![]() While major disasters keep growing in frequency and cost, it’s chronic challenges such as flooding and drought that affect more communities. Nor is the country ready to manage a changing climate. The shift to a digital business platform-from everyday banking to the use of machine learning-continues to create barriers to growth for many small- and medium-sized businesses. There are still about 17 million households who don’t have broadband of any kind, and the patterns of geographic disconnect follow the same stubborn neighborhood divides by income, education, and race. The past year has been one long reminder that, for all of the nation’s economic strengths, we are woefully unprepared for our digital future. That leads to the bigger reason the Senate’s infrastructure bill can make a real difference: It addresses generational challenges. That spending peak-almost exactly half a century ago-was motivated by a clear sense of purpose: the vision to connect regions via highway and address the dirty and unsafe water within our communities. Then there’s the proposed reconciliation bill while the exact text is currently unknown, workforce, research and development, and capital programs are all likely part of that separate multitrillion dollar package.Īll told, it’s possible that infrastructure outlays over the next five years could match the federal government’s all-time peak: a period from the mid-1970s through the early 1980s when the federal government was still building out the interstate highway network and offering sizable grants to water utilities. ![]() That $250 billion bill includes direct infrastructure programs such as clean energy research, plus programs with indirect benefits such as improving supply chains. Innovation and Competition Act, and signs are positive that the House will pass a companion bill. It’s safe to call this a generational investment-and that’s before we even consider what the final total may be. To put that new spending in perspective, it’s nearly enough to increase total federal infrastructure spending to the same average levels as during the New Deal. It includes $550 billion in new spending, which means roughly $110 billion per year. The total spending levels are estimated at roughly $1 trillion, which could change a bit depending on legislative tweaks and appropriations decisions down the road. ![]() While money isn’t everything, this bill invests at a scale the country needs. If you step back and view it in total, the unquestionable answer is “yes.” Can this bill make the country more inclusive, environmentally resilient, and industrially competitive? Instead, we need to judge it in the aggregate. That’s one of the problems with a bill this big: It can’t be all things to all people. ![]() The commitment to clean drinking water could’ve been larger, and critics are right to worry when the workforce development programs will arrive. The same goes for electric vehicle investments and a new program to reconnect communities severed by highway construction. The transit spending is smaller than senators originally promised, and far smaller than what the Biden administration’s original American Jobs Plan proposed. It’s easily the biggest infrastructure package in decades.ĭepending on your priorities, it’s also likely that the bill has something you despise. Those new programs will target the digital divide, interstate electricity transmission, resilient infrastructure designs, and much more. And it’s massive: The Senate’s 2,702-page Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act reauthorizes a mix of transportation and water programs and adds $550 billion in new spending over five years. After months of negotiations and years of false starts, the United States finally has an infrastructure bill.
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