Senate Republicans have decided now is the time to tell Americans what does and does not constitute infrastructure. You see, over time, the idea of infrastructure has changed. There are moments in our history that changed the nation. These moments often come through innovation. The invention of train lines, the spread of electricity, the telegraph, and phone, public waterworks. History works this way. As time moves on, we discover that things that in the past were luxuries are now required. They mean the difference between an economically successful country and a failing one.
Does anyone seriously want to argue that an established AC power system could be randomized by companies and not be universally supported, and that would be okay? Are we ready for the U.S. government to get out of the wireless spectrum band infrastructure, allowing cellular, WiFi and television transmission companies to battle it out over who has the strongest signal, making sure that the majority would receive just noise? The world has changed. The more Republicans fail to acknowledge it, the more it shows how out of touch their party has become with reality.
The way in which our parties view infrastructure differs.
In order to understand claims like this one, we have to appreciate the differences in how Republicans and Democrats see defense spending in relation to infrastructure spending. You see, looking to the future, the Democratic public believes that environmental concerns are going to be critical in making sure that all of the spending we conduct elsewhere matters in the fight against climate change. We don’t want to build roads and highways that go underwater. We’d like to make sure we are doing things in a way that causes less environmental damage, and we want to preserve long-term economic power for the United States by avoiding chaos. Climate change studies can also point us in new directions that prove successful American businesses can capitalize on these study results.
Republicans have defined infrastructure, at times, as looking at investment in military services or direct injections for research. In some of those moments, the investments actually paid off well, such as Eisenhower’s investment in NASA. Today, would that investment be seen as infrastructure? It seems to depend—at least to someone like Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee—on who proposes the spending.
Transportation, the environment, and home and community-based services (HCBS) are a huge part of the infrastructure of the modern era. Why? Because more baby boomers are becoming elderly and need help. It also recognizes that this is a new era; in the past, the growth of an American hospital system was infrastructure. Communities would plan on them. Now, giving the same tools to build a home and community-based service opportunity represents the current equivalent. From Disability Scoop:
The focus on caregivers and improving access to home- and community-based services makes good on promises Biden made during his campaign for the White House last year. And, the plan’s rollout comes just weeks after a group of federal lawmakers issued a draft proposal for a bill known as the HCBS Access Act that’s designed to eliminate waiting lists for home- and community-based services, strengthen the network of providers and bring other changes to the nation’s disability services system.
“With this $400 billion in the American Jobs Plan, we can help people receive the care, comfort and healing they deserve in their own homes, while building our nation’s long term care system back better than it ever was before. And then we can focus our efforts on the systemic reforms necessary for HCBS and long-term care under legislation like the HCBS Access Act,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., one of the lawmakers behind the draft proposal.
Beyond services for people with disabilities, Biden’s American Jobs Plan would also expand access to competitive, integrated employment for people with disabilities and bar employers from paying people with disabilities what’s known as submininimum wage — pay that’s less than the federal minimum — the White House said.
Time moves on. Change comes. Republicans like changes they propose and hate changes they don’t. Every day that we think about the American Rescue Plan, we need to remember that for the first time in a very long time, the American people are receiving a benefit. Every single day that happens, Republicans should hear about what the new American infrastructure could, and should, look like.