The infrastructure bill(s?)

Chew Toy McCoy

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I'm a little confused by Biden's strategy here. Why spend so much time and energy negotiating, proudly announce an agreement has been made, and then say it's only going to pass as part of a larger spending bill that didn't get negotiated? I don't blame Republicans for being pissed, although I also don't care. This would be like Democrats negotiating and compromising on a Republican bill only to be told it will only pass as part of a larger bill that includes guns for Jesus and the ironic death penalty for people who get abortions.
 

SuperMatt

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I'm a little confused by Biden's strategy here. Why spend so much time and energy negotiating, proudly announce an agreement has been made, and then say it's only going to pass as part of a larger spending bill that didn't get negotiated? I don't blame Republicans for being pissed, although I also don't care. This would be like Democrats negotiating and compromising on a Republican bill only to be told it will only pass as part of a larger bill that includes guns for Jesus and the ironic death penalty for people who get abortions.
I think the other bill he is asking for could be passed as a reconciliation measure, meaning only 50 votes needed. So maybe he is pressuring Manchin and Sinema?
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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I think the other bill he is asking for could be passed as a reconciliation measure, meaning only 50 votes needed. So maybe he is pressuring Manchin and Sinema?

I think Manchin has finally been schooled with his voting rights bill compromise attempt. So he might be up for it.

I think reps for both parties need to seriously look at the content and how it could help or hurt their constituents instead of just voting party line. And don’t just full stop block it if they find something that could hurt their constituents because there might be other things in the bill that will compensate for that. Don’t just hammer on coal miners being put out work if green jobs in the same area will be available.
 

Herdfan

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I think Manchin has finally been schooled with his voting rights bill compromise attempt. So he might be up for it.

I think reps for both parties need to seriously look at the content and how it could help or hurt their constituents instead of just voting party line. And don’t just full stop block it if they find something that could hurt their constituents because there might be other things in the bill that will compensate for that. Don’t just hammer on coal miners being put out work if green jobs in the same area will be available.

I think there will be some D's who will be involuntarily retired if they vote party line on for this. Just like with the ACA.
 

SuperMatt

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I thought the infrastructure bill was supported by the GOP. And yet 200 republicans voted against it in the house. I guess they want our roads and bridges to crumble to dust.
 

lizkat

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I thought the infrastructure bill was supported by the GOP. And yet 200 republicans voted against it in the house. I guess they want our roads and bridges to crumble to dust.

There will have been something in the excruciatingly extended process that has occurred here (in both chambers) that every member of House or Senate (both parties) will now be able to say they voted for (or against) something in the package before they voted against (or for) whatever now lands on the President's desk. Likewise with how it all actually rolls out (or doesn't) during implementation.

If you believe your own congress critter by time something of "the infrastructure bill" does or doesn't show up in your district, then if it's good, well it's bc he or she voted for it, and if it's not so good then the other party was surely to blame for the shortcomings.

That's essentially how a bill with "bipartisan support" is supposed to work out. Something for everybody. Credit AND blame...

Well it's something anyway. It was always going to be "something". Hey, it's how DC rolls.

( I wish I had an audio clip of the moment in the film "A Mighty Heart" when Will Patton says "God I love this town," after Irrfan Kahn says something along lines of "we have to be careful here... not all our guys might be with us on this move" --acknowledging that the CID has been inflitrated by jihadi sympathizers-- as they roll through Karachi towards a raid on a suspected terrorist's residence. )
 
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lizkat

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I think there will be some D's who will be involuntarily retired if they vote party line on for this. Just like with the ACA.

Well of course. Purple districts abound. Same with votes "for" on the R side. Let's not imagine Pelosi and Hoyer weren't tracking where the purple-district Rs were heading as negotiations went on.

There's a reason that people loathe Pelosi, but --or should I say AND-- it's often that she's just about unparalleled in ability not just to whip but to count potential votes. And Steny Hoyer's no slouch.

