Legislators laud passage of infrastructure bipartisan bill

WASHINGTON D.C. >> On Friday, Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) voted to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the bipartisan legislation to invest $550 billion in new infrastructure spending. Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA) a senior member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, also voted to pass the bill.

“I was proud to vote to pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a multi-billion investment in rebuilding our nation’s infrastructure, creating jobs and addressing climate change,” said Thompson in a statement. “This is a bipartisan bill, crafted by Republicans and Democrats, that provides a 21st Century infrastructure.”

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was first passed by the Senate last summer with a wide, bipartisan majority. The bill provides $550 billion in new spending and $450 billion for existing surface transportation programs.

Garamendi met in the Oval Office this spring with President Biden, Vice President Harris, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and a small bipartisan group of his colleagues on the House Committee on Transportation to begin negotiations on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The Congressman said the vote was the culmination of months of hard work and negotiations. “As a senior member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, I was proud to play a part in these negotiations and fight to ensure California’s transportation needs were addressed in the ‘Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,’” Garamendi said.

The “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” includes several key provisions authored by Garamendi:

A brief overview of the major provisions in the “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” is included below:

One in five miles, or 173,000 total miles, of our highways and major roads and 45,000 bridges are in poor condition. Bridges in poor condition pose heightened challenges in rural communities, which often may rely on a single bridge for the passage of emergency service vehicles.

America has one of the highest road fatality rates in the industrialized world. The legislation invests $11 billion in transportation safety programs, including a new, $5 billion Safe Streets for All program to help states and localities reduce crashes and fatalities in their communities, especially for cyclists and pedestrians.

America’s transit infrastructure is inadequate — with a multibillion-dollar repair backlog, representing more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 rail cars, 200 stations, and thousands of miles of track, signals, and power systems in need of replacement. The legislation includes $39 billion of new investment to modernize transit, and improve accessibility for the elderly and people with disabilities.

Unlike highways and transit, rail lacks a multiyear funding stream to address deferred maintenance, enhance existing corridors, and build new lines in high-potential locations. The legislation positions Amtrak and rail to play a central role in our transportation and economic future. This is the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago. The legislation invests $66 billion in rail to eliminate the Amtrak maintenance backlog, modernize the Northeast Corridor, and bring world-class rail service to areas outside the northeast and mid-Atlantic.

U.S. market share of plug-in electric vehicle (EV) sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese EV market. The President believes that must change. The bill invests $7.5 billion to build out the first-ever national network of EV chargers in the United States. The bill will provide funding for the deployment of EV chargers along highway corridors to facilitate long-distance travel and within communities to provide convenient charging where people live, work, and shop.

American school buses play a critical role in expanding access to education, but they are also a significant source of pollution. The legislation will deliver thousands of electric school buses nationwide, including in rural communities, helping school districts across the country buy clean, American-made, zero-emission buses, and replace the yellow school bus fleet for America’s children.

Too often, past transportation investments divided communities — like the Claiborne Expressway in New Orleans or I-81 in Syracuse — or it left out the people most in need of affordable transportation options. In particular, significant portions of the interstate highway system were built through Black neighborhoods. The legislation creates a first-ever program to reconnect communities divided by transportation infrastructure.

Currently, up to 10 million American households and 400,000 schools and child care centers lack safe drinking water. The legislation’s $55 billion investment represents the largest investment in clean drinking water in American history, including dedicated funding to replace lead service lines and the dangerous chemical PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl).

Broadband internet is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, to participate equally in school learning, health care, and to stay connected. Yet, by one definition, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds. The legislation’s $65 billion investment will help ensure every American has access to reliable high-speed internet with a historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment, just as the federal government made a historic effort to provide electricity to every American nearly one hundred

years ago.

In thousands of rural and urban communities around the country, hundreds of thousands of former industrial and energy sites are now idle — sources of blight and pollution. 26% of Black Americans and 29% of Hispanic Americans live within 3 miles of a Superfund site, a higher percentage than for Americans overall. Proximity to a Superfund site can lead to elevated levels of lead in children’s blood. The legislation invests $21 billion in environmental remediation. The bill includes funds to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites, reclaim abandoned mine land and cap orphaned gas wells.

As the recent Texas power outages demonstrated, our aging electric grid needs urgent modernization. A Department of Energy study found that power outages cost the U.S. economy up to $70 billion annually. The legislation’s roughly $65 billion investment includes the single largest investment in clean energy transmission in American history. It upgrades our power infrastructure, including by building thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewable energy.