Never before has so much ‘infrastructure’ been funded and so little built.
Unless, that is, you label Pete Buttegieg’s ‘paternity’ leave as ‘human infrastructure.’ Which, by the way, is exactly what the Biden administration did with its trillion dollar infrastructure boondoggle in 2021.
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The U.S. Energy Department faces major management challenges ranging from hacking vulnerabilities to foreign espionage and could create “massive new risks to the taxpayer” as it spends tens of billions of dollars in new spending from President Joe Biden’s signature infrastructure initiative, the agency’s internal watchdog warns.
The Office of Inspector General offered a stark assessment of the department under Secretary Jennifer Granholm, pointedly warning losses from fraud in the current infrastructure spending could mirror that seen during the COVID pandemic, where taxpayers now lost an estimated $200 billion government wide.
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Funds from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will be used to for water cleaning resources by developing a new treatment center in Tucson.
Specifically, the facility would focus on PFAS chemicals, which the United States Environmental Protection Agency describes as “widely used” and “long-lasting,” but could also have negative health consequences when they make their way into water and other consumables. Out of $10 billion targeted toward getting chemicals out of water in the act, $33,520,000 is Tucson bound, according to a news release.
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The federal government is looking to dole out nearly $2.3 billion to “expand and modernize” intercity passenger rail across the country.
But a leading transportation analyst says that Amtrak, the nation’s passenger railroad, doesn’t have any plans to break even.
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The America Rising PAC (ARPAC) recently spoke with the Arizona Sun Times via email, criticizing Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) for supporting a federal gas holiday that would ultimately, the say, undermine infrastructure funding for Arizona.
“This is another example of why Mark Kelly shouldn’t be sent back to Washington. Not only does his ineffective gas tax suspension undermine the one legislative accomplishment he’s writing home about – Arizona wouldn’t even need a gas tax holiday if it wasn’t for the Democrats’ anti-American energy agenda that drove gas prices to record-breaking levels in the first place,” said ARPAC Press Secretary Whitney Robertson.
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Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on Thursday launched a new task force to address the state’s infrastructure needs and appropriate federal funding administered to the state through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
The legislation, which was approved on a bipartisan basis, will allocate $1.2 trillion to states to repair and upgrade critical infrastructure needs, like roads and bridges.
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This week’s Golden Horseshoe is awarded to the Biden Administration and members of Congress who voted for the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which includes $250 million for reducing truck emissions at port facilities, which have been crippled by record-breaking cargo backlogs for months.
Critics have attributed the bottlenecks to draconian California emissions standards that exclude up to half the nation’s truckers from transporting shipping containers to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation’s two busiest, which together account for close to one third of total U.S. shipping cargo volume.
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Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo requested the inclusion of a provision in the bipartisan infrastructure bill shielding a $42 billion broadband funding program from public scrutiny, according to several people familiar with the matter.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion piece of legislation that passed the Senate in August with significant bipartisan support and currently awaits a vote in the House, sets aside $42 billion in broadband deployment grants to be given to states and administered through guidelines issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a division of the Commerce Department.
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The Senate on Tuesday passed its bipartisan infrastructure bill, moving what would be the largest public works package in decades one step closer to becoming law months after negotiations first began.
The bill, which advocates praised as the largest investment in America’s infrastructure since the construction of the interstate highway system in the 1950s, passed 69-30. Nineteen Republicans joined every Democrat in voting for the package.
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