BY ANNA LIZ NICHOLS, MICHIGAN ADVANCE
MICHIGAN—The secretary of “Fix the Damn Roads,” as Pete Buttigieg says Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer calls him, visited the Lansing area Friday to discuss investments in infrastructure and the economy under President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Buttigieg, who serves as US Transportation secretary, was joined by US Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) and Lansing Mayor Andy Schor while speaking with union workers constructing the more than $200 million project on US-127/I-496 funded by the Biden administration.
“For too long, Americans were looking at the state of our infrastructure, saying, ‘Why can’t we have nice things?’ And the answer was, it was a choice, because the funding just wasn’t there,” Buttigieg said during a news conference at a construction site. “That’s what we’ve changed with project after project, from six-figure projects to fix a crosswalk or a street light somewhere, to projects that will invest hundreds of millions of dollars to save lives like the one that we’re celebrating today.”
The bulk of the construction in the Lansing area segment of roadway is focused on driver safety by rebuilding bridges, fixing up signage and road markings, as well as repairing the pavement.
The much needed refresh to US-127, which runs between Michigan and Tennessee, didn’t get the greenlight overnight, Slotkin said. The funding, totaling more than $1 trillion for nationwide projects, was allocated under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which was workshopped in the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus in Congress of which she’s a member.
“Real stuff happens when people act like adults in Washington,” Slotkin said. “When we work together and stop all the angry rhetoric and all the potshots and all the nastiness, we actually get stuff done.”
Slotkin is running for the open U.S. Senate seat against former US Rep. Mike Rogers (R-White Lake).
There are about 600 infrastructure projects slated for Michigan, according to the Department of Transportation. Michigan is paying for the bulk of the construction to US-127, with more than $36 million federal dollars being designated to the project.
Putting the right people in positions of leadership matters, Buttigieg said, adding that lawmakers like Slotkin that are willing to reach across the aisle and compromise make large-scale investments possible.
“It’s easy to talk now like it would have happened no matter what, so let us remember that during that period of months … as [Slotkin] and her House colleagues were reaching across the aisle and engaging with each other, that the political obituary of this legislation was written half a dozen times by Washington commentators. It was far from certain that this infrastructure plan would become a reality,” Buttigieg said.
The US Transportation secretary’s visit to Lansing came earlier in the day before Biden was scheduled to speak in Ann Arbor about his “Investing in America” agenda, of which the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a part.
READ MORE: State grants pave the way for small Michigan towns to start fixing their damn roads
This coverage was republished from Michigan Advance pursuant to a Creative Commons license.
