what we want.
We could have crafted it much tighter, couldn't we have? We could have said: Nobody above $100,000, nobody above $150,000. That is pretty generous. We said a family earning up to $250,000 should get an extension of these tax breaks. That is 98 percent of the American people, and that is not good enough for our Republican friends. They are fighting tooth and nail to make sure the top 2 percent—the millionaires and billionaires, the CEOs who earn tens of millions a year—they are fighting—it is as if they are at war. They are so engaged to make sure these fabulously wealthy people receive at least $1 million, in some cases. For people who are making $1 million a year, they are going to receive, on average, $100,000 a year in tax breaks. For the very, very wealthiest, it could be over $1 million a year.
I say to the Presiding Officer, I know you joined me just 2 days ago in saying that at a time when senior citizens in this country and disabled vets, for 2 years in a row, had not received any COLA, that maybe it was the right thing to do—because we know that health care costs and prescription drug costs are soaring—that maybe we should provide a $250 check for those seniors and disabled veterans one time—one time. I could not get one Republican vote in support of that proposition. We won 53 to 45, but around here it does not take 50 votes to win; it does not take a majority to win; it takes 60 votes. We could not get one Republican vote. So here you have every Republican voting against a $250 check for a disabled vet or a senior citizen who is living on $15,000, $16,000 a year. Cannot afford it. But we can afford a million-dollar-a-year tax break for somebody who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, somebody may understand that rationale. I don't. I really
