Working to strengthen America’s infrastructure and transportation networks to make us more efficient, more competitive, and more prosperous. Since the Constitution provided the Congress with the power to establish post roads and regulate commerce among the states, the federal government has played a significant role in our country’s transportation and infrastructure. Our roads, bridges, railways,
waterways and runways have all made it possible for what was initially a collection of relatively independent states to truly become one nation, intimately connected over millions of square miles. Infrastructure has always been the backbone of the United States economy. Our diverse and distant communities are tied together, and commerce thrives, because the American people have always understood the need for a cohesive, unifying transportation network. House, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has jurisdiction over all modes of transportation: aviation, maritime and waterborne transportation, highways, bridges, mass transit, and railroads. The Committee also has jurisdiction over other aspects of our national infrastructure, such as clean water and waste water management, the transport of resources by pipeline, flood damage reduction, the management of federally owned real estate and public buildings, the development of economically depressed rural and urban areas, disaster preparedness and response, and hazardous materials transportation.