WASHINGTON — Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, urged Congress on Thursday to make a “generational investment” to improve the nation’s transit and water systems and address climate change and racial inequities, as Democrats began laying the groundwork to pass sweeping infrastructure proposals that could cost $3 trillion to $4 trillion.
Mr. Buttigieg’s inaugural testimony before a key House panel highlighted not only the enormous stakes of the Biden administration’s impending pair of infrastructure proposals, which could help President Biden deliver on a number of campaign promises and reshape the country’s economic and energy future, but also the hurdles ahead. Republicans at the hearing grilled Mr. Buttigieg over how to pay for the plan and signaled that they would not support any legislation that went much beyond the nation’s roads, bridges and waterways.
Mr. Biden’s proposals envision far more than that: One would address physical infrastructure projects and development, including clean energy and other measures to take on climate change, and the other would make investments in child care, education and caregiving.
In the first news conference of his presidency, Mr. Biden confirmed on Thursday that rebuilding “infrastructure, both physical and technological,” was his next major task, saying it was necessary “so that we can compete and create significant numbers of really good-paying jobs.” He mentioned repairing roads and bridges, replacing aging pipes that leach lead into water and helping the United States close an infrastructure-spending gap with China.
Mr. Buttigieg told lawmakers on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that at least $1 trillion was needed in infrastructure improvements to the nation’s roads, highways, bridges and transit systems. He painted such an investment as an opportunity to address climate change, racial justice and competition with China.
“I believe that we have at this moment the best chance in any of our lifetimes to make a generational investment in infrastructure that will help us meet the country’s most pressing challenges today, and create a stronger future for decades to come,” Mr. Buttigieg said, adding that the legislation would serve as a sequel to the nearly $2 trillion coronavirus relief plan approved this month.
He said minorities and low-income Americans bore the brunt of deficient infrastructure.
“Across the country, we face a trillion-dollar backlog of needed repairs and improvements, with hundreds of billions of dollars in good projects already in the pipeline,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “We face an imperative to create resilient infrastructure and confront inequities that have devastated communities.”
Mr. Buttigieg said the infrastructure overhaul should not be a partisan issue, because transportation affected all Americans. Democrats have professed optimism for a bipartisan package, particularly after pushing the pandemic relief legislation through both chambers over unanimous Republican opposition, and lawmakers in both parties repeatedly emphasized that infrastructure had traditionally been a source of cooperation.
But early partisan divisions spilled over at the hearing, with Republicans criticizing the size and some of the goals of Mr. Biden’s proposals.
“The transportation bill, I think, needs to be a transportation bill, not a Green New Deal,” said Representative Sam Graves of Missouri, the top Republican on the committee. “It needs to be about roads and bridges, and I hope that as this committee works on our next major bill, that we remember to prioritize transportation infrastructure.”
It remains unclear whether top Democrats, with slim majorities in both chambers and control of the White House, will be willing to curtail their ambitions to satisfy Republicans. They have refused to rule out using a fast-track budget process, known as reconciliation, to bypass Republican opposition and the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate to advance Mr. Biden’s infrastructure initiatives on strictly party-line votes.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California said Democrats would pursue a bipartisan legislative package but would have to “make a judgment” about how to accomplish more ambitious goals related to addressing climate change and economic inequality that Republicans might not support.
“One of the challenges that we face is we cannot just settle for what we can agree on without recognizing that this has to be a bill for the future,” she said. Among the specific proposals she said she favored was electrifying the U.S. Postal Service fleet.
Repeatedly pressed by Republicans for a commitment to compromise, Mr. Buttigieg assured lawmakers that “the president strongly prefers a bipartisan approach, and so do I,” and observed that he had “yet to see a Republican bridge or a Democratic pothole.”
That support, however, will most likely hinge on both the scope of the package put forward by Democrats and the mechanisms for paying for the legislation. On top of passing the dozen annual spending bills needed to keep the government funded in 2020, Congress approved more than $3 trillion in emergency spending to address the economic and health toll of the pandemic.
Early in the hearing, Republican lawmakers interrogated Mr. Buttigieg on how the administration planned to pay for such a large spending bill, while raising concerns about whether funds would be distributed equally across the country. Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska, pressed Mr. Buttigieg on whether the Biden administration had a strategy to pay for more than a trillion dollars in spending needs.
“We do have to fund this some way,” Mr. Young said. “Does the administration, or yourself, have an idea how to fund this program, other than borrowing?”
Mr. Buttigieg declined to commit to specific proposals for raising revenue, but said the country needed “stable, predictable, multiyear funding” for transportation investments. He left open a window for imposing fees on drivers, creating an infrastructure bank to draw in private-sector cooperation and borrowing money. Mr. Biden’s aides have drawn up plans to offset the first package, at least in part, with corporate tax increases, including raising the corporate income tax rates.
“I’ve heard loud and clear from members of Congress, Republican and Democratic, that an infrastructure proposal needs to have at least a partial funding source,” Mr. Buttigieg said. “I know that’s a challenging conversation.”
Lawmakers in both parties spent the majority of the hearing, which lasted for more than five hours, peppering him with specific questions about projects in their districts and extending offers for Mr. Buttigieg to visit.
But Mr. Buttigieg sparred with a number of Republican lawmakers, most notably on the administration’s decision to include climate change as a key tenet of the legislation. Representative Scott Perry, Republican of Pennsylvania, argued that prioritizing climate change in the bill would provide China, a top manufacturing rival, with an advantage given that Beijing believes that “the West, and only the West, needs to rapidly decarbonize.”
Mr. Buttigieg stood by the Biden administration’s decision.
“Climate change is real,” he said. “I recognize that the single biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the United States is the transportation sector. Thankfully, that means that the transportation sector gets to be the biggest part of the solution.”
Jim Tankersley and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
