The U.S. House passed a $715 billion bill July 1 to fund transportation and water infrastructure that now heads to the Senate.
The bill calls for spending $343 billion on bridges and roads and safety over five years. It represents a 54% increase in current funding and would focus on fixing existing roads and bridges.
The $343 billion also includes:
- $14.5 billion to reduce carbon pollution and for mitigation and resiliency, including use of green construction materials.
- $4 billion to install electric-vehicle charging stations.
- $3 billion to reconnect communities split by highways.
Known as the INVEST in America Act, the bill also calls for $168 billion for water and sewer infrastructure, $109 billion for public transit and $95 billion for passenger and freight rail.
The 221-201 vote was mostly along party lines.
Sponsors of the legislation see it as including President Joe Biden’s infrastructure priorities and can be used as part of the negotiations for bipartisan legislation.
“The INVEST in America Act puts a core piece of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan into legislative text – seizing this once-in-a-generation opportunity to move our transportation planning out of the 1950s and toward our clean energy future,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio, one of the bill’s sponsors.
The passage comes a week after Biden and a bipartisan group of senators announced a compromise infrastructure package. The chart below outlines how that proposal would spend $579 billion in additional funding: (When coupled with baseline spending over five years, the total package equals $973 billion, and when spread over eight years, the total comes to $1.2 trillion, the White House says.)
A breakdown in billions of dollars of how the new bipartisan infrastructure deal would be spent, if it passes Congress.White House
