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​​Since the passage of the in 1956, which essentially created the national interstate highway system we know today, roads, bridges, freight, and public transportation such as bus systems and commuter train lines have been the primary focus of governmental attention when it comes to funding.

As recently as 2015, this trend has continued, when President Barack Obama focused his  in precisely these areas. It was the first multi-year funding package in nearly a decade, and now the Jobs Act will provide a further.

Internet access is, simply put, essential, though the relative youth of the digital age has had legislators lagging behind on their willingness to acknowledge broadband as an aspect of infrastructure. But this is increasingly no longer the case. The Jobs Act devotes $65 billion to improving national broadband access, and along with it, U.S. Sen. Patty Murray introduced the , aimed at further helping states provide equitable high-speed access to underserved communities.

Thus far in 2021, 47 states along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have brought more than up for consideration, and have already been passed into law.

In its , the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s drinking water system a C-, noting that the system is antiquated and underfunded. With 2.2 million miles of underground pipe, nearly all of which is directly connected to homes, schools, and various businesses, the replacement of potentially hazardous lead pipes has moved at a snail’s pace.

However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has established to help communities on this score, and several states have initiated lead-pipe replacement mandates, including,, and. What’s more, the EPA has made moves toward a that could set national mandates, as well.

Labor unions began to form in the early 1800s as the need to protect workers’ rights and interests bloomed in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. In 2020, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics put at 10.8%, or 14.8 million U.S. workers. The question of expanding unions has always been a sticky wicket. Labor membership dropped 2.2% in 2020, and has dropped overall nearly 10% since data was first collected in 1983, in large part the result of.

A change, however, may crest the horizon. President Joe Biden has stated he wants federally funded infrastructure programs to be, declaring that America was built “by the middle class and unions built the middle class.”

Remember when the media asked, "Who killed the electric car?" Well, a viable electric vehicle market is now reality. Companies like Tesla and Ford have gone all-in on electric, but while EV sales continue to rise, the vast charging network required to keep these vehicles going and enable cross-country EV travel remains in its infancy. At present, there are just in the U.S.—compare that with over 136,000 gas stations.

The 2021 infrastructure bill devotes $7.5 billion to growing the EV charging network—the first such federal investment in U.S. history—and and private firms are also lining up to.

​​There are approximately presently operating in the U.S. More than half provide mental health counseling and nursing, and nearly two-thirds engage in physical, occupational, or speech therapy, all of which are crucial to what President Biden calls “human infrastructure.”

With U.S. life expectancy averaging 79.7 years—and the U.S. Census Bureau estimating that by 2060 that number will —the exclusion of elder and home caregiver funding from the Jobs Act has senior living advocates pinning their hopes on the as a means of bringing elder care and Medicare expansion under the umbrella of infrastructure.

​​Flying cars aside, many of the advances predicted in the last century for how we could travel in this century have become reality. in California, Texas, and Nevada; micro-mobility systems such as scooters and fleets of electric bikes are available in many U.S. cities; and in-vehicle automation has become ubiquitous in new car and truck models.

When the U.S. House takes up its $3.5 trillion social agenda, it will also be to provide $10 billion for high-speed rail, and another $10 billion to improve mobility for low-income Americans.

One million megawatts—that is how much electricity the national grid produces. However, in light of recent large-scale climate change-related power outages, notably the one that, it is clear that the national grid requires modernization. The U.S. Department of Energy puts the economic cost of power outages at $70 billion annually.

will provide $73 billion to upgrade the national grid and forge new investments in smart grid technologies. Moreover, climate change, which is causing higher temperatures, rising sea levels, and more intense hurricanes, is now widely recognized as one of the largest impacts on infrastructure resilience. As such, $47 billion from the Jobs Act will go toward in the form of flood control measures, protecting coastal lands, and fighting against drought and wildfires.

While the White House insists the Jobs Act will pay for itself through a combination of redirected emergency relief funds, targeted corporate user fees, a crackdown on cryptocurrencies, and revenue generated from higher economic growth that will result from the plan, not everyone is convinced. The nonpartisan finds that the White House appears to overstate savings or count savings that have already occurred, finding a shortfall of nearly $300 billion.

Republican leaders have also been vocal in their skepticism, with saying the bill “continues to spend money our country doesn’t have—and contrary to lots of Enron-style accounting claims, no, it won’t pay for itself.”

[Pictured: President Biden makes remarks during a press conference on the grounds of National Renewable Energy Laboratory on Sept. 14, 2021 in Arvada, Colorado.]

As climate change causes more intense weather events and with more frequency, the weather data systems that track, analyze, and predict climate patterns are being recognized as a crucial part of national infrastructure.

In a 2017 white paper, the concluded that weather and climate data are crucial to the sustainability of infrastructure because they reduce the risk of weather-related disasters, create systemic resilience against climate change effects, and drive growth across many economic sectors. The study also noted that weather forecasting, often featured on the evening news, offers a $31.5 billion value to the U.S. economy.