First on Fox: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the rating member on the Senate Commerce Committee, plans to introduce a decision on Friday that will overturn the Biden administration’s resolution to tie some federal funds to left-wing priorities.
Cruz’s resolution particularly targets the Division of Transportation’s (DOT) administration of three grant applications that function key instruments for funding varied varieties of floor transportation tasks nationwide. The Division of Transportation requires beneficiaries of the billions of {dollars} it’s mandated to distribute beneath the applications to “adequately” take into account each fairness and obstacles to alternative, local weather change and environmental justice of their planning.
“I intend to introduce a decision beneath the Congressional Assessment Act, and I urge my colleagues to hitch me in blocking the Biden administration’s efforts to tie federal funding to radical environmental and racial justice imperatives,” Cruz advised Fox Information Digital in an announcement.
“President Biden and Secretary Buttigieg ought to allocate grant funding by implementing the legislation as written quite than attempting to direct taxpayer {dollars} to favored tasks and constituencies,” he continued.
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Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks throughout a Senate listening to on Could 11.
In June, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg introduced that his company had begun accepting purposes for the Nationwide Infrastructure Challenge Help Program, Infrastructure to Rebuild America (INFRA), and Rural Floor Transportation Grants. The three applications acquired a collective enhance of $5.6 billion, most of which helps INFRA, beneath the Infrastructure Funding and Jobs Act of 2021.
Buttigieg mentioned the grants ultimately awarded beneath the applications will help “transformative infrastructure tasks throughout the nation.”
However the Discover of Funding Alternative (NOFO) issued by the Division for Transport as a part of the grant award course of introduced in June, states that recipients should broadly tackle fairness and local weather considerations.
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“Initiatives that haven’t adequately thought-about property rights and obstacles to alternative of their planning, as decided by the Division, shall be required to take action earlier than receiving funds for development,” the Division of Transportation’s NOFO states.
“Initiatives that haven’t adequately thought-about local weather change and environmental justice of their planning, as decided by the Division, shall be required to take action earlier than receiving funds for development,” the doc provides.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg speaks in the course of the Nationwide Affiliation of Counties’ 2023 Legislative Convention on February 13. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Name, Inc by way of Getty Pictures)
The 2 funding provisions cite President Biden’s Day 1 government order titled “Selling Racial Fairness and Supporting Underserved Communities by way of the Federal Authorities.”
Following Buttigieg’s announcement, Cruz in July wrote to the Authorities Accountability Workplace, requesting affirmation that NOFO is a rule and, due to this fact, topic to the Congressional Assessment Act (CRA), a virtually three-decade-old legislation that permits Congress to overturn federal legislation. Programs. The federal watchdog responded on Wednesday, saying it was the truth is topic to the legislation.
Since Republicans took management of the Home majority, they’ve handed a number of restructuring agreements that repeal Biden administration rules. For instance, Congress has handed resolutions rescinding guidelines that clamp down on water protections, regulating heavy car exhaust emissions, classifying the little prairie hen as “endangered,” and taking motion to permit Chinese language photo voltaic panel makers to keep away from tariffs.
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“Once we began this Congress, one in all my high priorities was to carry the Biden administration accountable for any overreach on environmental and power points inside our jurisdiction right here on the EPW Committee,” Senate Atmosphere and Public Works Committee member Shelley Moore Capito, R-W. Virginia, advised Fox Information. Digital beforehand concerning the CRAs she led.
“We’re constructing on this profitable report and demonstrating that our bipartisan oversight efforts have sturdy foundations, even in a divided Congress,” she continued. “We’ll proceed to make use of the instruments at our disposal to paved the way in defending American households, staff, and employers from the Biden administration’s seemingly countless dangerous rules.”