The $1 trillion “infrastructure” plan poised to pass the Senate is a bad bill; the only possible excuse its Republican backers have is the claim that it may help stop a truly terrible one — the $3.5 trillion social-spendapalooza Democrats will introduce next.
Contra the hype, the 2,700-page “bad” bill won’t pay for itself, and only a tenth of its spending ($110 billion) is for roads, bridges and other major infrastructure projects. (And even that includes plenty of waste, since as the White House notes most of it “will be subject to Davis-Bacon requirements,” meaning union-friendly prevailing-wage rules that vastly boost costs.)
Meanwhile, the bill drops plenty on Dem wish-list projects: $65 billion to expand broadband Internet access, including a new federal entitlement for low-income households, $73 billion for clean-energy transmission and $7.5 billion for an electric-vehicle-charging network.
The “pays for itself” claim is bunk: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it’ll add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade. (That rises to $350 billion when you add in $90 billion in new contract-authority spending, notes the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s Marc Goldwein.) Notably, it pretends that using leftover COVID-relief funds and unemployment benefits will save $263 billion; the CBO says it’d be more like $22 billion.
Worse: Once the Senate passes this mess, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says, it will then take up the $3.5 trillion package — a horror aiming to turn America into the welfare state of Bernie Sanders’ dreams. It would hike taxes on business and the wealthy to create multiple new entitlements: universal preschool, free community college, paid family and medical leave. It would expand Medicare benefits while reducing the program’s eligibility age, dump more cash on “green energy” subsidies — and even offer immigrants green cards, though the plan Schumer unveiled Monday doesn’t give details on exactly which immigrants would get them.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is backing the infrastructure bill, with the calculation that it will give a win to Dem moderates like Joe Manchin (D-WVa.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and encourage them to hold the line against the bigger bill. Schumer plans to ram through the larger package using reconciliation and can’t afford to lose one Democrat vote. But that’s a huge risk.
One nice wrinkle: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she won’t introduce the $1 trillion bill in the House unless the $3.5 trillion bill also passes the Senate. So pray first that the terrible bill dies — and that Pelosi then sticks to her guns.