Congress Just Passed A Once-In-A-Generation Infrastructure Investment. That's Just The Beginning.

     America is about the pass the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. This represents the largest investment in infrastructure in nearly a century, allocating $600 billion in new funds to roads, bridges, airports, railways, broadband, clean drinking water, and climate-friendly transportation, or a total of $1.2 trillion over eight years.

     This is a major victory for Joe Biden for a number of reasons. It represents a bipartisan infrastructure program that Biden has advocated for since his time as vice president, and it will also serve as a stimulus for job creation in a time when jobs are sorely needed. Certainly not least of all, it will tend to an issue Americans on both side of the aisle see the need to address. America needs more than $2 trillion in infrastructure repairs, and, while this investment is significant, it should not be the end of President Biden's work on infrastructure.

     Earlier this year, New York announced a $300 billion investment in infrastructure, the largest in state history and the largest bill passed by any state in the nation, which will focus on expanding broadband access, repairing rails, building the state's clean energy grid, and restoring impoverished neighborhoods. California is passing tens of billions of dollars in funding for universal broadband, housing, and other initiatives in the budget and in several major bills. Connecticut recently implemented universal broadband, and my home state of Wisconsin's budget included hundreds of millions of extra dollars for broadband and roads.

     This is excellent news, and it reveals that the impact of the infrastructure bill was even bigger than the money itself: it set the economic agenda in state legislatures across the country. We have made great strides, but Democrats, for the rest of 2021 and into 2022, must continue to pass bold investments in states where they hold the reigns and seek compromise in states where they do not. We are on track to at least match the money in the IIJA in state funds, and, if we keep up these bills for the next eight, four, or even just two years, we are on track to fully repair our nation's infrastructure.

     Just as President Biden is setting the tone on COVID, he must do the same on infrastructure around the nation.