The Economist - USA (2021-07-17)

The Economist July 17th 2021 21

United States

Infrastructureyear

Joe Biden’s mystery train

“I

nfrastructure week”was one of the

triter gags of the Trump era: like Samu­

el  Beckett’s  Godot,  it  was  perennially

promised and never arrived. President Joe

Biden’s go at infrastructure investment has

started to acquire a similar feeling of inter­

minability, with fitful progress and no leg­

islative text since he announced his plans

more  than  three  months  ago.  Fidgety

Democrats  vow  serious  progress  before

Congress decamps for its August recess. On

July 13th Chuck Schumer, their Senate lead­

er,  announced  the  headline  cost  of  the

mammoth  package  being  prepared:

$3.5trn.  Delivering  it  will  require  deft  and

perfectly executed legislative manoeuvres.

Back in April, Mr Biden packaged his in­

frastructure  ambitions  differently.  There

were to be two parts. One piece of legisla­

tion would be devoted to “hard” infrastruc­

ture—such as roads, bridges, broadband fi­

bre,  and  water  pipes—and  climate:  build­

ing  rehabilitation,  an  electric­vehicle

charging  network  and  other  necessary  in­

vestments that the private sector was poor­

ly placed to make. The second portion was

to be “human infrastructure” (the concept

has acquired a certain plasticity in Demo­

cratic  messaging).  The  striking  compo­

nents of this package included an expand­

ed child benefit, universal pre­school, paid

family leave, and hefty subsidies for child

care and community college. The hard and

the soft parts would each cost about $2trn,

and would be just about paid for (the White

House  employed  some  artful  accounting)

by raising taxes on wealthy Americans and

businesses, especially multinationals.

But  Washington  specialises  in  the

crushing  of  beautiful  visions.  Though

Democrats hold the White House and both

chambers of Congress, their narrow major­

ities mean they must stick together to pass

legislation  unilaterally,  as  with  the  presi­

dent’s  $1.9trn  covid­19  stimulus  bill,

passed  by  reconciliation  (a  provision  that

allows  budget  bills  to  circumvent  the  de

facto 60­vote  threshold  in  the  Senate).

Since  then,  the  moderate  and  progressive

factions  of  the  party  have  become  more

willing to exert their implicit veto powers.

Mr  Biden’s  response  is  another  two­part

plan: a bipartisan bill focused on hard in­

frastructure,  without  much  in  the  way  of

climate expenditures or compensating tax

increases; and a reconciliation bill stuffed

with everything else (the Big Bertha recent­

ly announced by Mr Schumer).

Because  of  the  filibuster,  a  bipartisan

bill,  which  moderate  Democrats  want,

needs  ten  Republican  votes  in  the  Senate.

The framework for such a compromise has

already  been  agreed  on,  though  its  size—

$579bn  in  new  spending—is  modest  in

comparison to the president’s stated ambi­

tions.  Hence  the  second  part  of  the  plan:

stuffing  the  leftover  policies  into  an  im­

mense  omnibus  bill.  It  will  probably  in­

clude  vast  climate­related  expenditures,

trillions  for  the  safety­net  and  tweaks  to

the  health­insurance  regime,  all  balanced

out  by  increased  taxes  that  Republicans

have declared a non­starter, and all passed

through budget reconciliation.

WASHINGTON, DC

The president’s agenda depends on somehow steering two trains at once

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