A Reality Check For Americans On Infrastructure Weekend

“Generations from now, people will look back and know this is when America won the economic competition for the 21st Century,” Joe Biden declared, in a statement early Saturday after House lawmakers passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

The vote was 228-206. Only 13 Republicans supported the legislation. Liz Cheney was a “No.” Adam Kinzinger a “Yes.”

A half-dozen Democrats voted against it, including Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who held a line Congressional Progressive Caucus chief Pramila Jayapal was ultimately unwilling to hold.

When the infrastructure bill came together earlier this year, Biden suggested he wouldn’t sign the legislation unless it came to his desk with the social spending plan. “If only one comes to me, I’m not — and if this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” he said, in late June, during remarks some Republicans framed as a betrayal.

Biden quickly softened his position to placate moderate Democrats. The result was an awkward commitment to what ended up being competing priorities.

That’s the irony of the Biden economic agenda. The legislation is theoretically complementary — two pillars atop which The White House’s vision for transformational change is constructed and realized. But by November, the two bills were battle flags hoisted by warring factions, moderates flying the roads and bridges and Progressives the social spending. Trench warfare galvanized the party against itself.

As the months wore on, Biden’s approval ratings fell, hurt by rising inflation, the perception of ineptitude created by intraparty intransigence and a botched exit from Afghanistan. America’s longest war ended as it began — with murdered innocents. Two decades after scores of Americans burned alive in Manhattan, a Reaper drone incinerated several children as they greeted their father in a small Kabul courtyard. The Pentagon later admitted to a tragic case of mistaken identity.

By October, Biden needed a win. Prior to last week’s trip overseas, he privately told Democrats that the midterms and, perhaps, his legacy, depended on the swift passage of his economic plan.

Nancy Pelosi, for all her powerbroker mystique, was unable to convince the Progressive Caucus to back the infrastructure deal without ironclad commitments from moderates around the larger, social spending package. By Friday, though, Biden was out of patience with Jayapal. So, she folded.

She didn’t frame it that way, of course. “Members of the Progressive Caucus and our colleagues in the Democratic Caucus reached an agreement to advance both pieces of President Biden’s legislative agenda,” she said, in a statement, adding that,

Our colleagues have committed to voting for the transformative Build Back Better Act, as currently written, no later than the week of November 15. As part of this agreement, at the request of the President, and to ensure we pass both bills through the House, progressives will advance the Infrastructure and Jobs Act.

Although the House did take a procedural step to advance the broader agenda, the bottom line was that Progressives were compelled to give up on the simultaneous delivery of Biden’s social spending plan. It’ll get a vote when everyone comes back from a short vacation and the Congressional Budget Office has a chance to score the $1.75 trillion tax and spend package.

Remember, it was Biden who emboldened Progressives to hold the line. The White House initially insisted the bills be passed together. In the end, only Bush, Tlaib, Pressley, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman were willing to stand on that promise. “I cannot in good conscience support the infrastructure bill without voting on the President’s transformative agenda first,” Omar said.

Of course, “transformative” is something of a misnomer even in the context of the social spending legislation. What began as a $6 trillion moonshot proposal from Bernie Sanders ended up as a $1.75 trillion “framework,” gutted of critical initiatives and stripped of key programs, in order to pacify Joe Manchin (and his Maserati) who, as far as I’m aware anyway, still hadn’t committed to backing the outline when Jayapal finally let the House pass the roads and bridges plan.

When you think about the infrastructure bill, do note that the total amount of new spending is just $550 billion, to be delivered “mostly” over the next five years. So, a little over a $100 billion per year, on average. Elon Musk made more than that on paper in the first 10 months of 2021.

Although it pains me to say this, Biden’s characterization of the legislation is wildly overblown. In the same Saturday statement, he called the infrastructure bill “a monumental step forward as a nation.” Forget Musk or Jeff Bezos. The total amount of new spending is (far) less than the cost of 2008’s Wall Street bailout.

Biden commented on the social spending plan too. “I’m also proud that a rule was voted on that will allow for passage of my Build Back Better Act in the House of Representatives the week of November 15th,” he said, calling the bill “a once-in-a-generation investment in our people.”

The problem, though, is that as of early October, only 10% of “our people” knew what was in the original Build Back Better Act. That almost surely means the percentage apprised of what’s in Manchin’s SlimFast version is in the single-digits.

At some point, you’d think voters would tire of an ongoing charade that everywhere and always excuses failure by citing expediency and sacrifices principle at the altar of practicality. Apparently, there are just six US lawmakers not willing to make that sacrifice. Seven counting Sanders.

Worst of all, the one person with the kind of charisma necessary to reawaken the despondent masses is too busy “owning” social media detractors and orchestrating wildly hypocritical publicity stunts at the Met Gala to take the revolutionary mantle. Conservatives needn’t fret. Che Guevara she is not.