Hunter
04/13/21
Citing decades of deferred maintenance and lack of investment, the Biden White House gave the State of Iowa a “C” on its infrastructure report card.
The president is currently working to get an over $3 trillion American Jobs Plan passed through the House and Senate. The White House has detailed the needs of every state in the Union, showing what the Plan will do to help several issues.
According to the report, there are nearly 4600 bridges and over 400 miles of highway in poor condition. A study calculated that commute times have increased by 6.6% since 2011 in Iowa, and each driver pays nearly $340 per year in costs yearly due to driving on substandard roads. The plan has earmarked over $600 billion to transform infrastructure, including $114 billion to repair roads and bridges.
Public Transit is an issue in Iowa as well. The report states that nearly 40% of the trains and other transit vehicles are past their useful life, and those that use public transport to commute spend an extra 30-plus percent of their time getting to and from work.
Biden’s America’s Job Plan will earmark $50 billion to improve the resiliency of infrastructure and support communities’ recovery from disaster. The report cites 32 extreme weather events in the last ten years in Iowa, causing up to $50 billion in damages.
Drinking water, housing, broadband, manufacturing, home energy, clean energy jobs and veterans health are also issues addressed in Biden’s plan. The White House report doesn’t offer specifics on how much money would be earmarked for Iowa on those issues.
Republicans, including Iowa senator Joni Ernst, have criticized Biden’s plan. Ernst says that only about six percent of the bill actually goes to roads and bridges. She also criticized the administration’s proposed investment in electric vehicles, saying that it would hurt Iowa’s ethanol and biodiesel industries.