Senate to Take Up Infrastructure Funding Bill to Create Jobs and Boost Economy

November 1, 2011 - Posted by Tyler Lewis

This week, the U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on the Rebuild America Jobs Act, legislation that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs by investing in the nation’s crumbling roads, highways, and schools.

The Act would provide $50 billion of immediate investments in transportation infrastructure and $10 billion for a national infrastructure institution bank. The bill would also ensure that transportation investments allow for the hiring of local workers—to maximize economic benefits for communities where projects are located—and provide investments for training, apprenticeship, and skill development programs.

The Leadership Conference supports investments in infrastructure because those investments create jobs and boost the economy at a time when the nation desperately needs it, particularly in communities of color hardest hit by the recession. In fact, every $1 billion invested in public transportation capital and operations creates or supports: 36,000 jobs, $3.6 billion in business sales, and nearly $500 million in federal, state, and local tax revenues.

The vote this week comes after a minority of senators blocked the Senate from considering a larger jobs bill, the American Jobs Act, which would have addressed the nation’s jobs crisis and sluggish economy in a more comprehensive way. The Senate is now considering pieces of that bill separately—the second of which is the Rebuild America Jobs Act—in hopes that some jobs creating legislation will actually pass.