Tester praises compromise infrastructure bill

In a monthly press call Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., provided details regarding a recently agreed-upon framework for a massive $579 billion increase in infrastructure spending that could, if passed, invest a significant amount of money into the nation's roads, bridges, airports, water and broadband infrastructure without the need for new taxes.

"For a country that has been living for years off our parents' and grandparents' infrastructure, this is a big deal," Tester said.

He said the bill is a once-in-a-century investment and may be one of the most impactful non-emergency pieces of legislation in the nation's history, and one that is urgently needed.

"It couldn't be more urgently needed," he said.

Tester said water infrastructure projects like the St. Mary Diversion, and other in Northern Montana are vitally important and would be addressed in the bill.

Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., has also thrown his support behind efforts to help the St. Mary Diversion project, urging at a U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing Thursday that a bi-partisan bill to authorize funding for the diversion's rehabilitation and to order a study to determine the water-users' ability to pay be passed.

"Any rural water package must ensure that folks on the Hi-Line get the help they need," Daines said. "This water system is over 100 years old and has one of the worst cost-shares in the nation, which is what led to the collapse of a drop structure last summer. It was a catastrophic failure and created huge problem for us, but we rallied together and were able to get a fix put in place here to repair by the end of the year. It was tough and if Congress doesn't move quickly to pass my bill, we could find ourselves in the same situation again."

The diversion is one of most important infrastructure projects in the region. Unfortunately, the catastrophic drop collapse in May of last year was the culmination of years of warnings that were not followed up on in time.

The diversion, one of the first projects the Bureau of Reclamation was authorized to build after it was created in 1902, was completed more than a century ago to provide irrigation water to Milk River Valley farmers and ranchers.

Patchwork repairs have been done to the system over the years, paid for primarily by the users, and more than 20 years ago Milk River water users began campaigning to find funding to rehabilitate the system to prevent catastrophic failure, which led to the state establishing the St. Mary Rehabilitation Working Group in 2003. The group has been working to plan and find funding for rehabilitation ever since.

Tester, Daines and Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Mont., have all been working to solve the problems at the diversion.

Tester said, while the matter of fund distribution in the infrastructure bill still needs to be hashed out, smaller communities like Hingham will be supported through a number of avenues created by the bill.

In particular, he said, the bill includes a lending facility that will be available to small towns that can borrow money long-term with extremely low interest rates.

Tester said the bill also includes support for wildfire management. He said, due to the length of the bill, he's not 100 percent sure if that includes bolstering firefighter salaries, but if it doesn't he intends to fight for that using other methods.

"If you consider how tinder-dry the state of Montana is, and it pretty much is throughout the entire West, ... this is dangerous work and folks need to be paid for it," he said.

Tester said investments in broadband infrastructure in the bill are also very important for rural Montana, which he said lags behind the rest of the country when it comes to quality high-speed internet access.

Even more important than that, however, he said, the bill will create a huge number of high-paying jobs for Montanans.

He said President Joe Biden backs the current framework and while there is a ways to go until it can be voted on, this is a significant step forward, and a refreshing change of pace from the typical deadlock of Congress.

"Often times you read, you hear, and you guys write about how sides are divided and we're far apart and can't get anything done, and all of that is true by the way." he said. "This is the exception to that rule."

Tester said the last few weeks of negotiation have been difficult, as they always are, and like always neither the political right nor left got everything they wanted.

He said he was especially disappointed by the lack of funding for housing, which he considers infrastructure, but he's hoping that can be addressed in a later reconciliation bill.

Biden said Thursday that some priorities he wanted in the bill - such as child care tax credits, "the human infrastructure that I talk about," did not make it in, saying "none of us got what we, all that we wanted." Biden said he will pursue those priorities in other bills, using a two-track method to meet the goals.

Tester said in his press conference that the bill does not require any new taxes and will be paid for using funds from the existing IRS tax gap, and unused unemployment relief funds from the CARES Act.

Tester said much of the bill was originally going to be paid for with a tax on the upper class, but that idea was killed in committee.

He said he's proud to have been part of the bill, but there is still work to be done and he suspects some people on the left and right will try to find a reason to vote against the bill.

He said the bill, which will help the U.S. maintain a competitive edge against China in the coming years, is too important for that.

A spokesperson for Daines referred to Biden saying he will use a two-track method to pursue other priorities.

"President Biden made clear today that he won't sign this bipartisan infrastructure compromise unless he has a social welfare package to sign with it, which undermines the purpose of a bipartisan proposal," the spokesperson said. "With a 50-50 split Senate and each senator having the power to stop any legislation from moving forward, Sen. Daines hopes that Sen. Tester would not allow President Biden to hold any true infrastructure compromise hostage and refuse to support a multi-trillion dollar social welfare package with massive tax increases."