Last week Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, H.R. 3684, which President Biden signed Monday. While Biden’s predecessor repeatedly proclaimed infrastructure week in an effort to gain public support not once in four years was an infrastructure bill ever voted on, let alone passed. Biden signed an infrastructure bill into law before he’s been in office 10 months. It goes to show you what competent leadership can accomplish.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act includes provisions
related to federal-aid highway, transit, highway safety, motor carrier,
research, hazardous materials, and rail programs of the Department of
Transportation (DOT). Several other provisions of the bill address climate
change, including strategies to reduce the climate change impacts of the
surface transportation system and a vulnerability assessment to identify
opportunities to enhance the resilience of the surface transportation system
and ensure the efficient use of federal resources. H.R. 3684 revises Buy
America procurement requirements for highways, mass transit, and rail and establishes
a rebuild rural bridges program to improve the safety and state of good repair of
bridges in rural communities like Seguin.
Passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is a big
deal, it moves the nation forward by providing the transportation
infrastructure that we’ll need for the next few decades while at the same time
providing good paying jobs that will raise wages and the standard of living for
everyone, but it isn’t enough. Next up is the Build Back Better Act, H.R. 5376,
which will soon be up for a vote in the U.S. House. The bill includes a lot of
good things for you and your family as well as the country as a whole.
H.R. 5376 will fund purchases and incentives for electric
vehicles and zero-emission, heavy-duty vehicles. This is an important step in
both reducing the damage from climate change and developing energy independence.
There is also funding for wildfire prevention, drought relief, conservation
efforts, and climate change research; all of which affect Texas greatly. The
bill also provides funding transit services and clean energy projects in
low-income communities, some of which Seguin would likely qualify for.
The Build Back Better Act also includes
funding for up to six semesters of free community college so that our young
people who aren’t interested in university degrees have a chance to develop
skills that lead to good paying jobs in construction, healthcare, and a wide
range of fields. For families with very young children the bill will provide
funding for universal preschool. The bill will also provide funding for free
child care for children under the age of six making it easier for parents to
work full time jobs that pay a living wage. An important provision here in
Texas is funding health benefits for eligible individuals who reside in states
that have not expanded Medicaid. There’s plenty more in the bill like expanding
Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing along with require that Medicare
negotiate prices on prescription drugs which is currently prohibited.
We all know that cities are perpetually
underfunded so that important infrastructure, like the water lines in Flint
Michigan where so many suffered lead poisoning, are unsafe and unhealthy relics
nearly a century old. If passed, H.R.
5376 will provide for safe drinking water so that water lines can be upgraded
using safe materials so that you and I won’t have to worry about lead or other
contaminants in our drinking water.
If you want to improve the economy and
health in our community do your part by calling our congressman, Vicente González
at 202-225-2531, and urge him to vote for H.R. 5376.
Published in the Seguin Gazette - November 17, 2021
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