Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee Chair calls proposal a bold national investment in the things that make our lives safer, cleaner, more efficient
Plan includes Cardin-Portman Neighborhood Homes Investment Act to build and rehab more than 500,000 homes for low- and middle-income homebuyers
Senator says “we cannot understate the importance of striving to remove every lead pipe in Baltimore, our entire state, and the nation”
WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, today issued the following statement in response to President Joseph Biden’s newly announced American Jobs Plan.
“The Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan is a massively bold proposal that will drive the country forward for decades. It contains multiple landmark measures that create millions of well-paying jobs, while dealing head-on with vexing national challenges like climate change, aging infrastructure, and social justice. It directs significant investments to the things that make our everyday lives safer, cleaner and more efficient, and it addresses persistent gaps in broadband connectivity that will make major differences in many of Maryland’s rural communities. The American Jobs Plan shows what happens when you think big, and Maryland has several huge highway, bridge and rail tunnel priority projects that will only be possible to accomplish with this kind of national investment.
“The American Jobs Plan will take major steps to ensure clean, safe drinking water is a right in all communities, including an investment of more than $100 billion to replace 100 percent of the nation’s lead pipes and service lines. According to the CDC, there is no safe level of lead exposure for children, and yet many of Baltimore City schools are served by lead pipes. We cannot understate the importance of striving to remove every lead pipe in Baltimore, our entire state, and the nation. The Biden plan also includes $100 billion for school infrastructure, which will help accelerate the rebuilding of Maryland’s schools, so that every child’s classroom has heat and air conditioning.
“Notably, President Biden’s plan also includes the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, which I authored with Senator Portman to build or rehabilitate more than a half-million homes for low- and middle-income homebuyers in distressed neighborhoods in Maryland and across the country. This bipartisan provision will create new pathways for more families to buy a home and to start building wealth.
“I also applaud the Biden administration plan’s emphasis on expanding mass transit and alternative forms of transportation, along with fixing highways, rebuilding bridges, improving railways, upgrading ports, and modernizing airports. This multi-faceted effort also contains clear blueprints for renewing our outdated electrical grid and expanding the use of renewable energy sources, two urgent national priorities.
“No comprehensive approach to our national priorities can be complete without an improved national strategy for addressing the impacts of climate change, and the American Jobs Plan decisively moves our country in the proper direction on addressing this growing threat. This is an especially important in a state whose economy and recreational opportunities are so closely tied to our nation’s largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay, whose habitats face a daily siege of stressors from climate change.
“Building back our national infrastructure better than ever before is an acute national imperative. I look forward to collaborating closely with my Republican colleagues as we shape and sharpen the American Jobs Plan as it moves through the Senate EPW Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee, and ultimately in the full Senate.”
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