The question was always going to be whether McCarthy would nudge anyone to "yes" if the CPC proved so difficult as to put the outcome into possible fail territory. He had probably read enough polls showing how many Americans wanted "infrastructure week" to stop being a joke.
 

GermanSuplex

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Biden is such a pro. Given the division in the country and the fact I swore Biden was going to be a downer on progressive policy, I’m pretty pleasantly surprised. He’s getting things done. Afghanistan hurt him a good deal, but he still ended that debacle and I think that will be viewed better as time goes on. Not to mention, all things considered, pulling out was never going to be easy and it could have been far worse, which is why I think nobody wanted to tackle it until Biden.

And now his infrastructure bill, one of the non-racist policies Trump ran on a little bit, but not enough. (I remember hearing him say things along the lines of “I’m a builder, okay? I know infrastructure”.)

But he got nothing done. Trump’s biggest “wins” were Muslim ban, migrant family separation and giving billions of dollars to the wealthy.

So this is a really big win for Biden. Will people remember next year, or in 2024? Who knows. But if he can keep up the pace, I can see democrats being competitive next year.
 

lizkat

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LOL the National Review weighs in. Even Murdoch rags don't pay the far right this much obeisance.


Only Marjorie Taylor Greene outdid the faux outrage of the NR... she published a 2-part tweet that first named and then listed the DC phone numbers of the 13 Rs who joined Dems in voting to pass the infrastructure bill. The NR only listed their names, prefaced by this pretty over the top wrap in their piece:

Every Republican who voted for this monstrosity who is not already retiring should be primaried and defeated by candidates who will actually resist the Left-wing agenda. Those who are retiring should be shamed for the rest of their lives. It also is not too soon to be asking whether Representative Kevin McCarthy should be ousted from leadership for his inability to keep his caucus together on such a crucial vote.

Gee even McConnell loves it when infrastructure dough flows into the state. These protest-too-much Rs should give it up already and enjoy the pothole crews' new spending power as it flows into their local economies.
 
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DT

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(I remember hearing him say things along the lines of “I’m a builder, okay? I know infrastructure”.)


This is what Drumph meant ...


b2b24026-c9b0-425a-8f7b-27969a75e097.183c22462369bff7a40c30b09b806a2a.jpeg
 

ronntaylor

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Biden is such a pro. Given the division in the country and the fact I swore Biden was going to be a downer on progressive policy, I’m pretty pleasantly surprised. He’s getting things done. Afghanistan hurt him a good deal, but he still ended that debacle and I think that will be viewed better as time goes on. Not to mention, all things considered, pulling out was never going to be easy and it could have been far worse, which is why I think nobody wanted to tackle it until Biden.

And now his infrastructure bill, one of the non-racist policies Trump ran on a little bit, but not enough. (I remember hearing him say things along the lines of “I’m a builder, okay? I know infrastructure”.)

But he got nothing done. Trump’s biggest “wins” were Muslim ban, migrant family separation and giving billions of dollars to the wealthy.

So this is a really big win for Biden. Will people remember next year, or in 2024? Who knows. But if he can keep up the pace, I can see democrats being competitive next year.
I don't hear much/any crying lately about Afghanistan. Uncle Joe knew that it was best to rip off the band-aid immediately instead of wrapping gauze over a festering, oozing boil producing Faux News stories for months on end. Similar to Mango's Mexican Caravans, and before him, ACORN pimp's using taxpayer money for whatever.

Now Dems wait for the $$$ to roll and hope COVID fades into the background. With vaccination programs rolling along and new cases dropping, the GQP is gonna need new bogeymen. I'm not sure they'll be able to keep holding up CRT hysteria for another year. Although we're talking about a fucked-up, immoral band of BS spreaders and eaters. So who knows.
 

