The Senate has released the details of its mammoth infrastructure bill, including its preliminary price tag of $1 trillion. The bill may be heading for a vote as early as this week.
The bill, HR 3684, was unveiled early this week, the result of a weekend-long drafting session between lawmakers. The bill is a bipartisan compromise, appearing to be a slimmed-down slate of requests initially proposed by progressives. According to Republican lawmakers, however, there may be enough support to pass the bill.
Looking to the bill's text, of the $1 trillion allocated for the bill, just over half is new spending, with the rest of the bill using pre-allocated funding. Of the allocated funding, about 1/5 is dedicated to transportation infrastructure, including $110 billion for road projects, $66 billion allocated towards rail, and $39 budgeted towards public transportation.
However, the funds allocated towards roads are only a fraction of the funding necessary to address the growing backlog of decaying infrastructure in the United States. Rail funding will address significant shortcomings with Amtrak, including the state-owned firm's backlog of outstanding repair bills. Another aspect of the bill regarding Amtrak is a provision that will take it away from the profit-seeking model and more towards a public service model more in line with public transportation and state-owned enterprises.
The bill also includes $65 billion in funding for broadband infrastructure, addressing concerns of internet accessibility in more rural regions of the U.S. and affordability in low-income neighborhoods.
Provisions of the bill additionally address concerns of the growing scale of natural disasters amid climate change, allocating some $47 billion towards resiliency. Other provisions include $7 billion towards EV infrastructure such as chargers, $55 billion towards water infrastructure, and $21 billion towards cleanup projects such as superfund sites.
While many aspects of the bill's funding are typical of a proposal of its type (accounting for economic growth, collecting fees, etc.), one aspect has cryptocurrency investors sweating bullets. According to the bill, information reporting requirements would be instated for cryptocurrency brokers. The vague language of the section and several issues that conflict with the nature of crypto trading (such as the difficulty of collecting personal information during transactions) have drawn a great deal of scrutiny. The provision intends to collect missed tax revenue, though as many experts have pointed out, there is very little evidence to support the belief that such measures would generate funds.
- https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/e/a/ea1eb2e4-56bd-45f1-a260-9d6ee951bc96/F8A7C77D69BE09151F210EB4DFE872CD.edw21a09.pdf
- https://www.reuters.com/world/us/whats-us-senates-bipartisan-1-trillion-infrastructure-bill-2021-08-03/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/03/business/dealbook/infrastructure-bill-details.html
- https://news.yahoo.com/infrastructure-bill-floats-national-mileage-181500769.html