Biden celebrates ‘Infrastructure Week’ — and hopes voters are listening

President Joe Biden’s surrogates will crisscross the country this week talking up the hundreds of billions he’s pumping into projects such as roads, clean energy, drinking water and broadband — an effort designed to draw a sharp contrast with his predecessor’s series of ineffectual “infrastructure weeks.”

The White House hopes the message will help convince Americans that Biden’s programs are improving their lives, just months before they head to the voting booth.

But recent polls — including one published last week by POLITICO and Morning Consult — show the message has been slow to sink in with voters. And a POLITICO analysis of the implementation of Biden’s four landmark infrastructure, climate, technology and pandemic-relief laws found that only 17 percent of the $1.1 trillion in funding that Congress provided has been spent to date, thanks in part to the time it takes to vet, approve and move so much money through myriad federal agencies, state governments and private recipients.

Nonetheless, White House deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian told reporters Friday, Biden’s programs have already made a tangible impact, including in rail service, clean drinking water and providing internet connectivity to communities that lacked it.

Under former President Donald Trump, “infrastructure week became an empty punch line,” Quillian said. Instead, she said, Biden is “delivering an infrastructure decade and that will benefit communities for generations to come.”

Infrastructure Week, which begins Monday, was already an annual industry gathering and Washington lobbying fly-in before Trump’s administration borrowed the name for its unsuccessful attempts to pitch a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that would have offered little new federal funding. Now, Biden’s White House is embracing the real event — and dispatching stand-ins such as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, senior White House adviser Tom Perez and acting Labor Secretary Julie Su to appearances around the country.

Administration officials will visit locations such as a high-speed internet project in Fredericksburg, Virginia, a workforce development project in North Carolina, and an announcement in Albuquerque, New Mexico, about spending on water infrastructure and pollution clean-ups.

The administration Monday also is preparing by-state fact sheets tailor-made to give local politicians talking points about the major Biden-era laws. Those include the four POLITICO has examined in its “Biden’s Billions” project — the 2021 pandemic relief package; the 2021 infrastructure law; the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act; and the climate law known as Inflation Reduction Act — as well as the PACT Act, a 2022 measure aimed at aiding veterans who were exposed to toxic substances while on duty.

But polls show voters are anything but convinced. And the billions of dollars the administration is investing may not roll out fast enough to change their minds.

According to the new POLITICO-Morning Consult poll, many voters aren’t that familiar with the laws and don’t see the benefits in their lives yet. And, perhaps most ominously for the White House before an election, respondents gave Biden only a 3 percentage-point advantage over Trump when asked who was more responsible for improving America’s infrastructure and creating jobs.

Scott Monroe, senior director at Fitch’s Global Infrastructure group, said the $550 billion investment in new funding from the 2021 infrastructure law is “a large sum of money,” but not “in relation to the overall infrastructure needs of this country.”

“And so it's certainly beneficial to have this type of funding, but in the context of the overall infrastructure needs and how this is going to trickle out over a five-year period, you're probably not going to see a lot of immediate, life-changing” projects.

Asked to respond to the challenges facing Biden’s spending initiatives, including spending that has lagged, a senior administration official told reporters that agencies are “working as quickly as possible while also being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.” The official noted that the pace of spending will necessarily be measured because Congress drafted the infrastructure law so that funds are released annually over five years.

“So we are working as quickly as we can to get money out the door in the year that it was appropriated and for the purpose that it was appropriated. But there’s more funding that’s still to come” in fiscal 2025 and 2026, the official said.

According to a fact sheet released Monday, the administration has announced $454 billion in funding spread over 56,000 specific projects and awards. However, announcing funding is only the first step in a lengthy process before money is actually spent. According to a POLITICO analysis of spending data to date, only $86 billion of the infrastructure law’s total sum has been spent by recipients as of April 22.

Cabinet-level and other senior officials in the administration have and will continue to traverse the country showing what the White House has brought to bear.

For instance, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will promote Biden’s investments in cleaning up legacy pollution and creating union jobs in Southern California, and Yellen will head to Virginia to promote a project, funded through the American Rescue Plan, that brought high-speed internet to nearly 700 houses.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has been to 47 states promoting the positive effects of the law and visiting projects that are in motion.

This past month, Buttigieg was in Las Vegas for the groundbreaking of one of the projects the White House has focused on promoting — the Brightline West high speed rail system connecting Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga, California. The $3 billion award for the 218-mile high speed rail system promises to get passengers to their destination in just over two hours and serve 11 million people annually, while cutting carbon dioxide pollution by reducing cars on the road.

Officials also took note of the Hudson River train tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey — a project Trump had repeatedly refused to fund — and the Lewis and Clark Regional Water System, which will affect Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa, stressing the transformative nature of these initiatives across a diverse set of states.

The Lewis and Clark rural water system, which is in progress thanks to $142 million in obligations from the infrastructure law, would build more than 300 miles of water pipeline to deliver clean water from the Missouri River to around 350,000 people in rural parts of Minnesota, South Dakota and Iowa who lack access to such water.

And the administration has announced $11 billion to repair and expand the more than 100-year-old Hudson River tunnel, which serves 200,000 passengers a day and which is considered a critical crossing. The federal government is expecting to pick up three-quarters of the $16 billion project. Four billion dollars has already been formally obligated.

Ry Rivard and Jessie Blaeser contributed to this report.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report inaccurately characterized how much of the 2021 infrastructure law’s funding has been spent by recipients. It is $86 billion.