Billions of dollars coming to Florida once Biden’s infrastructure bill becomes law

Billions of federal dollars are coming to Florida once President Joe Biden signs the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law — but the specific projects that stand to benefit haven’t all been identified yet.

The House of Representatives passed the infrastructure bill on Friday after weeks of procedural debates among Democrats, who are also attempting to pass an expansion of the nation’s social safety net.

The infrastructure bill passed the House on a 228-206 vote, with 13 Republicans joining a majority of Democrats to vote in favor. Six Democrats and a majority of Republicans, including Miami U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Carlos Gimenez and Maria Elvira Salazar, voted against the bill.

Three months ago, the U.S. Senate voted 69-30 to pass the bill, which now awaits Biden’s signature. Florida Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott voted against the bill.

The bill is divided into eight major buckets of funding: roads and bridges, public transit, passenger and freight rail, electric vehicles, internet access, the electric gird, airports and water.

Biden said the bill is “a once-in-a-generation investment that’s going to create millions of jobs modernizing our infrastructure, our roads, our bridges, our broadband, a whole range of things — to turn the climate crisis into an opportunity.”

South Florida’s four Democrats in Congress, U.S. Reps. Frederica Wilson, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Ted Deutch and Lois Frankel, all voted for the bill.

Florida-specific effects

In Florida, the White House estimates that $13.1 billion would be spent to rebuild and modernize Florida’s highways with an additional $245 million for bridge replacement and repairs. The White House cited data from the American Society of Civil Engineers that said 3,584 miles of highway and 408 bridges in Florida are in poor condition.

The White House also said Florida expects to receive $2.6 billion over five years to improve public transit. And the state would get $198 million over five years to expand an electric vehicle charging network, with an opportunity to apply for $2.5 billion more in grants to further expand EV charging stations.

Florida would get $100 million to expand broadband internet coverage across the state, which the White House says would give internet access to more than 700,000 Floridians who currently do not have it. An additional 6.5 million Floridians, or anyone with an income at or below 200% of the federal poverty line (about $25,500 for an individual in 2021), would be eligible for a $30 a month internet subsidy under the bill.

The state will receive $1.6 billion over five years to improve drinking water infrastructure, $26 million to protect against wildfires, $29 million to protect against cyberattacks and $1.2 billion for airports.

“As Florida’s families worry about our decaying infrastructure and inflation driven by an inadequate supply chain, this is a significant victory for Florida and will help build the kind of 21st century infrastructure that we need to clean up our economic blockages and get the economy moving smoothly for working families across our state,” said Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings of Orlando, who is hoping to run against Rubio for U.S. Senate in 2022.

The White House estimates are based on federal funding formulas that are determined by each state’s population and projected growth.

But specific projects in Florida that end up benefiting from the infrastructure bill will be determined over the coming months and years by various federal agencies and Congress through the federal funding process. One example is Everglades restoration funding, a high priority for Florida lawmakers from both parties.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers works with the state of Florida on Everglades restoration projects but will ultimately control $11.6 billion for construction projects as part of the bill. Florida lawmakers argued last week that is ample funding to cover the federal government’s $5 billion share for approved Everglades restoration projects.

But the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of Congress that provides research to lawmakers, estimated that the Army Corps has a $109 billion construction backlog. Florida-specific projects like completing the Everglades Agricultural Area Reservoir will ultimately compete with other projects around the country for funding.

“We want to make sure that outside the appropriations process that we get our share, get the federal share of Everglades restoration funding back in balance and we get us considerably down the pathway to finishing all of our projects,” Wasserman Schultz said.

White House officials estimated on Sunday that certain projects funded by the bill could begin construction by next spring.

“We know that we have the workers out there and we’re going to start fixing this nation’s crumbling infrastructure,” said Biden senior adviser and former U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

New national spending

At the national level, the White House said the infrastructure bill represents the largest investment in public transit ever, the largest investment in passenger rail since Amtrak was created in 1971 and the largest investment in roads and bridges since the construction of the interstate highway system was approved in 1956.

A total of $110 billion will be spent on repairing roads and bridges, $39 billion on public transit, $66 billion for Amtrak, $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, $65 billion for broadband internet access, $65 billion for the electric grid, $25 billion for airports and $55 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure. The bill includes $550 billion in new federal spending, and the Congressional Budget Office, a federal agency that provides budget and economic information to Congress, estimated that the bill will increase the federal deficit by $256 billion over the next decade.

Gimenez echoed the sentiment of many House Republicans who voted against the infrastructure bill in a recent interview, arguing that the infrastructure bill and social safety net bill that Republicans uniformly oppose are tied together.

“The two bills are tied, they’re trillions of dollars,” Gimenez said to NBC 6. “It’s our children, our grandchildren who are going to be paying for it.”