Statewide Iowa — Third district Congresswoman Cindy Axne says the bipartisan infrastructure package that cleared the House late last week will provide five BILLION dollars to Iowa for roads, bridges and water infrastructure as well as the repair of locks and dams.
Axne says at least 100 million of that will be spent on broadband projects.
Axne, a Democrat from Des Moines, was the only member of Iowa’s U.S. House delegation to vote for the bill. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley voted for it when it cleared the U.S. Senate in August. Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks says she voted against it because it’s tied in negotiations to the so-called Build Back Better plan. That plan is expected to put hundreds of billions toward climate change and childcare costs. Axne says it aims to fix problems the infrastructure plan doesn’t.
Axne says Democrats’ social spending package could come to a vote as soon as next week. Axne, boosters of the ethanol industry and officials from the USDA gathered at Elite Octane in Atlantic Tuesday to discuss ethanol-related spending in the infrastructure package the House will vote on next week. Axne has pushed to include a billion dollars for ethanol infrastructure, like pumps that can dispense fuel that has higher percentages of ethanol, like E-15 and E-85.
Elite Octane in Atlantic is getting a $250,000 grant from the Rural Energy for America program. The company plans to use the money to install an exhaust recovery system on its corn dryer — a project that will save the company more than a million dollars a year in electricity costs.
