Here comes a *real* Infrastructure Week
Of course, we all remember the mockery and derision which attached itself to the term "Infrastructure Week". The Former Guy made a big noise about wanting to implement a yuge infrastructure bill, because he was a builder, and it's what he knew how to do. But even when his paltry political capital was at its height, he could never manage to do it, because he was a moron and Mitch McConnell was simply using him for judges and tax cuts and was not going to commit to trillions of dollars in new spending. However, whenever some new scandal would plague TFG, he'd pivot to a new infrastructure push, until it became a stock joke.
Joe Biden is not The Former Guy. And he's not playing:
President Biden’s economic advisers are preparing to recommend spending as much as $3 trillion on a sweeping set of efforts aimed at boosting the economy, reducing carbon emissions and narrowing economic inequality, beginning with a giant infrastructure plan that may be financed in part through tax increases on corporations and the rich.
After months of internal debate, Mr. Biden’s advisers are expected to present a proposal to the president this week that recommends carving his economic agenda into separate legislative pieces, rather than trying to push a mammoth package through Congress, according to people familiar with the plans and documents obtained by The New York Times.
The broad outlines as described by the New York Times are thus:
It would spend heavily on infrastructure improvements, clean energy deployment and the development of other “high-growth industries of the future” like 5G telecommunications. It includes money for rural broadband, advanced training for millions of workers and 1 million affordable and energy-efficient housing units. Documents suggest it will include nearly $1 trillion in spending alone on the construction of roads, bridges, rail lines, ports, electric vehicle charging stations and improvements to the electric grid and other parts of the power sector.
We've all just recently seen the parlous state of our electric grid, as the second biggest state in the Union succumbed to misery as a freak storm took its power offline. From the grid, to our decaying roads and bridges, this country's infrastructure is not fit for the purposes of a 21st century economy.
Now, usually a big spending project like this would have a thousand fathers and mothers. It's the kind of spending which constituents expect their representatives to bring home to them. This spending creates jobs like nothing else. And no, this isn't something best left to the private sector. Only governments can marshal the resources necessary to improve basic infrastructure. It is, in fact, a prime role of government. The longer you delay investing in infrastructure, the more costly it becomes when you inevitably have to repair or replace it.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle would love cutting ribbons at new highway projects, or opening a new sewage treatment plant. It would show them doing their jobs. But while all Democrats would be on board with the broad parameters of Pres. Biden's plan, one can't expect even a small fraction of Republicans coming to the table, even with the House and Senate back in the earmarks business.
There are several reasons for this. Mostly, they don't want to give Pres. Biden another win after his American Rescue Plan passed with no GOP support. But for the most part it's due to the fact that the Republican Party has lost any sense of how to govern. It exists now solely to fight culture wars it's losing badly. It offers nothing to its constituents of any tangible benefit, because its officeholders are not public servants but apparatchiks who seek only to criticize and stymie, all to parlay rage into votes. The interstate highway system, remember, was built under a GOP president. It beggars belief that today's GOP would undertake such an endeavor.
So, the new plan will pass on a party-line vote in the House, and be sent to reconciliation in the Senate, and Democrats will have done all the long hauling, while various GOPers show up at ribbon cuttings with shit eating grins to take credit for projects with which they had nothing to do. When 2022 and 2024 come around, it's our job to remind their constituents that the new jobs they have, or the not-falling-down bridges over which they can safely drive, were due solely to the efforts of Joe Biden and his Democrats. Mooch on someone else's dime.