Once President Joe Biden signs his name to the $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed late last week by Congress, important questions about how much hard infrastructure is in the bill and what part of the measure is actually paid for all too quickly will fade away.
And what is left is this:
“Certainly we will spend anything they send to us,” state Rep. Joey Hensley, R-Hohenwald, told the Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle last weekend, “and there are always projects we will do.”
Neither Tennessee nor any other state is going give back their part of the money once it has been allocated. And any serious discussions about federal deficit spending will be kicked down the road again.
The Volunteer State appears to be getting slightly less than $8 billion in funding over five years, with $5.8 billion going to the state Department of Transportation (TDOT) for improving federal-aid highways and $302 million tabbed for bridge replacement and repairs.