On Tuesday, after months of negotiations, the Senate voted 69-30 to pass a sweeping bipartisan infrastructure proposal. The legislation will cost $1.2 trillion over eight years, and offers more than $550 billion in new spending, including the reauthorization of highway and water programs, among other provisions.
While this bill did not include the investments in workforce development to support infrastructure development originally proposed in the Administration’s American Jobs Plan, the measure contained some education-related provisions, including:
- $65 billion for broadband
- $5 billion for clean-energy school buses
- $1.5 billion for the establishment of the State Digital Equity Capacity Grant Program
- $500 million for competitive grants to schools for energy efficiency improvements
- $200 million for the removal of lead contamination in school drinking water
- $200 million to support voluntary testing or compliance monitoring for and remediation of lead contamination in drinking water at schools and child care programs
In an effort to control costs, it also contains offsets including one that would rescind $353.4 million of unobligated balances from the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund. The $353.4 million unobligated funds come from the total of almost $37 billion that Congress provided for the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund under the CARES Act in March 2020 and the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act in December 2020. The rescinded amount is less than 1% of the total provided, and no institutions of higher education had applied for that funding.
The bill now must be considered by the House, although timing of that vote is uncertain and may be linked to a vote on a broader budget reconciliation bill containing additional investments that did not make it into this bi-partisan package.
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