tracks — usually over the bill’s contents and how
to pay for it.
“We are an economy that depends on public
goods to educate our children, move goods
from place to place, ensure our safety,” said
Jared Bernstein, who was chief economist to
former Vice President Joe Biden. “They simply
haven’t been willing to sit down and hammer
out an infrastructure plan that both sides could
agree on.”
The parties have been bedeviled so
consistently by disagreements over a goal both
say they embrace that it has been encapsulated
in jokes about “infrastructure week” —
shorthand for Trump plans to roll out proposals
that never materialize.
This time could be different, as leaders of the
mostly locked-down country desperately try
addressing the historic loss of jobs and averting
the worst economic collapse since the Depression.
Congress and Trump have already approved over
$2.2 trillion to bail out the demolished economy
and overwhelmed health care system — all of it
by adding to the national debt.
Yet even with both sides agreeing that
infrastructure can be a reliable way of creating
jobs and modernizing systems that themselves
add muscle to the economy, it’s unclear they can
reach an election-year compromise.
“A lot of this is theater, staking out the high
ground for the fight that’s coming,” said Liam
Donovan, a lobbyist who’s specialized in
infrastructure work.
Pelosi, D-Calif., and other top Democrats
sketched out their own evolving infrastructure
plan on Wednesday.