Seeing a lot of summary of the Infrastructure package we passed Friday night. Some accurate, some goofy, lots with opinion masquerading as fact. So herewith a thread on what's in, what's in the BBB and why it's in 2 separate bills:
1/ First, remember that Biden campaigned on transforming our hard and soft infrastructure. After getting elected, he gave us his American Jobs Plan as a framework. See here for details: whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…
2/ It was ambitious. Highways and bridges, yes. But also lower drug costs, address the climate crisis, expand access to education, housing and broadband, slash child poverty... and much more.
3/ POTUS first asked the Senate to get as much of that done as they could on a bipartisan basis. Their work product is the bill we passed in the House on Friday. (Thus the "Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal").
4/ There is lots of good stuff in the BID. Repairs and modernization of roads, bridges, airports and ports. Build out of a national EV charging network. Electric transmission capacity upgrades. Massively expanded access to high speed internet
5/ Two bills of mine were included - the BEST Act, to deploy grid-energy storage technology and better use intermittent renewables and the Clean Industrial Technology act to deploy tech in hard-to-decarbonize industries (steel, cement, fertilizer, etc)
6/ However, it was not complete. Not because we wanted to do this in two bills, but because when you prioritize bipartisanship in DC, there are many things that don't get prioritized. Sadly.
7/ There is no @GOP support for legislation that addresses the climate crisis, lowers prescription drug costs, cuts child poverty, expands access to housing, removes fossil fuel subsidies, expands access to education.
8/ That's tragic, but the reality of the current (elected) GOP. So all those provisions in the President's agenda were left on the cutting floor as the BID was assembled. And it is those pieces that were pulled into the separate bill, the Build Back Better Act.
9/ We have NOT yet passed the BBBA. Friday, we voted only to advance the rule so that we can finalize and pass in the next week (ish). But that bill will have to pass on a straight party-line vote through reconciliation, since there are no Senate Rs who will support.
10/ To be sure, the BBBA does not include everything in POTUS' agenda either. Some was cut at the request of Dem members who see bipartisanship as a goal rather than a path. Such is the nature of politics. But lots is still there.
11/ One can simultaneously lament that the BBBA is not big enough to tackle the climate crisis and still celebrate that it will be the most impactful climate bill ever passed by the US Congress. Ditto for child poverty, affordable housing and so much more.
12/ The debate you saw taking place in the Dem party last week wasn't a debate about goals. It was, a debate about whether House Dems could trust the Senate to fight for Biden's agenda. Because once we pass BID, we depend on those fragile 50 votes in the Senate to pass BBBA.
13/ We have now given them that trust. But many of us remain very skeptical. Don't blow this, Senate. Way, way, way too much is at stake.
14/ It's also worth noting that this whole package is not nearly as big as it looks. US GDP is $20T/year. Increasing federal investments by a few trillion over 10 years is not nothing - but the scale is nowhere near big enough to crowd out private spending.
15/ That matters for any inflation concerns. But also matters because it made it relatively easy to fully pay for. This package will reduce federal deficits because the added spending was addressed with minor offsetting increases in revenues.
16/ Those included small increases in taxes to the wealthy that do not fully undo the prior dude's tax cuts. There are no tax increases for anyone earning <$400K/yr. A big revenue source is simply increasing IRS budgets to address under-collection of taxes due under current law.
17/ Other significant revenue sources are changes to reduce corporations ability to declare revenue in low-cost foreign jurisdictions and dodge US taxes due - and initiatives to lower drug costs for seniors, which saves Medicare $.
18/ (As an aside, that's even after factoring in expanded Medicare coverage so that hearing will be covered. I fought to include hearing, dental and vision expansions. As Meatloaf says, one outa three ain't bad.)
19/ If you want to criticize the BID or BBBA, you can reasonably complain that they are not sufficient. We didn't do enough to address the climate crisis, to make higher ed affordable, to lower drug costs. And our tax system is still tilted too far in favor of the wealthy.
20/ But it's still transformative. And the fact that we didn't get everything is the nature of our political process.
21/ So for now, celebrate the BID. Fight like hell to make sure the Senate doesn't drop the ball on the BBBA. Then show a little love to all who will benefit from this once in a generation investment. And then get back to work. /fin
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