mr. tonko: thank you, representative cartwright for yielding. but first and foremost i thank you for leading us in this discussion this evening. so what does the infratruckture bill mean to my district? mean to me? i think it's sharpening our competitive edge. and when you're out there functioning in a global economy, we may not be the only force-out there as we were decades ago. and so sharpening that pencil, making certain we cut costs, costs for families, cost for production, and providing for resources that will put tools in the kit and are required for a 21st century economy is what it's all about. we have back burnered for far too long. you know, having been here now, this is my 13th year in congress, train have chuck -- infra-- in congress. infrastructure is not a democrat or republican idea. people many both parties have been talking about it for a long time. every week in the last administration was infrastructure week. finally, it took leadership. president biden with his experience o

mr. tonko: thank you, representative cartwright. thank you for leading us in type's discussion. on infrastructure and -- both physical and human infrastructure. let me start by extending my comments toward the child tax credit you made mention of in your last comments. the data now are available from july and august as we all know families reseed their first check dm july. and what a bit of welcome relief. and as we look at where those dollars went, 47% from july and august payments, those are the data available currently, 47% went to put food on the table. food on the table. 28% went toward utilities including broadband. so we're talking about kids doing their homework. we're talking about parents having an opportunity to reach the outside world. middle income america to have cottage industries up and running. so 75% of that tax cut went to food and utilities. and other incidentals absorb the remaining amount of payments. that's a staggering statistic. that should tell us something about the v