Last week, Republican Senator Shelly Capito grilled Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg about why he included language from a House bill that had been rejected by the bipartisan group writing the infrastructure bill into a memo to the states about infrastructure funding. The House bill required states to put all of their roads into a state of good repair before they could use any federal funds to built new roads. I called this provision “poison pill” because transportation systems always need some maintenance, but expansions are necessary too.
Buttigieg’s memo wasn’t a mandate, but as Capito noted, it included “language from the House bill basically verbatim.” The Department of Transportation, the memo says, “does not prohibit the construction of new general purpose capacity on highways or bridges, but in most cases Federal-aid highway and Federal Lands funding resources made available through the BIL should be used to repair and maintain existing transportation infrastructure before making new investments in highway expansions.” Continue reading
