The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act delivered about $1.2 trillion over a decade, including $551 billion in grants to the Department of Transportation. Yet only $5 billion targeted air traffic control systems, with $1 billion spent, while over $80 billion went to diversity, equity, and climate efforts, Duffy noted. Official data shows 78% of the adjusted IIJA budget announced and 43% obligated by August 2025, funding thousands of projects like highway resurfacing and bridge repairs despite rollout delays from inflation and reviews. Critics question the balance between equity priorities and core fixes like outdated technology.
WAIT. I’ve been asking EVERY WEEK for years what happened to the $1.2 TRILLION Congress gave @PeteButtigieg for infrastructure.
— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) November 27, 2025
Guess what? It wasn’t $1.2T… it was $2 TRILLION.
How the F does 133 nuclear aircraft carriers worth of 💰 just vanish??@FBIDirectorKash why isn’t… pic.twitter.com/MPjr3IMfsu
Sean Duffy, the Secretary of Transportation in the second Trump administration, posed a blunt question this week that has quickly become the talk of political Washington and beyond: after the federal government committed what he described as two trillion dollars to roads, bridges, and related infrastructure in recent years, why, he asked, do so many American highways still look as if they have survived a war?
Speaking on the Shawn Ryan Show, a podcast hosted by a former Navy SEAL, Mr. Duffy, a former Republican congressman from Wisconsin, said he arrived at his department expecting to see the fruits of what had been billed as the largest infrastructure investment since the Eisenhower era. Instead, he said, he found crumbling pavement, stalled projects, and little visible evidence of the promised transformation.
The clip, excerpted and widely circulated on social media by the maritime journalist John Konrad, has drawn hundreds of thousands of views and a torrent of commentary demanding explanations—and, in some quarters, prosecutions—of Mr. Duffy’s Democratic predecessor, Pete Buttigieg.
The charge is serious, but the arithmetic behind the “two trillion dollars” is less straightforward than it first appears.The core of the controversy is the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed by President Biden in November 2021. The legislation carried a headline figure of $1.2 trillion over ten years. Of that amount, approximately $550 billion was new money above the routine reauthorizations that Congress has long provided for highways, transit, and water systems. The remainder simply continued existing programs at previously anticipated levels.
Mr. Duffy’s larger $2 trillion estimate appears to combine three distinct streams: the 2021 infrastructure law, portions of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under President Obama, and hundreds of billions of dollars in clean-energy and transportation provisions contained in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. When baseline highway and transit funding that would have been spent regardless of new legislation is added, the cumulative ten-year total for transportation-related spending does indeed approach or exceed $2 trillion.
Critics of the Biden-era approach, including Mr. Duffy, argue that much of the money was diverted to secondary priorities—broadband deployment, electric-vehicle charging stations, climate-resilience studies, and diversity initiatives—rather than the traditional roads and bridges that most motorists notice. Supporters counter that modern infrastructure necessarily includes high-speed internet and cleaner energy systems, and that the Biden administration faced severe supply-chain disruptions and labor shortages in the wake of the pandemic.
Four years after the law’s passage, the record is mixed. The Transportation Department reports that more than $220 billion has been awarded for tens of thousands of projects nationwide. More than 40,000 miles of highway have been resurfaced, several thousand bridges repaired or replaced, and major initiatives such as the Hudson River rail tunnels and the replacement of lead water pipes in older cities are under way. Yet the American Society of Civil Engineers, in its most recent quadrennial report card issued this year, still assigns the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of C-minus, an improvement of only one notch since 2021.
Mr. Buttigieg, who left office in January 2025 and is frequently mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential contender in 2028, has defended the record as a necessary long-term investment hampered by external shocks, including inflation that at one point exceeded nine percent. A spokesman for the former secretary dismissed Mr. Duffy’s remarks as partisan revisionism.
Transportation analysts across the ideological spectrum acknowledge that large infrastructure programs rarely produce immediate, dramatic results. Permitting delays, state-level bidding processes, and a nationwide shortage of skilled construction workers—estimated at 400,000 unfilled positions—have slowed execution. Many of the largest projects financed by the 2021 law will not be completed until late in this decade or beyond.
Mr. Duffy has promised a different approach: accelerated environmental reviews, stricter safety enforcement, and a renewed emphasis on what he calls “core” infrastructure. Whether that shift will yield faster results remains to be seen.
For now, the secretary’s exasperated question—where are the roads and bridges?—has crystallized a broader public skepticism about Washington’s ability to translate large appropriations into tangible improvements. In an era of $37 trillion in national debt, few issues strike closer to the daily experience of ordinary citizens than the condition of the pavement beneath their wheels.
