CNN is rather admitting that Joe and the Dems are not really attempting to pass a bill focused on infrastructure
The fight to define infrastructure could change America
The meaning of the word “infrastructure” suddenly depends on your politics.
President Joe Biden is using a sleight of hand by crafting a bill that might be traditionally associated with repairs to potholed highways to instead be his latest effort to reshape the US economy and social safety net. His move encapsulates the White House’s own sense of momentum and explains why Republicans are lining up to block his ambitions before they change the character of the country.
In one example, the President has stretched the definition of infrastructure to insert $400 billion in the bill to revolutionize home health care for the elderly and disabled. In another he’s also seeking billions to supercharge America’s development of electric vehicles to fulfill another political priority — the elimination of fossil fuels in the fight against climate change. And, after a year in which millions of workers relied on home internet connections to work remotely, the plan also includes $100 billion to build a high-speed broadband infrastructure that would reach the whole country.
Biden and his Cabinet members argue that infrastructure undergirds every pillar of American life, from education to energy, and health care to manufacturing and that the need for investment is gargantuan. But the President’s audacity and his generous interpretation of a policy area that Washington has traditionally seen as confined mostly to transportation projects is already sparking a huge clash with his foes on Capitol Hill. After all, one person’s infrastructure plan is another’s left-wing power grab. (snip)
The disconnect over infrastructure exposes the huge gulf in perceptions between Republicans and Democrats over the state of the country as the post-pandemic era approaches. It highlights a seminal moment in American politics with a new Democratic President eying a window in history to carve a record that will stand comparison with the great reforming Democrats of the 20th Century. And most fundamentally, the battle over the shape and size of Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure bill announced last week fleshes out the perennial fault line between conservatives and liberals on the role of American government.
We all know what infrastructure is, and we all know that this bill being proposed is mostly about non-infrastructure things. It’s about pushing progressive (nice Fascism) ideas and increasing the power of the federal government. And, because it focuses so little on real infrastructure, we’ll be having this debate again in 3-4 years.
The unfolding standoff over the infrastructure bill escalated on Monday even as another threat to its passage came into view. West Virginia’s Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin warned he and several other moderates wouldn’t back Biden’s proposed corporate tax hike from 21% to 28% to help pay for the mega-bill.
They know it is bad optics, and that raising the corporate tax rate will not work out the way China Joe thinks. Corporations will just change up operations, which could mean less hiring, more part timers, slower coming pay raises, and passing the costs on to consumers, who will then purchase less. Tax increases never work out. Remember, though, Biden is all about bipartisanship and Unity! Despite essentially going it alone.
What’s for dinner?
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For decades, Democrats and their economic advisers have agreed: broadly-shared growth requires more government investment. They’ve just lacked the power to invest.
