It cannot have escaped everyone’s notice that 17 Republican senators had agreed to support the infrastructure bill that the senate passed yesterday — enough to prevent a filibuster. A former senate staffer once told me that the fix was always in for senate votes: the leadership would decide what to do and then twist enough arms to make it happen.
So what was in it for the Republican leadership to support this bill? The bill included billions of dollars for projects we don’t need, like rural broadband, urban transit, and new Amtrak trains. Some Republicans may benefit from the pork, but I wonder if the leadership thought that going along with this bill will help them to fend off the $3.5 trillion bill the Democrats want to pass next.
That bill includes money for clean energy, preschool, and affordable housing, among other things. As with the infrastructure bill, these things are arguably not necessary or, to the extent they are, the top-down approach taken by the bill will do more harm than good. For example, we know the reason housing is unaffordable in many states is because state and local land-use rules of restricted the supply of land for new housing, but the bill will do nothing about those rules. Continue reading