Chew Toy McCoy

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Biden is such a pro. Given the division in the country and the fact I swore Biden was going to be a downer on progressive policy, I’m pretty pleasantly surprised. He’s getting things done. Afghanistan hurt him a good deal, but he still ended that debacle and I think that will be viewed better as time goes on. Not to mention, all things considered, pulling out was never going to be easy and it could have been far worse, which is why I think nobody wanted to tackle it until Biden.

And now his infrastructure bill, one of the non-racist policies Trump ran on a little bit, but not enough. (I remember hearing him say things along the lines of “I’m a builder, okay? I know infrastructure”.)

But he got nothing done. Trump’s biggest “wins” were Muslim ban, migrant family separation and giving billions of dollars to the wealthy.

So this is a really big win for Biden. Will people remember next year, or in 2024? Who knows. But if he can keep up the pace, I can see democrats being competitive next year.

I honestly don’t see the infrastructure bill as a big win for Biden. It’s been widely popular on both sides of the aisle for a long time and some Republicans in Congress were pretty pissed Trump didn’t put one on the table. It’s an easy win, not to mention another pillage bucket for donor contracts.

I said before, I think voters are going to take bigger notice of all the expanded popular social programs that are getting picked off one by one in the second bill. And now they can’t even leverage the infrastructure bill. So say bye bye to those programs and consequently votes.
 

lizkat

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I honestly don’t see the infrastructure bill as a big win for Biden. It’s been widely popular on both sides of the aisle for a long time and some Republicans in Congress were pretty pissed Trump didn’t put one on the table. It’s an easy win, not to mention another pillage bucket for donor contracts.

It will be jobs though. A lot of them. And jobs doing billions on billions of dollars' worth of stuff that's been needed doing for way too long. Spending power in local economies will go up as work proceeds on the implementations. People fixing bridges and stringing broadband gotta get coffees and eat lunch, whether they brown-bag it or buy it near the job sites. Rs will have to work rather harder to overcome "It's the economy, stupid" at the midterms.

Okay it's true that I found my rose-colored glasses over the weekend. And yeah the Rs will still call the programs socialist. But as you say, Americans on both sides of the aisle did want this stuff passed. How could they not. Every day now people sit in their cars on poorly maintained bridges in the rush hours hoping the light will change before some bridge says yeah I counted the 18-wheelers on this rust-bucket of a bridge decking and there's 100k tons more than I can take any more.
 

SuperMatt

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It will be jobs though. A lot of them. And jobs doing billions on billions of dollars' worth of stuff that's been needed doing for way too long. Spending power in local economies will go up as work proceeds on the implementations. People fixing bridges and stringing broadband gotta get coffees and eat lunch, whether they brown-bag it or buy it near the job sites. Rs will have to work rather harder to overcome "It's the economy, stupid" at the midterms.

Okay it's true that I found my rose-colored glasses over the weekend. And yeah the Rs will still call the programs socialist. But as you say, Americans on both sides of the aisle did want this stuff passed. How could they not. Every day now people sit in their cars on poorly maintained bridges in the rush hours hoping the light will change before some bridge says yeah I counted the 18-wheelers on this rust-bucket of a bridge decking and there's 100k tons more than I can take any more.
As long as 1 Republican voted for it, even those Republicans who voted against it will act as if they made it happen when the money comes to their state or region of their state. And the sheep will vote for them again anyway.
 

lizkat

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I'm not sure they'll be able to keep holding up CRT hysteria for another year

Hah, in a country with the attention span of a housefly in a manure-rich barnyard, there's always something else waiting for its 15 seconds' worth of a chance to go viral. It's hard to maintain outrage over anything year on year.

Anyway it's coming to light that the astroturfed hammering on critical race theory in education started with some big bucks from a rather obscure right wing outfit (Thomas W. Smith Foundation) that has dumped at least 12 million bucks into 21 other organizations to incentivize them to help attack CRT.

Some of those outfits --identified in the piece cited below-- are well known, have "respectable" conservative credentials and do or should know better than the BS they've been echoing and amplifying, but apparently they have been willing to take the money and spread the word anyway.

 
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