To sum up this drama:
The Squad has been holding the infrastructure bill hostage for months.
Pelosi forced a vote on it after the devastating defeat in the 2021 elections.
Apparently, an agreement was reached between the progressives and moderates in which the latter would vote for the “human infrastructure” bill after its true cost was known.
After I went to sleep last night, The Squad voted against the infrastructure bill, anyway.
13 House Republicans voted for it which caused it to pass.
The Squad no longer has any leverage over the “human infrastructure” bill.
In theory, the “human infrastructure” bill is supposed to pass by Thankgsiving. If memory serves, it includes a third attempt at amnesty which has already been defeated twice by the Senate parliamentarian.
According to Axios, the infrastructure bill includes:
- $110 billion toward roads, bridges and other much-needed infrastructure fix-ups across the country; $40 billion is new funding for bridge repair, replacement, and rehabilitation and $17.5 billion is for major projects;
- $73 billion for the country’s electric grid and power structures;
- $66 billion for rail services;
- $65 billion for broadband;
- $55 billion for water infrastructure;
- $21 billion in environmental remediation;
- $47 billion for flooding and coastal resiliency as well as “climate resiliency,” including protections against fires, etc.;
- $39 billion to modernize transit, which is the largest federal investment in public transit in history, according to the White House;
- $25 billion for airports;
- $17 billion in port infrastructure;
- $11 billion in transportation safety programs;
- $7.5 billion for electric vehicles and EV charging; $2.5 billion in zero-emission buses, $2.5 billion in low-emission buses, and $2.5 billion for ferries;
- The bill will include language regarding enforcement of unemployment insurance fraud;
- And it will add $256 billion in projected deficits over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
National Review is upset:
“With only three “no” votes to spare within her own caucus, Pelosi lost six Democrats — enough to sink the bill. Yet 13 Republicans swooped in to rescue Pelosi, provide Biden with the biggest victory of his presidency, and put the rest of his reckless agenda on a glide path to passage in the House. This is a substantively bad decision that is political malpractice. It represents a betrayal. …”
Most people don’t care about investing in hard infrastructure which is not really a polarizing issue. Apparently, this was some kind of corporate legislative sausage though. Business lobbyists supported the bill. It was either this bill or nothing though.
Assuming its not all wasted hiring “minority” businesses to pretend to build things, the infrastructure spending is long over due.
Its surprising to me given the extent of the disruption of the supply chain for international commerce that so little was earmarked for ports.
Donald Trump should have done this instead of cutting taxes.
This won’t save Biden. Its literally the least we could expect from our imperial government to actually bother to fund the maintenance of its own infrastructure.
This is as good a legislation as the system can produce. Note that the “sudden” increase is being spread over several years and that some of the repair work was already underway or earmarked and is only being subsumed under this bill, and that some of the spending goes to military-related infrastructure and consistutes another indirect increase of the war budget.
The well-to-do pseudo-“socialist” Squad is grandstanding (a very harmless show because there are few of them and they create a nice illusion of democracy) but they are correct that not only worn-out roads and bridges but also the worn-out working people need care.
It will be interesting to see how much of this actually gets to actual “infrastructure” I suspect most will get dribbled off into Left non profits, union funds, BLM, etc, etc,. By law it’s supposed to go to real projects, but as we all know, the Left has become masters at using government funds to fund their movements.
As Rush Limbaugh, ( may he rest) used to say, defund the Left. Or, even better, when the Stupid Party is in power, use government to Benefit their own base, rather than Wall Street and themselves.
We all know a great slice will go to “Consultants” and NGOs and other paper-pushers/excel sheet spreaders
1.2 tril, over 10 years, is only 120 billion a year, peanuts. The defense budget is over 850 billion a year.
Where’s pelosi’s 200 million presidio project, of which she will get a large fraction ?
“minority” businesses to pretend to build things”
You know the score.
This is nothing but a hodgepodge of make-work projects to conceal a lot of graft. Any national economic benefit will be trivial.
Want to rebuild the economy and make massive improvements to infrastructure and efficiency ?
Implement Hitler’s Breitspurbahn plan.
Rebuild America’s rail system to 3 meter gauge.
A tremendous spur to steel, concrete, machine tool and technology. Plus greater efficiencies in transport, less fuel consumption and very green tech.
I wonder what coonservative Wheeling, WV Congressman McKinley plans on getting out of this spending bill besides a pat on the head from Nancy Pelosi.
I don’t see anyone getting anything out of this infrastructure spending bill other than fat Jew suppliers and equally fat Italian and Irish Roman Catholic contractors.
Have you ever known anyone personally who has cashed in on one of these bills???
