Friday, April 2, 2021

Rural in Biden's big infrastructure plan

 This is from NPR's report Wednesday, following the plan's announcement:  

Also, upgrading housing, schools and hospitals - a lot of focus on union jobs and helping underserved communities, both urban and rural. It specifically talks about trying to entice manufacturers to areas affected by a loss of coal jobs and helping address racial inequities by reconnecting neighborhoods that were cut off by previous highway-building.
Tamara Keith interviewed former U.S. Senator from North Dakota, Heidi Heitkamp, for the story:
HEIDI HEITKAMP: You get a bridge, and you get a bridge, and you get a bridge, and you get a road, and you get a hospital (laughter). It's the Oprah of infrastructure.

Keith also talked to Reverend William Barber of the Poor People's Campaign and asked him why Biden shouldn't do a little at a time, be piecemeal in the approach.  

WILLIAM BARBER:  Where you do the roads, but you don't prioritize rural and urban areas. Or you do the bridges, but you don't look at environmentally sustainable infrastructure jobs and the health care and the public health infrastructure and the training and the capacity. It's not or; it's and. It's and.

NPR ran another story on the plan by Kirk Siegler, who reports from out west.  That story featured the rural angle more prominently, but I have not been able to find a transcript of it online.  

Here's what the New York Times and the Washington Post had to say about the infrastructure bill.  

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