Senator Collins Presses DOT, HUD Secretaries on Infrastructure and Affordable Housing
Click HERE to watch Senator Collins’ Q&A on infrastructure. Click HERE to download high-resolution video.
Click HERE to watch Senator Collins’ Q&A on affordable housing. Click HERE to download high-resolution video.
Washington, D.C. – This morning, U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the Ranking Member of the Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development Appropriations Subcommittee, participated in a full committee hearing examining the Administration’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal. She questioned U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary (DOT) Pete Buttigieg and Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge on funding for infrastructure and affordable housing.
Senator Collins pressed DOT Secretary Buttigieg on the need to invest in traditional infrastructure. She noted that the Administration’s proposal includes more for electric vehicles than for roads, bridges, seaports, airports, and waterways combined.
“I have long advocated for a robust infrastructure package,” Senator Collins told Secretary Buttigieg. “And I agree with the phrase you used today that ‘fix it first’ should guide our approach. However, when I look at President Biden's proposal, it does not seem to embody that philosophy…Now, it's certainly appropriate to look ahead and to accommodate future and cleaner modes of transportation. But what the Administration is doing is spending billions more on subsidies related to electric vehicles than on the roads and bridges on which they will travel. Could you explain that?”
“The roads and bridges and highways of this country have a multi-layered set of resources to support them. When it comes to electric vehicles, we are much earlier in America's story,” Secretary Buttigieg responded. “We believe robust public investment is needed in order to make sure that America leads the future when it comes to electric vehicles, especially from the perspective of making sure that the electric vehicles of the world are made on American soil by American workers.”
Senator Collins also questioned HUD Secretary Fudge and expressed concern that the Administration is taking a “heavy handed approach to achieving the goal of affordable housing.”
“The Administration's proposal includes $5 billion for a new grant program to be awarded to jurisdictions that make changes in local zoning laws. And I am troubled by having the Administration, the federal government, dictate local zoning laws,” Senator Collins said. “I would also note that that $5 billion is larger than the entire funding for the Community Development Block Grant Program, which is arguably the nation's most popular, and certainly has been its largest community development program. Will the Administration tie access to other federal funding to changes in local zoning laws and land use policies in your Department?”
Secretary Fudge replied that the “plan is to have a discussion with communities about how we could make zoning less exclusionary and more inclusionary.” She mentioned that as a former Mayor, she would “never be in support of demanding or dictating that communities have to change their zoning to do a certain thing.”
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