The best part of this whole cluster fuck was that 13 Republicans switched sides and supported that wrinkly, Halloween looking horror show, crazy Nancy Pelosi. Without those Republican votes the legislation would have failed, gravely weakening Dementia Joe’s administration even further. The Republicans never fail to fail, this time right after their big wins on Tuesday. They certainly wasted no time.
The Republicans are hopeless. They never fail to stick the knife in the back of their loyal voters, whom they despise, for the benefit of their wealthy oligarch bidness owners.
The tragedy is that the Republicans will probably roll up the ballots nationwide in 2022 in an historic election victory followed by another historic victory in 2024 as the country disintegrates from decades of self inflicted wounds. The Republicans will claim they can’t do anything after their 2022 victories because they don’t control the White House even though they control both the House and the Senate as well as state level offices coast to coast.
After winning another historic victory in 2024 as the country is in a shambles (after four years of Dementia Joe/Cackling Kamala as Mr. President) the Republicans will proceed to loot what is left of the country for their bidness friends who bought them the election. It’s all so predictable.
The Republicans aren’t the lesser of the two evils, they are just evil.
Out of the 1.2 trillion, none it will go to the infrastructure. I’m sure there billions in there for Israel though.
This bill is a symbol of America’s.decline.
It’s all about patchwork.
Secede now!
Form a secession party (at least “electronically” or “on paper” — waste as little money as possible on “warm bodies” and “brick-and-mortar” stuff) in each of the hopefully soon to be restored sovereign states so people can at least have an alternative to waste their votes on during this end-time madness as we circle around the drain going down into the memory hole for corrupt empires. Just having a secession party will keep the idea of secession in the public view and plus anger the wicked Repubs/Dems with the thought of how many votes escaped out of their greedy hands that they think they are entitled to and should have a lock on in this dystopian “two-party” (actually just a “one-party”) system where the two parties are working together in their perverted anti-God agenda.
May God Save the South!
@ let them spend all the fake money they want………
Yeh, and you’ll pay for it, in inflation.
@ Arrian, I am simply trying to remain unaffected by their fiscal monetary madness, if some common ordinary white folk, can be helped with this spending bill, I am ok with it, they are killing the dollar anyway.
This country is producing less and less of the type of people who will “keep things running”. The die is cast.
A measly $25 billion for airports? The renovations at LAX alone are going to cost $2 billion!
On paper, it looks reasonable. That’s what government SHOULD be doing:- spending money on domestic programs. Nothing there about useless projects in Somalia, just domestic infrastructure.
Unless I’ve missed something, it looks good for America.
Beats having the money go to Israel…….. though I know they won’t miss out somehow.
Ten year bill. Country doesn’t have that long. There is an amnesty for illegals in there. It does about nothing to fix roads, near zero. 98% of the road money is to tear stuff down and rebuild it. The contractors prefer this as the margins are higher than just repaving the road. The money is for expansions, not maintenance. All you will notice are more work zones, more wrecks, and bumpier roads, the opposite of what you want. The dump trucks working any project are far overweight, they tear the roads up.
The rule of America has been, since Reagan, nothing gets better, it only gets worse. Enjoy your electric car with no steering wheel that will be your only option, unless we can secede.
One of the thousands of benefits of having our own country is escaping this DOT hell. Other countries have it far better than us. We need our own country.
The accelerationist position would be to back Nikki Haley this time. This Indian Hindu woman probably would start a war with China and Iran, meaning WW III. I’m all in for Nikki.
Pray for war.
“Nothing there about useless projects in Somalia, just domestic infrastructure”:
There should be. In a just world, the U.S. population would be forced to pay reparations for repair of infrastructure of Somalia and all the other nations the U.S. has thrown into chaos, looted and bombed “back to the stone age.” Prosperity was coming in Somalia after Italian, French and British colonial connections were cut off. Banking was nationalised, land redistributed, free universal healthcare, and public education, worker-ownership of industries and agricultural cooperatives were established. Life expectancy and literacy were shooting up, and it was homegrown effort not entirely dependent on Soviet aid. Somalia soon had the second-most powerful (after South Africa) military south of the Sahara. But then, Siad Barre’s plan to “unite all Somalis” by taking back the Ogaden (where he was born) by force from Ethiopia (the British and other colonial powers typically drew boundary lines to splinter/disunite ethnic groups) was pursued (against strong objection and opposition by the Soviet Union) and was unsuccessful and weakened and destabilised the Somali Democratic Republic leading to its destruction by the U.S. in the 1980s, and Somali slipped into chaos, and soon the U.S. began bombing and actually invaded: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9ClgZTX2Q8
Yes, the infrastructure bill should include trillions for repair and replacement of foreign infrastructure destroyed by decades of war. And that wouldn’t begin to pay for all the human lives lost or ruined by crippling injuries and impoverishment. Only forgiveness and forgetfulness can save us.