The Day Michael Laris and Ian Duncan, The Washington Post
May 7, 2021 WASHINGTON - Dueling proposals to fund the nation's ailing infrastructure network follow decades of timidity in Washington - a period that has seen roads crumble and a warming climate threaten investments of the past. A line of presidents couldn't make transformational investments in infrastructure, despite big promises and yawning national needs. For those in the trenches, the question in 2021 is whether the nation still can make good on its aspirations - from upkeep of its physical foundations to meeting the challenges experts say will intensify with a changing planet. "NASA just landed on Mars and we had a big vaccine," said Costa Samaras, who worked as a transportation engineer in New York City and now studies infrastructure resilience at Carnegie Mellon University. "We can do big things - but we should be doing big things in infrastructure, right?" Biden and his supporters have echoed those appeals in seeking to build support for a $2.3 trillion infrastructure and jobs proposal, which Republicans have knocked as too sprawling and expensive. Biden also set a goal of halving U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, work that would be spurred by his infrastructure plan. But experts say achieving those ambitions would take a level of creativity and perseverance that have failed a generation of leaders in Washington.
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