The bill is filled with financial gimmicks, waste and expansions of Washington power.

WSJ
It isn’t just the Biden administration that is keen to redefine the term “infrastructure.” A growing number of Republican senators are getting in on the act, and more fool the party.

A bipartisan group of 10 senators last weekend finally released the 2,702 pages of their infrastructure bill. Explaining that they’d worked “day and night” to finalize the legislation, they touted their work product as a “historic” investment in “hard infrastructure” that will “create good-paying jobs.” As well the GOP members of the group might. “Infrastructure” sounds a lot better than “spendathon,” “central planning,” “corporate bailouts,” “Solyndra” and “Green New Deal.” All of which are the real descriptors of this behemoth.

Polls show a majority of Americans support the idea of infrastructure spending, so the bill takes care to lead with items that most people associate with that term—highways, bridges, tunnels, ports, waterways. Yet according to a breakout from the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, those provisions account for about $127 billion, or a mere 23%, of the bill’s $548 billion in new spending. Public transit gets $39 billion, and rail and Amtrak $66 billion, even though a scant fraction of Americans regularly ride them. Then there’s the $21 billion earmarked for “environmental remediation,” or the $50 billion under the catchall category of climate “resilience and western water storage."

The bill is better viewed as step one of President Biden’s Green New Deal, giving his appointees and federal bureaucrats tens of billions with which to remake the economy. The Energy Department gets more than $20 billion to reprise its failed role as a green-energy venture capitalist. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gets $3.5 billion to deal with flooding. There’s new money for the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, you name it.

The bill similarly gives the feds unprecedented and centralized control over chunks of the economy. Washington will now dictate rules in areas that have traditionally been managed by local authorities (such as drinking water) even as it muscles in on private-sector enterprises like broadband. The bill turns Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg into an electric-vehicle czar, with authority to pinpoint new charging stations down to the mile marker.

And let’s not forget corporate America. The Washington Post reports the bill has unleashed a “lobbying bonanza,” with more than 2,000 companies and groups engaging Washington officials on infrastructure this year alone. The bill creates a $6 billion handout for nuclear companies, which could benefit such paupers as Exelon and Southern Co. And any C-suite that dreams up a program for this-or-that green technology will be in line for federal cash.

Finally, there are the fictional pay-fors. A big reason the team struggled for so long to get the text out is that everyone understands there is no extra money in Washington. So while the authors claim the bill is paid for, in fact it rests on gimmicks—like the claim that by delaying a Medicare rule that will cost money, Congress is “saving” those dollars. These are the kind of tricks Republicans normally excoriate Democrats over. Most GOP members wanted most new spending to be covered by unused Covid funds. But the White House snarled, and negotiators rolled over.

Mr. Biden and Democrats are thrilled with this bill, and they should be. They got everything both sides wanted (roads, bridges, ports) and then a great deal more of the left’s agenda. GOP negotiators are internally talking up what they kept out of the bill, namely a Biden plan to expand Internal Revenue Service enforcement authority. But there’s no guarantee Democrats won’t turn around and use that to fund their follow-on $3.5 trillion reconciliation blowout.

So why did 17 GOP senators vote to proceed? On the baser end of the scale, here’s the dirty little secret: The bill fundamentally amounts to a heap of spending, and some Republicans can spend with the best of Democrats. The member press releases are already flying, bragging about the pork they are directing back to their home states.

The more charitable view is that some Republicans think the bill helped reduce the reconciliation price tag. (Because $3.5 trillion is apparently much better than . . . what?) Others make the stronger argument that the show of bipartisanship possibly makes it harder for Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema to abandon the filibuster.

Yet these vague unknowns have to be weighed against the inevitable cost, the terrible policies, the bailouts, the corporate welfare and the growth in federal power and reach—all of which Republicans claim to oppose. The Biden White House wants to remake America fundamentally in Bernie Sanders’s vision. This is the moment the GOP needs to be hammering away at the bad policy, the risks, and at the contrasts in governance.

