Roads and Bridges
South Dakota’s wide-open spaces mean the nearest hospital or airport can be many miles away. Federal funding is essential for ensuring that South Dakota’s highways and bridges are properly maintained. I support commonsense infrastructure investments at the federal, state, and local level to help keep roads safe for South Dakotans. These investments ensure the safe and efficient movement of goods and the people who produce them, which are vital to a host of South Dakota industries, including agriculture and tourism. Since being elected to Congress, I have been a strong advocate for infrastructure funding to ensure South Dakota’s transportation needs are met.
Air Travel
The Essential Air Service program is especially important in rural states like South Dakota. Ensuring access in and out of these smaller communities makes our local economies stronger, provides consumers with greater choices, and makes the entire commercial airline network more valuable. I have been working to maintain the Essential Air Service for years and have strongly discouraged any moves by the U.S. Department of Transportation that threaten reliable air travel for our smaller airports in Aberdeen, Pierre, and Watertown.
Over 850 million Americans rely on the United States airline system to get to and from their destinations annually, and modernizing the nation’s air traffic control system remains essential to ensuring its safety. In 2025, the Working Families Tax Cuts Act made a significant investment in technology improvements for the air traffic system, which will support the deployment of state-of-the-art technology to towers across America.