ports. and tomorrow the department of transportation is going to announce over $200 million in grants to ports nationwide. and we re making significant investment in freight rail as well. and we re also working to unstick bottle necks between the ports and the stores by getting more trucks moving all around the country. we ve heard a lot about the need for more truck drivers, and it s real. and we ve gotten to work to address that. for example, i want i see marty walsh, my labor secretary. he s done a hell of a job cutting red tape so companies can set up registered apprenticeships for truck driver s in two days instead of two months. these aparen sisships are going to help new drivers get trained better and faster and help companies retain drivers in a field that has a lot of turnover. i m going to hear about the new partnerships with trucking companies, and states to get
give your business the gift of savings today. comcast business. powering possibilities. right now president biden is getting an update on efforts to ease the supply chain issues that have led to higher prices and shortages of dpoods. the president kicked off a meeting with the supply chain disruption task force saying there s been some success in easing the bottle necks.
more child care options. people got back on the job. and there s more news. the house finally appears to be ready to vote on the two parts of president biden s multi-trillion-dollar agenda, assuming it passes the human infrastructure bill will have backed the senate for review. but the hard infrastructure bill. money for roads, bridges, ports. that s going to go to the president s desks and it could be signed into law tonight. it is very big news, it is good news, but americans are still concerned. they re concerned about prices. inflation, the average price of gas is currently up more than 60% from a year ago. and you know supply chain issues and bottle necks are still delaying deliveries for weeks, even months. and it might not get back to normal until 2023. that is why i am here. xpo specializes in moving freight all over the country. 42,000 employees, 50,000 customers, and nearly 300 locations across the u.s. but just like a lot of companies, they are getting squeezed. higher deman
become a problem. the supply chain issues leading to delays in productsing received. we re also, of course, twinning that with some inflatio with inflation, so prices are more expensive. and there is a limit to what they can do. the port of long beach, los angeles area, 24/7. there was a deal that the government helped make happen. but there are only things around the edges that they are able to do to get things to flow more freely. and they are worried. they recognize, this is how this works. president biden is fond of quotingquote ing harry s. truman saying, the buck stops here. they are concerned that as this continues to get worse and there s sbrooed talk of potentially delays around the holidays, there are some retailers who are suggesting that they do their christmas shopping now, which is an attack line seized upon the right, i should add, that they are concerned about where this goes and they re going to try to do what they can and hope those conditions keep improving from the
haitians under a bridge. everybody is screaming where is kamala harris. now you have 100 container ships and where is pete buttigieg, the secretary of transportation. well, trace, apparently he s been on paternity leave the last two months. i don t think anybody knew that. they didn t realize he was missing because he s had such performance on his judge thus far. he was absent from infrastructure negotiations. he s still absent even though he s back at work apparently because the solutions that the administration is proposing here is woefully inadequate. it goes back to the fact that we up port so much from china. joe biden has been advocating that for 30, 40 years in washington. more exporting of jobs and factories to china. they could have foreseen these bottle necks months ago and addressed them then.