Which gets hard to do when Senate Republicans are whooping that Biden agenda along.

Why Biden's bipartisan bet on infrastructure is working so far

Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said he is “100%" focused on stopping President Joe Biden’s agenda — and yet he voted with every Senate Democrat last week to set the stage for passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill that would be a major political win for the White House.

He wasn’t alone. Sixteen other Republicans opted to advance the legislation — in the face of multiple missives from former President Donald Trump urging them to block it.

At a moment of such intense partisanship, this momentary alignment of incentives for Democrats and Republicans, set to vote in the coming days to pass the approximately $1-trillion package out of the Senate, is the Washington equivalent of a total eclipse. However rare and fleeting, Republicans and Democrats believe they are serving their own self-interests, not just the president’s, in voting to pass a bipartisan bill to improve roads, bridges, rail lines, water pipes and broadband networks.

“Every incumbent benefits from the sense that the Congress can figure out how to get important things done,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Unsurprisingly, lawmakers don’t expect the conviviality to last long.

Upon passing the bipartisan plan as soon as this weekend, Democrats hope to soon approve the framework for a second bill, a sweeping Democratic proposal that includes massive subsidies and tax breaks for working families, free preschool and community college, a large expansion of Medicare and other tax cuts. Knowing no Republicans will support that measure, Democrats plan to utilize a process known as reconciliation, which requires just 50 votes for passage.

After Trump failed to achieve infrastructure legislation — his repeated efforts to promote “Infrastructure Week” became a running Washington joke — Biden has sought to leverage his 36 years of experience in the Senate to pursue a domestic program modeled after President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

Taking office amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Biden and Democrats brushed aside Republican opposition in March to enact a $1.9-trillion relief bill. But the decision to pivot to infrastructure, according to multiple administration officials, was based on a view that legislation focused on economic recovery was the logical next step and provided Biden an opportunity to notch a bipartisan achievement.

“The president always felt like this is a bill that’s going to get Republican support because these are issues that have always been bipartisan,” said Anita Dunn, counselor to the president, in an interview. “We haven’t had a major infrastructure bill in this country for a long time, and there’s desperate need for it.”

President Barack Obama, who provoked strong reactions from the GOP base, exhausted precious political capital in his first two years in office on a more ideological push for healthcare reform. Conversely, Republicans have struggled to negatively define Biden, and his prioritization of infrastructure legislation has maintained broad public support and generated little political backlash.

“It’s not like we’re asking people to vote for unpopular things,” Dunn said. “We’re asking them to vote for popular things.”
Seven in 10 Americans back the bipartisan infrastructure proposal, according to a Monmouth University poll that the White House cited in a memo to lawmakers this week. The initiative also has the backing of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other trade groups, as well as the country’s largest labor unions.

With both parties looking ahead at the 2022 midterm election that will decide control of Congress, several Republicans have calculated there’s more risk in outright obstinacy than occasionally meeting the president in the middle.

“If you’re a Republican, you want to prove that you’re not just here to completely block and stop the entire agenda,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate. “It’d be good maybe for the administration and they probably need a win right about now, but I also think that there are benefits politically to members on both sides.”
Biden’s push for bipartisan legislation has required persistence, flexibility and legislative acrobatics. After talks with Republicans faltered in early June, Biden encouraged his team to engage with a bipartisan group of senators drawing up their own infrastructure plan. After agreeing to a basic framework, Biden nearly torpedoed the effort by saying he wouldn’t sign it until Democrats passed their own companion bill — a likely $3.5-trillion package through the budget reconciliation process.

Though Biden quickly walked back that comment, his blunt assertion underlined his pursuit of a two-track approach that has proven — so far— to be politically shrewd.

The two bills, in theory, placate both ends of the president’s party: moderates craving a return to bipartisan deal-making and progressives eager to enact a broader agenda — giving Democrats, as some Republicans have argued, a chance to have it both ways.

