President Biden challenged Republicans to come up with a counter proposal to his infrastructure plan, and they have not disappointed those of us on the left who believe the GOP will not negotiate in good faith. Drum roll please. It’s not detailed, but the plan outlines spending only $568 billion on infrastructure. And Republicans get to define what infrastructure is. And there is no way to fund what they propose, unless you want to use taxes or “user fees” on plebeians such as myself.
As I had written earlier, this is a flaming turd in a plastic bag left on the White House lawn.
Republican senators released their counterproposal to President Biden’s infrastructure package on Thursday, a $568 billion outline that is short on details but provides their colleagues with a way of not voting for the $2.3 trillion that Biden has proposed.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) described the plan, based on a document circulated by GOP senators, as “a beginning document” during a press conference.
Though the proposal lacks specifics on many items, it does devote space to include a definition of “infrastructure” that limits the term to cover a small range of brick-and-mortar projects.
It also commits the GOP to a wider range of nos than it does to yeses: it eliminates any change to the Trump tax cut legislation as a means of paying for infrastructure, while demanding that all infrastructure bills be covered “to avoid increasing the debt.”
As has been hashed out before, estimates for rebuilding our infrastructure and making it greener for future generations run as high as $10 trillion dollars. The bottom line is that trillions of dollars will need to be spent, and some are saying that Biden’s plan will not cover what is needed. But here are Republicans with $568 billion. And I suspect this is over the same time frame as Biden has proposed, which means only $71 billion/year in new spending.
And note to Senator Coons: It’s way under that $800 billion figure that your Republican friends have been telling you they would start negotiations at.
Instead of the Green New Deal that Democrats have talked about, we can call this Republican offer on infrastructure the “Ebenezer Scrooge” Deal. Because Republicans get to define what is infrastructure, and it is one narrow definition.
The Republican outline omits any “human infrastructure” planks the Democrats plan to introduce — including an extension of the child tax credit and free community college tuition for all — but also bypasses Democratic priorities like investment in green energy.
“I think we fully expect when we get to the negotiating phase that climate will be part of the discussion,” Capito said Thursday.
The last part really means, “Democrats can go fuck yourselves on dealing with the climate crisis.”
And Republicans absolutely do not believe in changing the glorious Trump tax cuts either. But this infrastructure plan has to be paid for. No increase in the deficit! And how do they expect to finance any of their so called proposal? Well, we can take back some of the COVID-19 relief money for one! And the other…
The only way out, then, is to “repurpose unused federal spending,” or a tax on electric vehicle usage that is mentioned in the document.
A tax on electric vehicle usage.
We all knew this was coming from the Republicans. The only people who seem to either believe that Republicans are going to negotiate in good faith on the infrastructure bill are 1) delusional fools like Coons, Manchin, or Sinema and 2) the suck ups in the Media. Frankly, I don’t think that Biden believed he would get any Republicans on his proposal either because he only gave them a few weeks to come up with it. Biden has hinted that he is willing to move on this and not play the same silly game that Republicans have been doing for years. Negotiate in bad faith to stall, and then never vote for the bill in the end.