President Biden is preparing to OK another $5 billion in infrastructure projects as he heads out the door — even after his last big-money investment went bust over EV charging stations.
The president was due to announce the details of his final major infrastructure investment later Friday, shelling out $5 billion to 560 projects across all 50 states, Washington, DC, and other US territories, Semafor reported.
The money, which is coming from the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package Biden signed into law in 2021, will go toward rail safety and other improvements to intercity rail transit, roads, bridges, airports — and more EV charging depots.
Another $5 billion was earmarked for the construction of electric-vehicle charging stations the year the law was signed. Just seven of the charging stations ended up being built by 2024 — leading to an outcry from Democrats.
“That is pathetic. We’re now three years into this … that is a vast administrative failure,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) exploded during a June hearing. “Something is terribly wrong and it needs to be fixed.”
In total, those stations comprised a couple dozen charging ports, Federal Highway Administration head Shailen Bhatt admitted before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
Bhatt added that EV-charging stations couldn’t even be deployed at rest stops under existing federal highway rules.
The White House had anticipated building at least 500,000 ports coast to coast on some of the nation’s busiest highways. By last October, just 200,000 have been made available, per the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation.
A federal watchdog also faulted Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm earlier this week for splurging nearly $10,000 more in taxpayer funds than federally permitted while attempting to promote EVs during a summer 2023 road trip.
That trip racked up almost $125,000 in total costs, the Energy Department’s Office of Inspector General also noted, and made national news when it was revealed the energy czar’s staff had deployed a gas-guzzling car to reserve a charging station for Granholm’s emission-free motorcade — causing a political firestorm.
Granholm further avoided driving a Tesla vehicle for the excursion — despite it having a larger network of chargers nationwide — and her department later added insult to injury by loaning $6.6 billion to Rivian, a rival of Elon Musk’s EV firm.
Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight Committee, ripped Granholm this week for the “serious waste, fraud and abuse” on her EV excursion.
“Secretary Granholm embarked on a taxpayer-funded EV summer road trip to showcase its radical Green New Deal priorities,” Comer (R-Ky.) said in a statement. “This publicity stunt not only illustrates how out of touch the Biden Administration is with the consequences of its policies but came at the expense of American taxpayers.”
Granholm told Reuters last June that 27 states have issued commercial requests to build charging stations and she expected 1,000 EV-charging stations in public places to be operational by Dec. 31, 2024, from the Biden-mandated program.
It’s unclear if that goal was reached.
Reps for the Energy Department and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
President-elect Donald Trump is looking to unwind several Biden-era renewable energy initiatives — and argued on the 2024 campaign trail that EV mandates were crippling the US auto industry.
