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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan, the former head of North Carolina’s environmental agency, will be accompanying Harris in the state. The EPA, along with the Department of Energy, will be key to the administration’s broader $174 billion electric vehicle push.
Harris will visit a Thomas Built Buses manufacturing plant in High Point, N.C., to discuss the $20 billion investment the administration is proposing to convert the entire U.S. fleet of gasoline and diesel-powered school buses to electric vehicles.
The visit will follow a Harris speech at the Center for Advanced Manufacturing at Guilford Technical Community College highlighting the administration’s work during its first 90 days and its goal of creating more jobs than any other White House in history.
The infrastructure package “will be the largest jobs investment our country has made since World War II,” Harris will say, according to excerpts of her speech provided to The Washington Post.
“And it’s not just about jobs. It’s about good jobs. … At a good job, you shouldn’t have to worry about your safety at work. At a good job, you shouldn’t have to go into debt for a diploma that promises a decent paycheck,” Harris plans to say.
Harris’s appearance on the campus of the technical school is also designed to underscore the training required for the new manufacturing jobs the administration hopes to create if Congress approves the infrastructure plan.
Although Harris has yet to explicitly highlight as much, her policy footprint threads through the far-reaching infrastructure proposal. As a senator, Harris co-sponsored several of the bills and investments incorporated into Biden’s infrastructure effort, including the plan’s proposed $111 billion investment in water infrastructure and $100 billion investment in high-speed broadband infrastructure.
The administration’s push to electrify the nation’s school bus fleet is derived directly from Harris’s original bill, according to senior administration officials. But it goes even further in trying to transition school buses — which mostly run on diesel fuel and make up 90 percent of transit buses in the United States.
The measure will prioritize transitioning school buses in districts serving the most students on free and reduced lunches and those with high local air pollution, as diesel engines are…
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