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.
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The infrastructure bill is not yet the law of the land, but the only changes the house is likely to make is to pad it up with more pork. Whatever the house does must be completed by September 30 when authority for federal highway and transit programs expire, so I suspect the house is not going to risk a major fight over the bill. That means the $3.5 trillion bill will be on the table soon after the August recess.
Will Republicans be able to stop it? Do they even want to stop it? Maybe they want to let the Democrats spend the nation into poverty so they can come racing to the rescue, though the only rescue I can think of would be to deliberately increase inflation to above 10 percent per year so as to effectively bring the national debt to manageable levels. In any case, the willingness of so many Republicans to agree to an unnecessary and expensive infrastructure bill doesn’t give much hope for the future of the country.
It shills be clear by note that there’s no real difference between Republicans and Democrats. Both parties are statist. The only minor difference is how they want to wield state power.
And inflation is already above 10% if calculated the way it was in 1980.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
I agree with this post but want to point out that Republicans have a record of spending and borrowing that will also drive the country to ruin. Debt under four years of Trump increased by 36% when the economy was recovering from recession, when the debt should have been going down.
https://www.thebalance.com/trump-plans-to-reduce-national-debt-4114401.
Aside from WW1 and WW2 the debt was increased by Regan by 186% and George W. Bush by 101%. Under Obama it increased by 74% although that was from the beginning of a recession. The same is true for Reagan where he had to cope with a recession initially.
https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296
At least Reagan realized the debt was skyrocketing and was responsible enough to sign increases to taxes by reforming the tax code:
https://money.cnn.com/2010/09/08/news/economy/reagan_years_taxes/index.htm
Under Keynesian Economic Theory
https://www.thebalance.com/keynesian-economics-theory-definition-4159776 government spending can end recessions. However the government shouldn’t deficit spend when when the economy is growing, and should instead pay down debt. At least the Democrats will tax and spend, bad when it is for useless things. Still better than Republicans “borrow and spend” and never paying down debt.
Ted and Paul,
You are right about Republicans but there was a period of time — roughly 2011 to 2018 — that a majority of Republicans (“tea partiers”) were truly fiscally conservative. Since they controlled the party and the party controlled Congress they were able to stop earmarks and some other wasteful programs. Trump at least temporarily halted a lot of light-rail projects.
I don’t hold out any hope that Blue-Dog Democrats will ever be able to control that party the way Tea-Party Republicans were able to control the Republican Party. I do hold some faint hope that we can shame Republicans into acting fiscally conservative.
“You are right about Republicans but there was a period of time — roughly 2011 to 2018 — that a majority of Republicans (“tea partiers”) were truly fiscally conservative. ”
Mr O’Toole, the tea party was a fraud because it was hypocritical. Anyone remember “hands off my medicare and social security”? Those two programs, but medicare in particular, are what’s actually going to bankrupt the federal government, after all.
Absolutely correct, metrosucks.
Remember, too, that Ron Paul–a libertarian–started the Tea Party movement, but then it was coopted by neocons.
The tea party only had rhetoric and never produced a budget. It is easy to criticize the current budget but unless one has an alternative the criticism is not serious.
As soon as an actual budget is proposed then suddenly there are many recipients of budget spending who suddenly decide that the budget shouldn’t be cutting their subsidy.
An example is farm subsidies. Many farmers are in rural areas that vote Republican but would be shocked at having their big government subsidy reduced.
Another example of only rhetoric but not budget: How popular would Rush Limbaugh be in rural areas if he actually produced a budget that reduced farming subsidies?
I don’t give a shit about more “infrastructure” (code for Jewish fat cat contractors building useless bullshit and making a lot of profit on it) or more “services” (code for Tyrone getting everything under the sun for free so he can hang around his “crib” all day and plot his next crime).
I want to live in an all white neighborhood, raise white kids with a white wife, and not have to deal with the Jewish invented and promoted “post racial” lunatic world.
They used to call this “freedom of association”.
Pussyfooting around it and claiming you’re “not a racist” will only result in the whole world going to complete shit in a post racial Somalian hand basket.
Republicans had a choice. They could oppose the infrastructure bill, but then it would get rolled into the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill and Republicans would have no influence whatsoever.
Or, they could cooperate and get some influence to mitigate some of the most egregious elements and make it more beneficial to Republican areas. This is the choice they made, and I think it was a good choice.
The Antiplanner previously reported on July 29 on some of the improvements due to the compromise, including less for transit, drastically reduced amount for “reconnecting neighborhoods” (i.e. freeway removal), and other reductions. Also, I think strings were removed, such as on how highway funds can be used.
That sounds reasonable on the surface, but the reconciliation bill is unlikely to pass. Republicans could have just held their ground and prevented more money from going to the transit hell pit. Every dollar poured into transit is also a dollar used to destroy white communities.