Pelosi’s office says 2 big projects will be taken out of the Covid bill

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The original bill, passed by the House, included $ 1.425 billion in funding to help transit rail capital projects, including the extension of the Bay Area Rapid Transit line from San Jose to Santa Clara , in California. It was part of the $ 30 billion in transit support in the relief program, but Pelosi’s office said Tuesday the Senate parliamentarian had rejected its inclusion because it was part of a pilot project.

The relief program will also no longer include funding for the International Seaway Bridge in upstate New York. The $ 1.5 million funding was offered under the Trump administration and backed by Republican Elise Stefanik, whose district includes the bridge.

A Senate source told CNN that the request to include bridge funding in relief legislation was originally made by the Transportation Department under the Trump administration in the spring of 2020 and that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, did not know. the funding was in the bill until he read it in the media.

Republicans have presented the two projects as examples of spending in the bill that would benefit Democratic leadership districts and home states and have very little to do with helping Americans recover from the Covid pandemic. -19. 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 is believed to have occurred 50 miles south of the area it represents.

Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said on Tuesday that Covid was having “an immediate and overwhelming effect on all of our transportation systems and the millions of transportation and construction jobs associated with them,” but now with the two deleted projects, he added, “it is not known how Republicans will justify their opposition” to the legislation.

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