After 30 years, DeFazio sees chance to realize infrastructure dream

House chair set for marathon markup of $547 billion package

Roll Call

By Jessica Wehrman
 June 8, 2021

Rep. Peter A. DeFazio, the chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has a refrain he repeats when talking about the transformational investment in the nation’s infrastructure he hopes to see.
 "We’re not doing Eisenhower 8.0," he said, referring to the original 1956 interstate highway system law.
 That system was partly sold as needed for national defense, to evacuate cities in case of nuclear war and move military equipment in case of a Soviet invasion.
 "I want to see something that’s appropriate to what I would describe as a bigger threat than the Soviet Union was, in the '50s and '60s and '70s, in the Cold War, which is climate change," he said. "That’s the new threat that we have to deal with."
 After more than 30 years working on transportation issues, the Oregon Democrat is seeing circumstances that may have aligned with solutions he envisions.

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