The American Jobs Plan, President Biden's historic infrastructure rebuilding initiative, was rolled out yesterday at a carpenter's union training center in Pittsburgh. The Washington Post's E.J. Dionne comments on the significance of the plan:
"The president is transforming the nation’s political assumptions by insisting that active government can foster economic growth, spread wealth to those now left out, and underwrite research and investment to produce a cleaner environment and a more competitive tech sector.
But all this comes wrapped in a big but thoroughly traditional government spending program that offers a lot of things to a lot of constituencies — and benefits to a great many voters.
'There is something old-fashioned and decidedly nonradical about Biden’s invitation to see enhanced infrastructure as a vital national interest and to mobilize government to get it done,' [NC Democratic Rep. David] Price said in an interview. 'The same goes for thinking of nationwide broadband as today’s rural electrification,' the latter a reference to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s popular initiative to bring electricity to a previously unlit countryside.
As a result, said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster, 'Republicans will face a tough challenge in trying to make something like infrastructure into something radical.' Which is why, she added, the GOP will try to focus their attacks on other aspects of the plan. 'Polling,' she said, 'has consistently shown broad support for the idea that rebuilding infrastructure is the best way to create jobs and get the economy moving.'” (our emphasis)
As Ms. Murphy notes, Republicans, as is their wont, will lie about and obstruct this initiative because they know that it will be popular across party lines at the grass roots and will cost them votes. That was the same assumption that they made about President Obama's Affordable Care Act, and why they've tried to erase it ever since. Can't have the other party succeed, can we?
Four years under the former guy saw frequent announcements of "infrastructure week" only to be shelved, turning "infrastructure week" into a political punch line. The truth is, there was never an infrastructure plan to speak of to advance, just smoke and mirrors from the culture war party. Not any more.
