Baker says ‘pretty significant investment’ in climate needed
Prez agrees in $2T rebuilding plan
Gov. Charlie Baker is calling for a “pretty significant investment” in climate resiliency as part of President Biden’s sweeping $2 trillion proposal to re-engineer the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and move toward a greener future.
“We have far more storms than we used to have and the storms we have are far more severe than they used to be,” Baker said Wednesday, adding that current infrastructure was simply “designed for a different day.”
“I certainly hope that as the federal government moves forward in this conversation about infrastructure and about climate that they incorporate a pretty significant investment in resiliency as part of that,” the GOP governor said. “Resiliency is how you save money in the long run associated with infrastructure.”
Biden appeared to align with Baker’s wishes hours later when he unveiled his “American Jobs Plan” in Pittsburgh, saying the $2 trillion infrastructure investment would “lead to transformational progress to tackle climate change with American jobs and American ingenuity, protect our communities from billions of dollars of damage from historic super storms, floods, wildfires, droughts, year after year, by making our infrastructure more secure and resilient.”
Biden’s eight-year plan would pump $621 billion toward repairing roads and bridges and modernizing public transit, along with sizable investments in workforce development, sustainable housing, clean drinking water, high-speed broadband and caregiving infrastructure as the nation moves forward from the pandemic.
“It’s big, yes. It’s bold, yes. And we can get it done,” Biden said while teasing another massive investment, the “American Families Plan,” which he plans to unveil in coming weeks.
Biden’s plan will face an uphill battle in Congress, mainly with Republicans, though U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., tweeted that it’s “not nearly enough” to meet Americans’ needs.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell — signaling the type of GOP pushback Biden could see — called the plan that relies on corporate tax hikes a “Trojan horse” for “more borrowed money and massive tax increases on all the productive parts of our economy.”
Biden, in his Pittsburgh speech, said he’s up for “good faith negotiation with any Republican that wants to help get this done — but we have to get it done.”