Transportation Infrastructure Bill Boosts Jobs and Planet, Says BlueGreen Alliance

The BlueGreen Alliance says that reauthorizing the fully funded Surface Transportation bill that President Obama today urged Congress to extend is “an incredibly important step in achieving our number one national priority: putting America to work.” BlueGreen Alliance Executive Director David Foster says the bill will not only create badly needed jobs, but it also will have a major positive environmental impact.

Currently, the U.S. spends approximately $1 billion a day on foreign oil, while transportation accounts for nearly one-third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. Investing in American-made cleaner vehicles, roads, bridges, tunnels, rail, transit, and better biking and walking can create millions of jobs in infrastructure, manufacturing, and operations.

A cleaner, safer, more efficient 21st century transportation system will reduce pollution and our dependence on foreign oil, create new jobs and opportunity for workers across the nation, and ensure America remains competitive in the global economy.

But House Republicans want to cut transportation and transit infrastructure funding so deeply that it would cost half a million jobs next year alone and send the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems into even deeper disrepair.

House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica’s (R-Fla.) reauthorization bill cuts transportation funding to a level that is 20 percent less than the last reauthorization bill signed by President Bush in 2005.
AFL-CIO Transportation Trades Department (TTD) President Edward Wytkind says the Republican proposal is “the worst highway and transit funding bill in modern history [and] a loser for the American economy and a loser for American workers.”
The BlueGreen Alliance is a national partnership of labor unions and environmental organizations working to expand the number and quality of jobs in the green economy.