During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) spoke about the Trump administration's evaluations of transportation grants.
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00:00Thank you, Madam Chairman.
00:03Mr. Secretary, welcome.
00:04And let me first begin by thanking you for your assistance
00:07to expedite the release of $220 million for the Washington Bridge.
00:12That is very critical to our state.
00:14It really is the linkage between one side of our capital city, Providence, and the other.
00:20Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary.
00:22I would love to come up in the summer and check that bridge out.
00:26I think you should come up.
00:27And by the way, I think you should also check out our restaurants.
00:30We have the best restaurants in America.
00:32I was there for the first time with my wife this last September
00:35and was shocked at how beautiful your great state is.
00:39Thank you, sir.
00:40But let me pose a question that I think all of my colleagues have.
00:46That is there are still significant amounts of DOT money that have not been released.
00:51It was properly awarded, authorized, appropriated, et cetera.
00:54Can you give us an idea of when and will all of these funds be forthcoming?
01:00Yeah.
01:00So I do think it's important to know what was left for me.
01:04And I know that all of you, when you get an announcement, you want the grant agreement
01:08so you can build a project.
01:10But between Obama and Donald Trump, from Election Day to Inauguration Day,
01:17Obama team announced 48 grants.
01:21And then from Trump to Biden, the Donald Trump team announced 100 grants.
01:29And Pete Buttigieg, between Election Day and Inauguration Day, announced almost 1,000 grants.
01:341,000.
01:36I told that to Senator Schatz as well before.
01:38But this is a lot of grants that were announced.
01:39And so the workload is real.
01:42And if I could just show you a chart, I just have a chart here that will indicate how many grants
01:47we have grant agreements on.
01:49And these are fiscal years from Secretary Buttigieg.
01:52But you can see at the start of even the last administration, they weren't moving as fast as we're moving.
01:58So I'm committed to getting through this as quickly as possible.
02:01We're at a pretty good clip, and I think it's going to continue to pick up as we work through the process.
02:07And I think there's technology that we can deploy to make this go even faster.
02:14There are some concern that these projects not being evaluated on engineering and other aspects, of course, benefit.
02:26But there is issues of climate change and social issues more than economic issues or transportation issues.
02:33Are you including DEI in these evaluations and climate change?
02:37Yes.
02:38In regard to the grant agreements that we have out now and the announcements, I am.
02:47And some of the requirements, if you want, I'll share them with you.
02:51And I can read some of them to you if you want.
02:53No, I think this is a very realistic question.
02:56Most people don't consider infrastructure, roads, bridges, et cetera, to be DEI qualities.
03:08Nor do they, after all the work that's done by DOT, by EPA, as something that would be challenging to the environment.
03:17In fact, most of these projects, I would suggest, are designed to cope with changes.
03:24And you can call them in because I mean why.
03:25So there are a lot of requirements in the grant agreements in regard to DEI and in regard to climate change.
03:34And there was adding a lot of costs and time onto the projects.
03:37So what I've done is tried to pull those out and say those requirements are no longer necessary for you to do your project.
03:42And I think I'm going to save you money and allow you to move quicker on your projects that are so meaningful to your communities.
03:47So what you're saying is you will eventually release the funds, but you will modify the arrangement so that they don't have to do certain things.
03:56Is that accurate?
03:57Well, so in regard to the announced agreements, but we don't have grant agreements, we're drafting grant agreements that don't include these issues.
04:09But you're committed to fulfilling the grant.
04:12Oh, listen, yeah.
04:14Another way to say this is that you're not going to defund projects because you object to language you consider to be DEI or in climate.
04:21No, no, we're just trying to pull out that language unless it could not be re-scoped or pulled out and it's just fundamentally something different.
04:28No, this is easy to pull this language out and save you money and time.
04:33Again, I think the faster and you do have a challenge before you, the faster you can get these funds to the states, the better.
04:41As evidence, I've gotten a couple to your state pretty quickly.
04:44And you have my thanks for that.
04:48My time is dwindling into seconds, but I look forward to working in this.
04:52You as well.
04:53Thank you, Senator.