Anthony Foxx to Tout Infrastructure at D.C.’s Union Station
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s second bus tour in less than a year is coming to an end soon.
On Feb. 20, the secretary is scheduled to wrap up his weeklong regional tour where he will promote infrastructure spending at an event in Union Station in Washington, D.C.
Foxx launched the tour Feb. 17 in Florida with stops at the proposed Capital Circle Southwest project in Tallahassee and at the Overland Bridge in Jacksonville, where construction crews are replacing the structurally deficient bridge. The next day, he traveled to Savannah, Georgia, to tour the Brampton Road Connector, a widening project designed to accommodate two left turn lanes into Container Gate 3 at the Port of Savannah.
Along the way, the secretary plugged the Obama administration’s six-year, $478 billion transportation funding proposal, which Congress has yet to consider. The White House's latest Grow America Act transportation proposal, partially unveiled Feb. 2 as part of the fiscal 2016 budget request to Congress, would ensure long-term investment in public works projects spending. It would be paid for through reforms of the corporate tax code.
Speaking to reporters days before the start of the bus tour, Foxx urged congressional action on the Grow America Act: “If you got something staring you in the face that can get you a six-year bill that basically doubles what the gas tax is bringing in and puts you on a pathway where you can break free from some of these conventional constraints and actually deliver a system that makes life better for people and for commerce, you should take it.”
In the spring of 2014, Foxx hopped on a bus and toured parts of Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio to tout an administration transportation investment plan and to call attention to a federal Highway Trust Fund that was running out of money. Congress responded later that summer by approving a 10-month funding stopgap for transportation programs that expires at the end of May.
We need ports that bring goods from the factory floor to markets around the world. #GrowAmerica pic.twitter.com/Vta6a06ZEh — Vice President Biden (@VP) February 19, 2015
