Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who ouldn’t even fix the potholes in South Bend when he was mayor, testified before the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure on Thursday.
The Associated Press reports that Buttigieg wants trillions to do what he wants to do with transportation. Much of it will include reparations and the Green New Deal.
We’ve spent $4 trillion on the pandemic, bailouts, and payoffs. They are planning 3-4 trillion dollars on climate change, infrastructure, and other socialist wishlist items.
Now Buttigieg wants more than a trillion. He is “warning that the country’s infrastructure needs exceed $1 trillion” as the secretary moves forward in his appeals to Congress for infrastructure needs. The Biden administration is preparing a $3-4 trillion spending package incorporating infrastructure funding and other priorities.
In written remarks during testimony, Buttigieg said, “I believe we have – at this moment – the best chance in any of our lifetimes to make a generational investment in infrastructure that will help us meet our country’s most pressing challenges today and create a stronger future for decades to come.”
Buttigieg said that this is the time to create good jobs [union jobs] through infrastructure, as well as the time to repair structures and facilities such as “highways, roads, bridges,” and more. He said that infrastructure “has such strong bipartisan support” for “good reasons,” saying that everyone has a need “for reliable roads, railways, and air transportation.”
REPARATIONS AND GREEN NEW DEAL
Buttigieg argued that this is also a moment to “address major inequities — including those caused by highways that were built through Black and Brown communities, decades of disinvestment that left small towns and rural main streets stranded, and the disproportionate pollution burden from trucks, ports, and other facilities.”
The secretary addressed concerns over climate change, as well, saying that it is time for the U.S. “to improve the air we breathe” and “tackle the climate crisis by moving the U.S. to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, building a national EV charging network, and investing in transit, transit-oriented development, sustainable aviation, and resilient infrastructure.”
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Buttigieg said that “transportation is the leading contributor to climate change” in the country, adding the negative effect that extreme weather has on infrastructure facilities. “Every dollar we spend rebuilding from a climate-driven disaster is a dollar we could have spent building a more competitive, modern, and resilient transportation system that produces significantly lower emissions,” he said.
REPUBLICANS BALK
Congressional Republicans are pushing back against the Biden administration’s ambitious infrastructure proposal, warning that any plan that strays from core transportation priorities to one that tackles climate change and social justice won’t get GOP support.
“I don’t think the bill can grow into a multi-trillion-dollar catch-all,” Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, the top Republican on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee said Thursday. “A transportation bill needs to be a transportation bill, not a Green New Deal. It needs to be about roads and bridges.”
Graves spoke during the same Buttigieg hearing. President Joe Biden’s wide-ranging $3 trillion infrastructure bill will focus on Green New Deal insanity.
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