WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday embraced a bipartisan Senate deal https://www.reuters.com/world/us/biden-meet-with-bipartisan-senators-discuss-infrastructure-plan-2021-06-24 to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure projects, building roads, bridges and highways and helping stimulate the economy.
Here are some of the details of the bipartisan framework released by the White House, valued at $1.2 trillion over eight years, $579 billion of which is new spending:
NEW SPENDING
* Roads, bridges and other major projects: $109 billion
* Power infrastructure, including grid authority: $73 billion
* Passenger and freight rail: $66 billion
* Broadband infrastructure: $65 billion
* Water infrastructure, such as eliminating lead pipes: $55 billion
* Public transportation: $49 billion
* Resilience (preparing infrastructure for the impacts of climate change such as floods and other extreme weather events, and cyber attacks): $47 billion
* Airports: $25 billion
* Environmental remediation: $21 billion
* Creation of an Infrastructure Financing Authority focused on clean transportation and clean energy: $20 billion
* Ports, waterways: $16 billion
* Safety, including grants to add bike lanes and other steps to protect vulnerable road users: $11 billion
* Electric vehicle infrastructure, including chargers: $7.5 billion
* Electric buses, transit: $7.5 billion
* Western water shortage: $5 billion
FINANCING
The plan includes a number of proposals to finance the spending. Republicans sketched out those plans:
* Improve tax enforcement: Net increase of $100 billion after $40 billion invested in enforcement
* Public-private partnerships and “direct-pay” municipal bonds: $100 billion
* Redirecting unused COVID-19 relief funds: $80 billion
* Proceeds from 5G wireless networks spectrum auction: $65 billion
* Estimated macroeconomic impact of infrastructure investment: $58 billion
* Redirecting unused unemployment insurance money returned from U.S. states: $25 billion
* Reinstating Superfund fees for chemicals. Superfund, the program for cleaning up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites, was originally financed primarily through taxes on petroleum products, chemicals and corporate income: $13 billion
* Extending expiring customs user fees: $6.1 billion
* Sale of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve: $6 billion
(Reporting by Susan Cornwell, David Shepardson and Lisa Lambert; Editing by Scott Malone and Sonya Hepinstall)
