U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), a member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Space and Technology, questioned witnesses this morning in a Senate Commerce hearing entitled “Rebuilding Infrastructure in America: Administration Perspectives.”

Witnesses included U.S. Transportation Secretary Elaine L. Chao, U.S. Department of Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, U.S. Department of Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry.

Click to watch Sen. Inhofe’s remarks.

Key Excerpts

On the need for energy infrastructure

Inhofe: “When you look at the problems that we have, in terms of pipelines, according to a 2013 report, we are going to need $890 billion in energy infrastructure investment through 2025. A lot of that would be through—of course—the pipeline restructuring and improvements. The impediment to more energy infrastructure is existing government regulations and red tape dragging out the completion of needed projects. Now, I don’t think this, I know this.

I served as—for a number of years—as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee. One of the real successes we had there was doing away with a lot of the regulations and streamlining things and I have to give credit to my fellow Senator Barbara Boxer. She’s a real liberal and I’m a conservative. We all agreed on this and agreed to make changes. Now, that’s right, we need to do more.

I just want to cover this one thing on pipelines. You and I are from very good oil states, natural gas producers and all of that. When I go home and I tell people in my state of Oklahoma that we are actually—that Boston is actually importing natural gas from Russia—how do you explain that? Well, I explain it: we don’t have the pipeline structure to have that.”

On paying for the infrastructure proposal

Inhofe: “Just nine years ago, we had a new president coming in, his name was Barack Obama and he wanted to have $800 billion for infrastructure. Do you remember that? How quickly we forget. And so, they had the House and the Senate and total control of everything at that time. And so they got not $800 billion—$836 billion. Now, of all of that they had—that he had at his disposal—what percentage do you suppose, Secretary Chao, of that actually went to infrastructure and transportation?

Let me answer it, because you may not have the answer to that: three percent. Only three percent of $836 billion actually went to transportation. Now, I remember at that time, because Barbara Boxer was ranking member—actually, she was the chairman and I was the ranking member. And we introduced amendments to try to force a large percentage of that. One of our amendments was to be sure that at least 35 percent went to infrastructure since that was what it was represented to be, but it want.

Second thing I want to say—and this is something I know I’ll get criticized for—but it’s a fact. And by the way, I say to my friend over on the side, this was a Democrat idea. This came in 1962, when we had Kennedy as President of the United States. He said –and I think this is an exact quote—he said ‘we need more money, revenue, to come in to support the Great Society programs and the best way to increase revenue is to reduce marginal rates.’ A novel idea—and it worked. … At the end of three years, the amount of money that was coming in as revenue increased by 30 percent. Then along came Reagan.

At the time that Reagan came in, the total amount of money it took to run government was $469 billion. So he said, ‘well Kennedy reduced the rates and the top rate went down from 90 percent to 70 percent. Remember that? So, Regan came in—he moved the top rate down from 70 percent to 50 percent and all other comparable rates and what happened? The total amount of money it took to run the government from $469 billion raised as a result of that to $720 billion. That’s what’s happening today. Why are we so blind, we don’t see it?