WASHINGTON (AP) – Looking beyond $ 1.9 trillion COVID relief Bill, President Joe Biden and lawmakers are laying the groundwork for another top legislative priority: a long-standing push for the nation’s roads, bridges and other infrastructure that can meet Republican resistance at a high price.
Biden and his team have started discussions on possible schemes of an infrastructure package with members of Congress, especially aware than the recent Texas struggles with power cuts and water shortages after a brutal winter storm constitute an opportunity for an agreement on sustained spending on infrastructure.
Gina McCarthy, Biden’s national climate adviser, told The Associated Press that the deadly winter storm in Texas should be a “wake-up call” to the need for more reliable and resilient energy systems and other infrastructure.
“The infrastructure is not built to withstand these extreme weather conditions,” said Liz Sherwood-Randall, the president’s national security aide. “We know we can’t react only to extreme weather events. We have to plan and prepare them. “
A White House proposal could come out in March.
“Now is the time to be aggressive,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, who knows the potholes.
On Thursday, at a conference with state and local highway officials, he referred to the Trump administration’s often-never-achieved promise of mega-initiative on roads, bridges, and the like.
“I know you’re one of those who work and wait more patiently, or perhaps impatiently, for the moment when Infrastructure Week will cease to be a kind of promise for Groundhog Day, but it will actually be something that offers generational investment.” , he said.
Much of the U.S. infrastructure (roads, bridges, public drinking water systems, dams, airports, mass transit systems, and more) needs major restoration after years of underfunding, according to the American Society of Engineers. Civilians. In its 2017 infrastructure file, gave the national infrastructure a global degree of D +.
The two chambers of Congress will use as a starting point their unsuccessful efforts to get infrastructure bills during the last session.
Democrats last year approved a $ 1.5 trillion package in the House, but it went nowhere with the Trump administration and the Republican-led Senate. A Senate panel passed in 2019 stricter bipartisan legislation focused on reauthorizing federal transportation programs. It also caught fire when the United States focused on elections and COVID-19.
Biden has spoken out with more numbers and some Democrats are now urging him to skip Republicans in the narrowly divided Congress to address a wider range of priorities urged by interest groups.
During the presidential campaign, Biden pledged to deploy $ 2 trillion in infrastructure and clean energy, but the White House has not ruled out an even higher price. McCarthy said Biden’s next plan will specifically target job creation, such as investments to boost “workers left behind” by closed coal mines or power plants, as well as by communities near polluting refineries and other hazards.
“He’s been very fond of investing in infrastructure (long overdue), I should say,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday. “But it also wants to do more about healthcare, help our manufacturing sector, do more to strengthen access to affordable healthcare. So the size – the package – the components, the order, which has not yet been determined ”.
Senator Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, recently told the White House that he is ready to use it the budget maneuver known as reconciliation to approve a broad package of economic recovery with only democratic votes. This provoked severe warnings from Republicans who have already closed ranks against the Democrats ’COVID-19 relief bill.
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said there is bipartisan support for ambitious infrastructure measures. But that “should not be extended to a multi-million dollar package that is full of other ideological and one-size-fits-all policies that bind the hands of our states and our communities,” he said.
Capito will help draft bipartisan legislation on the Senate side.
Representative Peter DeFazio, chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, told the AP that he envisions a comprehensive package of the House that will go beyond roads, bridges and public transportation.
He also hopes to have money for water, broadband and power grid systems, facing weak infrastructure left uncovered after Texas’ crippling blackouts.
He is not yet ready to talk about overheads. DeFazio, D-Ore., Said it will be up to the Biden administration and the House Roads and Media Committee to figure out how to pay for it.
DeFazio said General Motors’ recently announced goal of going largely electric in 2035 demonstrates the need for massive spending on charging stations across the country. Biden campaigned for the plan to install 500,000 charging stations by the end of 2030.
“I’m totally willing to work with (Republicans) if they’re willing to recognize climate change,” DeFazio said, “or if they don’t want to recognize climate change, they can only recognize that electric semis and electric vehicles are a flood in the ‘horizon and we have to move forward’.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, D-Mich., Expressed a similar sentiment, urging strong action on carbon emissions and vehicle charging stations to help achieve a “complete transition to electricity.” He also wants states to have more federal subsidies for infrastructure repair after natural disasters and extreme weather.
At the Senate hearing where he spoke, Republican Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland said there is bipartisan support among governors to alleviate congestion, cut red tape, leverage private sector investment and ensure projects can better withstand cyberattacks and natural disasters.
Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, the new chairman of the Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works, said his goal is for his committee to approve an infrastructure bill on Memorial Day.
In the House, Rep. Sam Graves, the top Republican in the transportation group, said Republicans would be open to a larger package as long as it didn’t add heavily to national debt.
But many lawmakers oppose an increase in the federal gas tax, a way to help pay for spending, while groups like the Chamber of Commerce advocate raising corporate taxes during a pandemic.
Cedric Richmond, a White House aide, a former Louisiana congressman, told state transportation officials that the president intends most of the spending to be paid and not added to debt. In part, this would be reversing some of the Trump administration’s tax cuts.
Ed Mortimer, vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said removing items from last year’s infrastructure bill to renovate low-income schools and homes could lower the price, because the relief measure House-approved COVID already has hundreds of billions of dollars for these purposes.
“Affordable housing, the construction of schools, is very commendable, but we are not sure that this is one of the key axes that will allow a bill to be signed into law,” Mortimer said.
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He reported a yen from Austin, Texas. AP writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.