"Not many people wake up thrilled at the possibility of a federal bill on infrastructure. But the US Senate’s passage of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, with $550 billion in new spending, is a big deal — one that could directly and indirectly affect Americans’ lives.
The bill, passed in a bipartisan 69-30 vote on Tuesday, includes a lot of measures that will help current and future generations: a major expansion of high-speed internet; spending for roads, bridges, and public transit; and funding for clean drinking water. It includes new measures to combat climate change, like money for electric vehicles and modernizing the power grid."
The bipartisan bill does a good amount on its own
Priced at $550 billion in new federal spending, the bipartisan deal focuses almost entirely on physical infrastructure projects that will move to rebuild parts of American society and take action on longer-term issues, from climate change to improving internet access.
Here are the areas that would get major new spending:
Transportation projects: The bill would spend $110 billion in new funds for roads, bridges, and related projects. It also would commit $39 billion for public transit — which the Biden administration described as “the largest federal investment in public transit in history” — along with $66 billion for rail. It’d spend $42 billion on ports, airports, and related projects. And it would invest $11 billion in making America’s roads safer.
Reconnected communities: In the past few decades of road construction, many American cities have been physically divided by large highways, disproportionately affecting minority communities. The bill would spend $1 billion to reconnect many of these places.
High-speed internet: The bill would spend $65 billion with a goal of providing broadband internet to all Americans, further aiming to boost competition among providers and reduce the cost of high-speed internet to make it more affordable.
Electric vehicles: The bill would put $7.5 billion into a national network of electric vehicle chargers. It would also put $7.5 billion toward electrifying buses and ferries. These actions, the Biden administration said, are meant to create jobs but also help tackle global warming by decarbonizing major components of American transportation systems.
Other action on climate change: The bill would also make several other investments meant to combat climate change, including $28 billion for power grid infrastructure, resiliency, and reliability (in part to help expand the reach of clean energy) and $46 billion to, in part, mitigate damage from floods, wildfires, and droughts.
Clean drinking water: The deal would spend $55 billion on clean water infrastructure, particularly to eliminate lead pipes and other dangerous chemicals in today’s service lines.
Cleaning up the environment: The bill would also commit $21 billion to environmental remediation, particularly to clean up Superfund and brownfield sites, abandoned mines, and orphaned gas wells.
The plan is paid for through repurposed unused funds from the economic relief package, anti-fraud enforcement for unemployment benefits, a delay on a Medicare Part D rebate rule, and several other generally smaller sources. But the Congressional Budget Office found that the deal would still add $256 billion over 10 years to the deficit.
None of this may be as exciting as the government mailing you cash, but it’s a big deal nonetheless: On top of the traditional rebuilding of crumbling infrastructure that you’d expect in this kind of plan, it also tackles a host of issues that have been very present in Americans’ lives over the past year or so. That includes global warming amid intensifying droughts, heat, and wildfires, but also issues like many Americans’ inability to work from home or attend school virtually, at least with any consistency, during Covid-19 lockdowns due to poor internet access.
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