Pres. Biden announces bipartisan infrastructure deal with eight of the
21 white U.S. Senators who negotiated the package.
With the so-called “no double-dip” rule, President Biden and 21 senators
have negotiated a deal on the Build Back Better agenda that threatens
several of his major climate and racial justice initiatives. The
senators, all of whom are white, protected industry priorities in their
deal.
At risk include programs for restoring minority neighborhoods cleaved
by racially unjust highway
projects,
cut 96 percent, and for replacing all the lead water
pipes
in the nation, cut 67 percent.
In May, Biden proposed $6 trillion in public investment ($5
trillion
in new spending) over ten years, in the form of the $2.3 trillion
American Jobs Plan, a $1.9 trillion American Families Plan, and about
$1.5 trillion more in other spending.
Biden’s proposed plan was significantly smaller than that advocated by
Green New Dealers, who called for $10 trillion in spending over ten
years to build a
just and sustainable economy.
After months of Senate negotiations, Biden’s plan was cut down to about
$4.5 trillion, broken into two legislative components – a $1 trillion
($550
billion
in new spending) bipartisan “physical infrastructure” package passed by
the Senate by a filibuster-proof majority, and a $3.5-trillion
reconciliation package intended to pass with only Democratic votes.
The bipartisan package is a fully detailed bill, while the
reconciliation package, at least publicly, remains a top-level skeleton
that remains to be fleshed out.
The bipartisan package includes nearly the full amounts requested by
Biden for traditional fossil-fuel-intensive infrastructure: $110 billion
for roads and bridges, $25 billion for airports, and $17 billion for
waterways and ports. In addition, there is $16 billion to bail out oil
and gas companies to clean up their abandoned wells.
The “double-dip” deal is this: any initiative which received any monies
in the bipartisan package cannot receive more in the reconciliation
package. As Politico
reported
on June 30:
The president said something really important the other day and nobody
noticed. At his press
conference
celebrating the bipartisan infrastructure deal, Joe Biden suggested
there would be no coming back for seconds: When it comes to spending
on basic physical infrastructure (for roads, bridges, public
transportation, etc.), the bipartisan deal is it. There will be no
using the parallel, Democrats-only reconciliation package to spend
more on those things than Republicans agreed to.
Instead, Biden indicated, the reconciliation bill is exclusively for
stuff that Democrats want but Republicans oppose — like spending for
family care, climate change and health care.
This may seem like a minor point, but it has big implications. On the
left, some progressives have argued that they would simply add to the
reconciliation bill anything that wasn’t fully funded in the
bipartisan bill. That’s not happening. Biden wanted $157 billion for
electric vehicles. The bipartisan bill spends $15 billion. He wanted
$100 billion for broadband, and he secured $65 billion. From the White
House’s perspective, these issues are now resolved and the
reconciliation bill can’t be used to take another crack at them.
We checked with the White House, and officials confirmed that this
interpretation is correct.
On the right, some conservatives have argued that voting for the
bipartisan deal is pointless because Democrats will simply take what
they can get from Republicans on highway spending or airports and then
get the rest in the reconciliation bill.
But what’s actually happening is that the bipartisan bill is serving
as a brake on what Biden can spend on core infrastructure.
In July, the Senate’s bipartisan package whittled $2.6 billion of
Biden’s planned new spending down to $550 billion. Left out completely
were major components of Biden’s plan that likely will be taken up in
the reconciliation package, including
housing,
schools,
clean energy tax
credits,
and home and community-based
care.
However, because of the “no double-dip” deal Biden and the Senate
negotiators made, the following programs face massive cuts that can’t be
restored unless the deal is broken:
- Reconnecting minority communities cut off by highway projects, cut 96%
from $24 billion to $1 billion
- Replacing the nation’s lead
pipes,
cut 67% from $45 billion to $15 billion
- Investing in electric school buses, cut 87% from $20
billion
to $2.5
billion
- Repairing and modernizing public transit, cut 54% from $85
billion
to $39
billion
- Building electric vehicle charging stations, cut 50% from $15 billion
to $7.5 billion
- Upgrading and modernizing America’s drinking water, wastewater, and
stormwater systems, cut 46% from $56 billion to $30 billion
- Road safety, including “vision zero” programs to protect pedestrians,
cut 45% from $20 billion to $11 billion
- Broadband infrastructure, cut 35% from $100 billion to $65 billion
- Investing in passenger and freight rail, cut 18% from $80 billion to
$66 billion
This overall cut of nearly half of $441 billion in proposed spending
disproportionately targets the urban and rural poor and minority
“environmental justice” communities, despite the Biden administration’s
stated plans of achieving justice through intentional
spending.
Biden’s plan was about one-third of what Green New Deal advocates have
said is needed for these initiatives.
The Green New Deal Network, a coalition of over 100 organizations, is
advocating
for the restoration of these funds.
House Transportation Committee chair Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) is intending
to
challenge
the “no double-dip” deal for programs under his jurisdiction, including
high-speed rail, connecting neighborhoods, and water systems.
In contrast, the all-white team of 21 U.S. Senators who crafted this
deal, led by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio),
approved Biden’s requested spending levels for highways, airports,
waterways, and major bailouts for industrial polluters responsible for
chemical and fracking cleanups.
