Buttigieg's star rises as $1T Biden agenda shifts toward him
ABC News
As President Joe Biden gets set to sign a $1 trillion infrastructure package, many eyes are turning to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg
WASHINGTON -- Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who holds the purse strings to much of President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion infrastructure package, was holding forth with reporters on its impact — the promise of more electric cars, intercity train routes, bigger airports — when a pointed question came.
How would he go about building racial equity into infrastructure?
The 39-year-old former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate laid out his argument that highway design can reflect racism, noting that at least $1 billion in the bill will help reconnect cities and neighborhoods that had been racially segregated or divided by road projects.
“I’m still surprised that some people were surprised when I pointed to the fact that if a highway was built for the purpose of dividing a white and a Black neighborhood ... that obviously reflects racism,” he said.
