U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg walked into Cleveland Cliffs steel plant in Steelton with a desire to see for himself how President Biden’s once-in-a-generation bipartisan infrastructure investment is being spent to benefit Pennsylvania and the nation as a whole.
What he got was a real education on rails that some of that $1 trillion being spent over five years are buying.
As he toured the 150-year-old plant, he learned it produces rails that carry freight, passengers and even the retractable roof on the Las Vegas Raiders stadium, along with steel for heavy machinery, power generation plants and military applications such as submarines..
Buttigieg had to break into a smile upon learning that employees such as plant manager William Carlisle can glance at the size of a rail from 100 yards away and know whether it is going to be used for major rail transit systems, freight carriers like Norfolk Southern or CSX , crane rail at shipyards or rails for retractable roofs on stadiums.
Following a 35-minute visit, Buttigieg, wearing a personalized white hard hat with the words “Secretary Pete” on its brim, came away, saying he was “very impressed” and would report back to Biden about “the extraordinary work that you do here every day.”
He was then joined by Gov. Josh Shapiro and state Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll who highlighted some of the places around the nation where the rails from Cleveland Cliffs, one of only three rail producers in America, are being used from the Port of Long Beach in California to the one in Wilmington, Delaware.
“We are seeing right around us what it actually looks like to make these investments and what’s going on here proves that a facility that goes back almost to the Civil War can also be a center of innovation,” Buttigieg said. “It was the first facility in the country to exclusively produce steel and now it’s at the forefront of the advanced methods that emit so much less carbon pollution than anything coming in from China does.”
He said the facility is showing “how to write a better story and multiply the possibilities for economic growth” as a result of this significant investment in the nation’s infrastructure.
The plant manager attested to that. Carlisle said the bipartisan infrastructure law for the Steelton plant “gives us a strong order book and continues our success as a company. So we get to make more steel, more profitability, more investment. And we get to hire more people.”
The visit to the plant was bookended by a stop in Lancaster to see the improvements made there with federal dollars for pedestrian, bicyclist and motorist safety and a stop at Harrisburg International Airport to hear about the improvements being made to its baggage handling system and passenger boarding bridges with $13 million from the Federal Aviation Administration’s Airport Terminal Program.
Introducing Buttigieg and Shapiro at the news conference was third-generation steelworker Delisa Baldwin, a member of the U.S. Steelworkers Women of Steel and Civil Rights Committee. Baldwin credited Buttigieg for being an effective advocate for steelworkers and he returned the praise by thanking the steelworkers union for helping to make a case to pass the trillion-dollar infrastructure law.
“President Biden has been very clear American-made steel produced by union workers is the backbone of our economy,” he said. “And thanks to the president’s leadership, we are investing in American-made materials and American workers like never before in my lifetime.”
Shapiro highlighted the partnership Pennsylvania has with Biden and Buttigieg that has resulted in nearly $17 billion in investments so far in repairing 7,000 miles of state roadways, bringing high-speed internet to more than 100,000 Pennsylvanians in 42 counties, and replacing toxic lead pipe.
“That doesn’t happen without the commitment of Secretary Buttigieg and President Biden to invest here in Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said. “Thanks to the historic investments that Secretary Buttigieg and President Biden negotiated in a divided Congress to make sure we got the resources to build America’s future and make it right again.”
In taking questions from reporters, Buttiegieg shied away from discussing his future political ambitions, saying his current job is “taking roughly 110% of my talents and attention.”
He said being in the third year of a five-year infrastructure law, his department is working on identifying projects as well as seeing the dollars already allocated turning into projects where “the dirt is flying” including ones here in Pennsylvania.
“The ultimate benefit is when you drive across that better bridge or you check in at that better airport and you ride on that better rail,” Buttigieg said. “Even before that’s done, it’s already bringing benefits in the form of good-paying jobs.”
Among the projects competing for some of the funding that has yet to be allocated is the replacement of the I-83/South Bridge in Harrisburg. Buttigieg said he was familiar with that bridge project but added there was a lot of competition for those dollars.
“I’ve committed to the governor and anybody else who calls to make sure that this application, this idea gets every appropriate look because we understand how important it is to the community,” the secretary said.
Asked what happens to the infrastructure investment if Biden doesn’t win re-election this year, the secretary said in his governmental position he can’t talk about campaigns and politics except to say that “we can’t ever take for granted that this infrastructure moment will continue.”
Shapiro said he wasn’t as constrained as Buttigieg in responding to that question and launched into a tirade critical of the policy positions of the presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump. He said, “The secretary may not be able to say it, I’ll say it, it’ll be a dangerous path if we go backward to Donald Trump – less freedom, less opportunity, less jobs, less health care, less economic progress in Pennsylvania.”
Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on X at @JanMurphy.