As President Joe Biden says: “Finally! Infrastructure Week!”
Despite all the Republican nay-saying, the more than $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the House in a 228-206 vote (and the Senate in early August by a vote of 69-30), now awaits just one more signature – President Biden’s – before it will bring slightly less than $8 billion to Tennessee and an expected $12.33 billion to Georgia over the next five years.
This is money for sorely needed highway and bridge replacement, public transportation repairs, clean drinking water and airports, among other things.
But it’s not just concrete and pipes. It’s also an infrastructure investment in jobs, and one that adds not one penny to the deficit. It is to be paid for by higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and large corporations, as well as by reapportioned funds – including money not used from the Coronavirus Relief Act.
As Biden termed it: “It’s a once-in-a-generation investment that’s going to create millions of jobs, modernize our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our broadband, and a whole range of things to turn the climate crisis into an opportunity and put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st century that we face with China and other large countries.”