Biden signs historic infrastructure bill to get ‘America moving again’

President Joe Biden took his $1.2 trillion infrastructure victory lap Monday, culminating an up-and-down 25-year investment drive to upgrade this nation’s roads, bridges, air, waterway and broadband connections.

“My message for the American people is this: America’s moving again, and your life’s going to change for the better,” Biden said at a White House Rose Garden ceremony before members of both parties, governors, mayors and scores of pro-business lobbyists.

As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., succinctly summed up, “To paraphrase one of my favorite former vice presidents, it’s a big f-ing deal.”

And just in time, it would appear. The American Society of Civil Engineers recently gave the U.S. a “C-minus” grade on infrastructure. The World Economic Forum recently ranked the U.S. 13th in infrastructure.

“That’s about to change—and in a big way,” Biden said.

Biden called it the biggest investment in roads and bridges in 70 years. Some 80% of the transportation-related spending goes to highways and bridge projects.

“It’s a blue-collar, blueprint for rebuilding America,” Biden said.

Lobbyists who had spent the better part of a quarter-century working Washington politics agreed it was time to upgrade.

The American Trucking Associations (ATA) estimated its members testified 24 times on Capitol Hill in the last five years on the need for Congress to act in a bipartisan manner to shore up America’s faltering roads and bridges. 

“Roads and bridges are not political—we all drive on them,” ATA President and CEO Chris Spear said in a statement. “A majority in the House and Senate realized this truth and did what’s right for the country, not themselves.

“From farmers to truckers, the millions of hard-working people who make this country great won today. Those lawmakers who put their constituents before themselves have now cemented a lasting legacy that the American people will see, feel and use for many decades to come,” Spear added.

Truckers will finally see the fruits of their labor—a 38% increase in road and bridge funding, and an infusion of highly-trained, younger talent into the workforce to help alleviate what ATA has estimated is an 80,000 shortage of qualified truck drivers.

“Today, all Americans won,” U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Suzanne Clark said in a statement.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will help connect 14 million Americans to broadband, provide clean drinking water for 10 million families, upgrade our energy grid and grow our economy. It is the single largest investment in bridges since construction of the Interstate Highway System in the mid-1950s and the single largest investment to address climate change in U.S. history. 

One would think this would be positive for the politicians who supported it. Five years ago, a similar stop-gap spending measure passed the Senate 83-16 and by a 359-65 margin in the House.

This year, 19 Republican senators voted for it but only 13 Republicans did in the 228-206 House vote. But all those Republicans supporting it got a curtain call at the White House.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will oversee his department that will grow from a $90 billion to a $140 billion agency practically overnight. That’s because the new law reauthorizes surface transportation programs and adds $550 billion in new spending on infrastructure within the next five years.

The man tapped with supervising all this new federal spending is former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, who now owns the title of infrastructure coordinator. It’s a role similar to one Biden held when he was vice president overseeing the 2009 Recovery Act, which included some $787 billion in investment designed to stimulate the economy.

“I made it a point every day to stay on top of how exactly the money was spent, what projects were being built, what projects were not being built and how it was functioning,” Biden told reporters last week.

“We owe it to the American people to make sure the money in this infrastructure plan and the Build Back Better plan – which, God willing, we’re going to still be able to finish – will be used for purposes it was intended.”

That was a reference to the larger, $1.75 trillion “human infrastructure” bill that was de-coupled from the vote on highway and transport infrastructure. Biden and Democrats are still hoping to steer that measure through a divided Congress soon.

But mostly the Rose Garden signing ceremony was a strong signal from the Biden administration that it could do what the previous tenant in the White House couldn’t.

“Trump talked about infrastructure for four years and couldn’t get it done,” Julian Castro, former Housing and Urban Development secretary, told MSNBC. “Now it’s done. This is a show of force, a show of unity.”

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., a key vote in the Senate, said at the Rose Garden ceremony, “How many times have we heard that bipartisanship is dead? Our legislation proved the opposite.”

The law is expected to produce a 38 percent increase in highway funding from 2021 through 2022. Federal spending on highways has not been at this level since 1959, three years after the Interstate Highway System was completed.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) estimated more than $100 billion out of the $550 billion in new spending will be for new grant programs. Those programs will take a while to implement.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Peter A. DeFazio, D-Ore., said he expects taxpayers will quickly see progress on the bill. He said that even before the bill passed, manufacturers were gearing up for the bill’s implementation.

“Hopefully, people don’t get upset by all the construction going on,” he said. “It’s going to be very obvious to the American people that we’ve begun the meaningful reconstruction of the deteriorating infrastructure in this country. It’s going to be hard to miss.”