Hillary Clinton, while campaigning in California, committed to sending “a comprehensive infrastructure proposal to Congress in her first 100 days in office,” an aide said Wednesday.
“We will start working immediately because I want us to get this issue behind us,” Clinton said on Wednesday in Buena Park, California, calling her infrastructure plan “the biggest infrastructure investment since Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System.”
Clinton added that she felt “if we do comprehensive immigration reform and we invest in infrastructure… we are going to have more than enough jobs for everybody. That is what we want in America, because I want everybody to have jobs with purpose and dignity.”
This is the second piece of legislation Clinton has pledged to send to Congress in the first 100 days. The first was immigration.
The infrastructure proposal — which was first rolled out at a November event in Boston — will cost $275 billion.
Clinton said Wednesday that she “intends to add to that package by proposing additional measures to invest in infrastructure over the coming weeks.”
An aide to Clinton added that, all told, the package would “represent the most significant increase in infrastructure investment since President Eisenhower built the Interstate Highway System,” a 1956 act that built 47,856 miles of highway across America.
Clinton’s plan looks to increase infrastructure spending over the next five years in order to “bankroll upgrades to roads, bridges, airports and public transit.” The plan also includes establishing a $25 billion national infrastructure bank, which would put up federal dollars to attract private investment.
“To build a strong economy for our future, we must start by building strong infrastructure today,” Clinton said in November. “I want our cities to be in the forefront of cities anywhere in the world. I want our workers to be the most competitive and productive in the world. I want us, once again, to think big and look up, beyond the horizon of what is possible in America.”
The plan also calls for universal broadband by 2020 and more focus on creating a clean energy grid.
Clinton has not been alone in calling for more infrastructure spending. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton’s opponent for the nomination, has called for more than $1 trillion dollars in spending on the issue.