The Patriot Post® · That Big Fat Infrastructure Bill
The infamous infrastructure bill that was held hostage for months in Speaker Pelosi’s House of Representatives will soon become law of the land. The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will be signed into law this week by President Joe Biden, who has called it a “monumental step forward.”
Well, not exactly. Yes, there are some things to like about the new law, but also plenty not to like. First the bad parts:
Always be wary of legislation passed by Congress at 11:28 on a Friday night after months of misfires.
$1.2 trillion is an enormous amount of money. Now that government spending is routinely discussed in terms of trillions, one trillion sounds puny. It’s not. A trillion dollars — $1,000,000,000,000 — is a thousand billions, an incomprehensibly big number. The new law is by far the largest infrastructure spending package in our history, despite being dissed as “too small” by many Democrats.
It includes a lot more than conventional infrastructure. A great deal will be spent at the discretion (whim) of the Executive Department. For example, did you know that some U.S. roads and bridges are inherently racist? Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg now has the authority to replace those racist bricks and mortar with new, appropriately fair-minded bricks and mortar.
Still, the new law has a lot going for it.
In the USA, there is in fact substantial need for infrastructure upgrades. The Trump administration planned similarly costly infrastructure investment but was unable to make it happen. It was overdue then and it still is.
Moreover, the new law — flawed or not — is the one and only flicker of bipartisanship in the entire first year of the Biden administration. It came about at the initiative of a handful of Republican senators who stepped up to challenge Biden’s American Jobs Plan, a mega-bill masquerading as infrastructure but containing trillions in entitlements and climate spending. Republican and Democratic senators then worked together to produce a more tolerable compromise bill.
Which brings up the touchy question of Republican support. On November 5, 13 Republican congressional representatives joined 215 Democrats in approving the already passed Senate version of the infrastructure bill. Those 13 were immediately branded as traitors by the former president, by conservative media, and by many rank-and-file Republicans.
I disagree — strongly. I understand their frustration. Republicans universally oppose the Biden agenda, for good reason. And it’s true that those 13 votes helped to keep Biden’s agenda alive — the bill would not have passed in the House without them. But that is precisely the rationale employed by Democrats in their four years of resistance to President Trump, willfully throwing sand in the gears at every step, and harming the nation in the process.
That’s fundamentally wrong. Actions by our elected legislators — on either side — should be driven solely by what’s best for their constituents, not the dictates of their party bosses.
With that in mind, a message to my fellow Republicans: The nation is watching. This is no time to start acting like Democrats — and if we do take the House and Senate next year, don’t do it then either. And wouldn’t it be nice someday to get back to the legislative process envisioned by the founders and implicit in our democratic republic form of government: elected representatives acting on behalf of the people who sent them to Washington?
Perhaps the most important element of the new infrastructure legislation is what happens next. The Biden team is pushing the bizarre notion that this gigantic new legislation is just a starter package, a natural segue to the next logical step — a package twice its size that will pile on huge “social infrastructure” (i.e, entitlements) and much more climate change spending, to be passed by Democrats only, as “budget reconciliation.”
Give them an “A” for audacity. Consider the mind-bending illogic of linking a bipartisan infrastructure package with a wholly partisan one. That’s like playing a baseball game with umpires for only the first three innings. For the rest of the game, the home team manager would call balls and strikes from his dugout. A fair game?
Republicans’ oft-stated concerns about the Democrats’ monster reconciliation bill (now slimmed down by political exigencies to “only” $1.75T — but more likely to cost about $4T using realistic estimating assumptions) are now drastically compounded by America’s skyrocketing inflation, the highest in over 30 years.
The Democrats’ planned reconciliation package is a sure-fire loser, bad for America in many ways. Having supported the infrastructure bill, Republicans — along with sensible and politically savvy (and non-suicidal) Democrats — must now hold the line against severe left tilt, before it’s too late.