Iowa and Illinois lawmakers, including Grassley, say the funding will finally speed long-delayed replacement of river locks that are well beyond their 50-year design life and cannot accommodate modern tows.
Ernst, though, voted against the infrastructure bill. She said she supports infrastructure and lock and dam funding, but objected to the bill not being fully paid for.
She pointed to a Congressional Budget Office analysis from August that showed nearly half of the new spending — $256 billion — would be financed by adding to the nation’s debt over the next decade.
“There is no funding for many of those projects,” Ernst said. “So until we can get that worked out, I did not want to support something and make false promises to the people of Iowa.”
Business owners also talked of the difficulty of finding affordable child care.
Like many parents, Nicke Helle, staff accountant at Anderson, Lower, Whitlow, P.C. in Bettendorf, said his wife — a former special education teacher — was forced to stay home early in the pandemic as numerous schools and child care programs across Iowa closed.
But now that schools and day cares have reopened, the family risks losing their health care and other financial assistance should his wife go back to teaching, even if just as a part-time substitute, due to income eligibility thresholds.