“If you can get major legislation through with support from both parties, in Washington right now, that is a major accomplishment,” said Mike DuHaime, a GOP strategist in New Jersey. “He’s giving cover to a lot of Democrats in swing districts who need it. And it does give him freedom to go in a more partisan direction on other things.”

But the bifurcated approach also benefits Republicans. By backing the bipartisan bill, they can showcase a willingness to work with a Democratic administration to advance shared goals, while vehemently opposing the Democrats’ second bill, a release valve for the partisan steam that animates the party’s base.

“For Republicans, it’s a two-fer,” said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster. “There’s lots to like in both positions.”

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., who has supported the bipartisan bill while opposing the Democrats’ reconciliation measure, is OK giving the president a bipartisan “win,” believing GOP lawmakers will benefit from delivering their voters long-needed improvements and projects.

“Not every transaction requires a winner and a loser,” Cramer said. “Some transactions can have winners on both sides. I think infrastructure along with national defense are the policy issues that provide opportunities for us to do the right thing.”

Republicans also feel confident that any bipartisan credit Biden receives from the deal will come crashing down when Democrats turn to the partisan proposal.

“The problem he’s going to have is he’s going to shift within minutes of passage of this bipartisan bill into a hyper-partisan bill,” Cramer said. “He will in that moment, I think, squander all the goodwill he would rightfully deserve.”

Republicans plan to attack Biden for ramming through a costly partisan bill immediately after reaching across the aisle. They have already warned that Democrats will attempt to raise taxes on higher earners to pay for the plan.

But drawing a clear distinction between the two bills could be something of a challenge. Republicans “want to be sure voters understand the difference in this bill and the next bill,” said Blunt, the Republican senator from Missouri. “And it is a fairly hard sell.”

To that end, McConnell and other Republican leaders, such as Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who led negotiations on the bipartisan proposal, have stressed to their colleagues in closed-door lunches that the two bills are separate — that backing the infrastructure plan doesn’t amount to enabling the Democrats’ larger agenda.

Many Democrats believe the tangible benefits for Americans in their go-it-alone measure — and potential tax hikes on people earning more than $400,000 a year that would pay for the new programs — are popular, setting up their 2022 campaigns to draw sharp distinctions with their GOP opponents.

“I look forward to running on both bills,” said Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), who is up for reelection next year. “After years and years of obstruction, years and years of just partisan warfare that hasn’t delivered much for the American people, we now, with these two bills, are going to deliver quite a lot.”

China's loaning me the money for this bill
Don't worry this will fix everything.
Sign here

One thing Biden should be good at by now
Spending OPM

Hunters art can't pay for this bill?

And how much did that tax cut for corporations and the rich cost ?

Last time I looked it up only 8% of debt was being carried by China. That was a couple years ago. Did you know that China's economy is headed to recession?

That's irrelevant because it was supply-side economics at play.

Tax cuts don't cost anything, it government spending that costs everybody— unless you are on the receiving end of the loot.

But, they do decrease tax revenue/income, which is the same as spending. It results in a reduced bottom line.

Decreasing tax revenue, starving the beast is a good thing when it comes to reigning in government spending normally—like if the USA had a real free-market economy and governments stuck to their Constitutional authority.

Only one problem, the beast figured that it doesn't need the limitations of tax revenue to spend like drunken socialists. Their so-called "independent" central bank being an anti-free market institution has always been more than happy to accommodate the drunken socialists and their repeated binges and monetize all their unconstitutional government debt.

+1

Like Tony, your an...

Nothing.

They just got to have less of their money confiscated.

Taxes are not revenue/income. They are confiscations. The government doesn’t have a bottom line. Government spending is far more than what is taken in through confiscation. All those business terms do not apply to government.

Before any meaningful response can be made to this question please define what you mean by "cost?"

Be careful, they may mistake you for one of those anarchists or somethin.8-[

The "cost" to progtards is a loss in the percentage of loot that the government couldn't steal from the private sector.