President Biden is gearing up to approve another $5 billion in infrastructure projects for the hospital, even after his last big-money investment collapsed over EV charging stations.
The president was scheduled to announce details later on Friday for the last major infrastructure investment, which would see $5 billion spent on 560 projects across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and other U.S. territories. Semaphore reports.
Funding from the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan that Biden signed in 2021 will help improve rail safety, intercity rail transit, roads, bridges, airports and more, including EV charging stations. The money will be used for improvements.
In the year the law was signed, an additional $5 billion was allocated to build electric vehicle charging stations. In the end, only seven charging stations were built by 2024, leading to protests from Democrats.
“It's pathetic. We're now three years into this…This is an administrative failure,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) exploded during a June hearing. . “Something is terribly wrong and needs to be fixed.”
In total, these stations included dozens of charging ports, Federal Highway Administration Director Shailene Butt acknowledged before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Butt added that existing federal highway regulations don't even allow EV charging stations to be installed at rest stops.
The White House expected to build at least 500,000 ports from coast to coast on some of the nation's busiest highways. According to the Energy and Transport Integration Authority, just 200,000 were available by October last year.
Federal watchdogs said earlier this week that Biden administration Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm sought to promote EVs during a summer 2023 road trip, costing nearly $10,000 more in taxpayer funds than the federal government authorized. accused of wasting his money.
The total cost of the trip was nearly $125,000, the Department of Energy's Office of the Inspector General noted, and the Energy Czar's staff stocked up on gas to reserve charging stations for Granholm's emission-free convoy. It became national news when it was revealed that they were deploying vehicles for consumption. — sparking a political firestorm.
Granholm also avoided driving Teslas on excursions despite having an extensive network of chargers across the country, and her department was later sold to Rivian, a rival to Elon Musk's EV company. Added insult to injury by lending $6.6 billion.
Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, accused Granholm of “gross waste, fraud and abuse” in EV travel this week.
“Secretary Granholm embarked on a taxpayer-funded EV summer road trip to demonstrate the priorities of a radical Green New Deal,” Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement. Ta. “This publicity stunt not only shows how indifferent the Biden administration is to the consequences of its policies, but it comes at the expense of American taxpayers.”
Granholm told Reuters last June that 27 states have commercial requests to build charging stations, and that a plan mandated by Biden would put 1,000 in public places by Dec. 31, 2024. He said he expects the EV charging station there to be operational.
It is unclear whether that goal was achieved.
Officials at the Department of Energy and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
President-elect Donald Trump is seeking to unwind several renewable energy initiatives from the Biden administration, arguing during his 2024 campaign that the EV mandate would severely hurt the U.S. auto industry. .
