By: Ian Connor Linnabary, Blog Contributor
In Pittsburgh, President Biden debuted his newest piece of signature legislation, a $2 trillion infrastructure bill coined The American Job’s Plan. You may ask, what is in this plan? The real question we should ask ourselves is what isn’t in this plan. The Biden administration claims the expressed purpose of this legislation is to rebuild and improve our infrastructure, yet a large portion of this bill focuses on agenda items that have little to nothing to do with infrastructure. $621 billion of this $2 trillion plan goes towards what the White House refers to as transportation infrastructure. But when we dig deeper we can see that only about $115 billion, or 17% of the bill, goes towards roads, bridges, and highways. Now while roads, bridges, and highways are not the only examples of infrastructure, they are ones that Americans most often closely associated with it, and with such a small portion of this bill actually being appropriated to these items, it can be taken as a warning sign to what the rest of this plan contains. The rest of this $621 billion dollar transportation infrastructure fund goes towards some other noteworthy items such as $85 billion for public transportation, $80 billion for Amtrak, and $174 billion for electric vehicles. Another noteworthy part of the plan is $20 billion to address historical inequities in transportation. All the above mentioned spending sounds quite expensive, but it also sounds somewhat like infrastructure (or closet related enough to it). Unfortunately though, that is only a portion of this bill.
Some items in this legislation that have little to nothing to do with infrastructure can be found in a section of the plan that attempts to bolster our “Care Infrastructure.” Funds in this section go towards matters such as care facilities and at home healthcare workers which for one, are not infrastructure, and second, are typically private investments rather than public. In total around $400 Billion dollars in this Care Infrastructure section goes towards “expanding access to quality and affordable home or community based care for aging relatives and people with disabilities.” This is a little under a third of the package, and is once again not infrastructure. There is $50 billion in subsidies for domestic manufacturers and $40 billion for a new dislocated workers program. Also snuck into this legislation is the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, which eliminates right to work and 1099 status. If you haven’t caught on yet, all the above mentioned items that fall under Care Infrastructure and more, are not actually infrastructure. It is for this reason that the GOP has so far opposed the bill, given that it is just a throw-everything-at-the-wall type of legislation that seems to try and address every issue while truly addressing none effectively.
Now what can we expect to happen with this legislation? Megan Casella of Politico writes: “President Joe Biden says he views his $2 trillion-plus infrastructure plan as simply a starting point for negotiations with Congress, a draft document of ideals where “compromise is inevitable.”” While this sounds comforting, if we look back only a short time ago, we will remember that the Biden administration used very similar language around its American Rescue plan. They said that they wanted it to be bipartisan, and claimed they were willing to work with Republicans on it. Sure enough though, when push came to shove the Biden administration and the Democrats were unwilling to compromise with the GOP, saying that everything in this package is non negotiable. Ultimately they passed it through reconciliation with zero GOP support.
The Biden administration and the Democrats seem to have a very easy time saying that they want compromise, but they lack the ability to put it into practice. With compromise and bipartisanship, you don’t always get everything that you want, and unfortunately the Democrats seem to not be willing to give up anything. I truly believe that this infrastructure bill will receive the same fate as the American Rescue Plan. When it actually comes time for the Democrats to not get everything they want, they will simply do what is easiest, and that is pass this Infrastructure bill through reconciliation without compromising with the GOP. This is truly a shame because when we look at infrastructure, it has holistically been something that is bipartisan. This more than anything else is something that both the GOP and Democrats can and should work together on, and what the country needs right now is everyone working together.
