Pelosi’s office says 2 major projects will be pulled from Covid’s bill

Pelosi’s office says 2 major projects will be pulled from Covid’s bill

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The original project, approved by the House, included $ 1.425 billion in funding to help with transit transit capital projects, including the extension of the San Jose Bay Area rapid transit line to Santa Clara, California. It was part of the $ 30 billion in public transport support in the aid package, but Pelosi’s office said on Tuesday that the Senate congressman decided against its inclusion because it was part of a pilot project.

The aid package will also no longer include funding for the Seaway International Bridge in upstate New York. The $ 1.5 million funding was proposed during the Trump administration and supported by Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, whose district includes the bridge.

A Senate source told CNN that the request to include funding for the bridge in relief legislation was originally made by the Department of Transportation under Trump’s administration in the spring of 2020 and that Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, he didn’t know the funding was in the bill until he read about it in media reports.

Republicans saw both projects as examples of spending on the bill that would benefit Democratic leaders’ home states and districts and have very little to do with helping Americans recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. Stefanik did not support the relief bill and said funding for the bridge should not have been included.

The BART extension is not in the Pelosi district of California and would have occurred 50 miles south of the area it represents.

Pelosi’s spokesman, Drew Hammill, said on Tuesday that Covid had “an immediate and overwhelming effect on all of our transport systems and the millions of transport and construction jobs associated with them”, but now with the two bills removed, he added, “it is unclear how Republicans will justify their opposition” to the legislation.

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