As President Donald Trump pulls back on green funding, state officials are lobbying Congress to retain those dollars for other infrastructure projects that would be more palatable to the current administration and Republicans, like road and bridge repairs.

Republicans negotiating the nation’s next big infrastructure bill seem amenable to the idea, as long as it means they can move funding away from green projects and toward “traditional” ones.

“That’s laying asphalt, pouring concrete, building bridges and building roads,” said House Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman Sam Graves, R-Mo., in an interview. “Not environmental justice and Green New Deal mandates and all of these other things” found in the 2021 infrastructure law that funded billions of dollars in Biden-era priorities.

Graves has said that his upcoming version will be scaled back.

“Without [the infrastructure law],states would have had to scale back projects due to the rising cost of inflation,” said Jim Tymon, executive director of nonprofit American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, in an interview. “A new surface transportation bill aligns with the administration’s priorities as well as those of both chambers of Congress,” with the prior bill establishing a “baseline” for future funding.

[….]

I am not against this. Green technology and energy sounds great in theory but in reality it’s still too damn expensive!! But the infrastructure in the United States can use more investment to repair and modernize.