The government has sent $110 billion of infrastructure funds to states and local governments in the six months since President Joe Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“Just in the last six months, this group behind us on behalf of the President of the United States has pushed out $110 billion of funding,” White House Infrastructure Coordinator Mitch Landrieu said Monday at a press conference with a group of cabinet secretaries touting the new law and the beginning of national Infrastructure Week.
There’s another $100 billion of funding queued up to go out “in the short future,” Landrieu added.
Biden signed the $1.2 trillion IIJA in November 2021. The law features $550 billion for reauthorization of surface transportation infrastructure spending and another $550 billion for assets ranging from bridges, drinking water, public transit, broadband, rail, electric vehicle chargers, ports and airports.
The White House Monday published an interactive map showing where the money is going and one showing the new projects.
The $110 billion sent out so far includes $52.5 billion for federal highway funding, $27 billion for bridges and $20.5 billion for public transit, officials said. It has funded 4,300 projects in 3,200 counties across all 50 states.
California has seen the biggest chunk, at $9.7 billion, of which almost 87% has gone to transportation projects, according to the White House. New York has received the next-highest amount, at $6.7 billion, and has also sent 86% to transportation projects.
Transportation marks the top spending category so far, followed by projects in the climate, energy and environment space. North Dakota, Montana and Wyoming have spent the majority of their funds on climate-related projects.
In the six months since the law was enacted, inflation has reached 40-year highs and the labor force has contracted, posing challenges to the law’s implementation.
“There’s going to be a lot of pressure and natural tensions that come with actually implementing this once-in-a-generation” spending, Landrieu said. “And wherever there are challenges there are incredible opportunities. And one of the challenges is going to be on workforce development.”
U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is responsible for the largest piece off the IIJA dollars, said the department will work with sponsors to smooth supply chain issuers where possible to bring down construction costs.
“I was just speaking with a governor today about this, trying to get a sense of what they’re seeing on the ground especially as they’re starting to look for the bids that come in and how much they reflect increases in costs,” Buttigieg said. “There’s a lot of work that’s going on to try to forecast and smooth that.”
Landrieu said 53 of the states and territories have appointed infrastructure coordinators, as the White House requested, to oversee funding and programs.
States and cities need to invest in worker training to help ramp up hiring amid a tight labor market, said Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh.
“The people are there,” Walsh said. “And we just need to make sure as we make investments in job training and workforce development money that we go out and make sure we train the people for the jobs.”