ACEC News / Advocacy
July 2, 2021
House Passes $720 Billion Infrastructure Bill; Includes $592 Billion for Surface Transportation
The House of Representatives approved the $720 billion INVEST in America Act on Thursday.
ACEC has concerns about some components of the bill, but overall it is a transformative measure that the Council strongly supports.
The bill, which passed by a vote of 221 to 201 along mostly partisan lines, includes a five-year $592 billion surface transportation reauthorization that would provide $343 billion to roads, bridges and safety, $109 billion to transit, and $95 billion to passenger and freight rail.
The legislation would commit $105 billion over ten years to drinking water infrastructure and replacement of lead service lines, and $54 billion to wastewater infrastructure.
The bill also marks the return of earmarks after a long ban, including about $5.7 billion for nearly 1,500 projects that lawmakers seek to fund in their districts.
Among our concerns are the bill removes both the nationwide VMT implementation pilot program and the extension of transportation revenues—gas and diesel taxes and truck taxes–flowing into the Trust Fund.
In the Senate, the Administration and a bipartisan group of Senators continue to drum up support for their $1.2 trillion compromise infrastructure deal, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) saying he wants to move on infrastructure this month.
Passage of an infrastructure bill this year would provide huge benefits to the national economy and the engineering industry.
The ACEC Infrastructure Scenarios Impact on Forecast report, which was released last week, estimates that the Senate bipartisan agreement would create more than 82,000 full and part-time jobs in engineering and design services and generate $62 billion in A/E industry wages, and the sector would add $75 billion to GDP. Overall, the proposal would lead to a 6% average annual increase in engineering and design services sector activity over the next six years, pushing annual output from $352 billion in 2021 to $416 billion by 2026.
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