Read the Report: Get America Moving Again
View the Presentation: Get America Moving Again
Alongside its tragic human cost, COVID-19 has illuminated the vulnerabilities of our economy, with more than 30 million Americans losing their jobs in just six weeks. To catalyze the country’s recovery and strengthen the U.S. economy, Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) is launching Get America Moving Again, a detailed plan to stimulate the economy and lay the foundation for continued, sustained growth.
Get America Moving Again emphasizes the need to enhance American economic competitiveness and security by focusing on critical supply chains in transportation and energy that will position the United States to maintain its industrial leadership—and removing the threat of other nations leveraging their supply chains over our economic and national security future.
The proposal contains detailed policies to enhance job creation and create economic growth opportunities, ensure people can travel to work again safely and affordably, bolster the reliability and resilience of our energy and transportation sectors, and strengthen U.S. national security by decoupling from a volatile oil market and investing in domestic supply chains.
SAFE has created this 15-point plan to help jump-start the energy and transportation sectors and see them through four critical stages to Get America Moving Again: rescue, recovery, stimulus, and preparation. The suite of concrete, actionable policy recommendations include:
- Providing immediate federal funding to state and local agencies to sustain surface transportation infrastructure projects and offset transportation revenue losses, while also supporting improvements to active transportation infrastructure during the crisis.
- Passing critical federal autonomous vehicle regulations to provide a pathway to contactless delivery and transportation—stimulating American R&D and ensuring U.S. leadership.
- Accelerating transportation’s electrification and ensuring the technology and supply chains are in the U.S. by reforming tax credits for vehicles of all classes and for a nationwide infrastructure.
- Stimulating the auto industry with a trade-in incentive, including a bonus incentive for the alternative fueled vehicles that represent the future of the industry.
- Promoting a U.S.-based supply chain for rare earth elements by chartering a cooperative seeded with $500 million in capital as 100 percent of all rare earths are currently processed in China.
- Stimulating investments in U.S. manufacturing capacity and creating jobs in building next generation transportation technologies through the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program.
- Ensuring the continued survival and growth of emerging transportation options by providing CARES Act flexibility to support micromobility and TNCs, which can provide less-crowded commuting alternatives.
- Enhancing grid resilience and reliability through expediting greater deployment of grid modernization technologies, including smart meters/advanced metering infrastructure (AMI), energy storage, microgrids, and electric transmission and advanced transmission technologies.
Central to any economic recovery and repair is our nation’s transportation system. Moreover, the stimulus provides a crucial opportunity to reduce our overwhelming dependence on oil—which, as proven by its dramatic fall in price, is a highly volatile commodity upon which to power the world’s largest economy—by transitioning our nation’s vehicle fleet to American fuels unconnected to a global market. It also enables the U.S. to advance its transportation and energy systems into the 21st century by putting in place a targeted plan focused on jobs and technologies that will define the coming decades, as well make sure the country has the economic independence it requires.
