U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned lawmakers Thursday that the nation is facing a “a trillion-dollar backlog” of infrastructure projects and at risk of falling behind competitors like China.
“Across the country, we face a trillion-dollar backlog of needed repairs and improvements, with hundreds of billions of dollars in good projects already in the pipeline,” he said in prepared remarks for a U.S. Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing that got underway Thursday morning. “We see other countries pulling ahead of us, with consequences for strategic and economic competition. By some measures, China spends more on infrastructure every year than the U.S. and Europe combined.”
His testimony came as President Joe Biden is considering proposing as much as $3 trillion worth of measures in a long-term economic program to address key issues, including infrastructure and climate change. The president’s top aides have spent the last several days weighing how to advance the plan in the face of staunch GOP opposition.
While the details remain in flux, aides are leaning toward separating Biden’s policy plans into two bills — one focused on infrastructure and the other on issues including child care, college tuition and health care — with tax hikes to offset part of the cost. Biden laid out many of the policy details, including tax increases, during the campaign.
Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday that Biden was still finalizing the plan but will lay out details in a speech Wednesday in Pittsburgh.
Buttigieg told the lawmakers they have “the best chance in any of our lifetimes to make a generational investment in infrastructure.” He cited the Biden administration’s plan as a logical next step in the road to recovery from the pandemic after Congress approved a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief that was proposed by the president.
“The infrastructure status quo is a threat to our collective future,” he said. “We face an imperative to create resilient infrastructure and confront inequities that have devastated communities.”
Lawmakers in both parties agreed with Buttigieg’s assertion that the nation has large infrastructure challenges, but they disagreed on the size and scope of the bill Biden is preparing to submit to Congress.
“We know our infrastructure needs are massive,” U.S. Representative Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee said in remarks prepared for the hearing.
DeFazio cited a study from the American Society of Civil Engineers that he said documents an investment gap of $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years to fix the nation’s existing infrastructure, meet future needs, and restore American competitiveness on the global stage.
“We know the question is not whether we need to invest, but what consequences we’ll suffer for every day of delay as the risk of failure of our aging and fragile assets increases,” he said.
U.S. Representative Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican who is the top Republican on the panel, said in his own prepared remarks that an infrastructure package should be narrowly tailored to focus chiefly on roads and bridges.
“While infrastructure means different things to different people, to me and my colleagues on the Transportation Committee, it’s the highway bill,” he said. “Partnership — not partisanship — gets results.”
Graves added: “This bill cannot grow into a multi-trillion dollar catch-all. It needs to be manageable and responsible."
