Biden Defines Infrastructure Down Now it’s mostly about green-energy subsidies and payments to social workers.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-builds-government-back-bigger-11617231190?mod=opinion_major_pos1
Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination, but you wouldn’t know from President Biden’s first two months in office. First came $1.9 trillion in social spending under the cover of Covid-19, and now comes $2.3 trillion more for climate and political spending dressed as “infrastructure.”
Most Americans think of infrastructure as roads, highways, bridges and other traditional public works. That’s why it polls well, and every President has supported more of it.
Yet this accounts for a mere $115 billion of Mr. Biden’s proposal. There’s another $25 billion for airports and $17 billion for ports and waterways that also fill a public purpose. The rest of the $620 billion earmarked for “transportation” are subsidies for green energy and payouts to unions for the jobs his climate regulation will kill. This is really a plan to build government back bigger than it has ever been.
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The magnitude of spending is something to behold. There’s $85 billion for mass transit plus $80 billion for Amtrak, which is on top of the $70 billion that Congress appropriated for mass transit in three Covid spending bills. The money is essentially a bailout for unions, whose generous pay and benefits have captured funds meant for subway and rail repairs.
Mr. Biden also proposes to build “broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas” by subsidizing government-owned and nonprofit networks. But the Trump Federal Communications Commission unleashed private broadband investment by liberating providers from Obama net neutrality rules, streamlining regulations and limiting how much cities could extort them to install 5G sites. In 2019 providers built over 46,000 cell sites, up from a mere 708 in 2016.
Then there’s $174 billion for electric vehicles, including money to build 500,000 charging stations and for consumer “incentives” on top of the current $7,500 federal tax credit to buy an EV. Electric cars are fine with us if they can compete on their own merits. But they are still too expensive for most Americans, and their limited battery range makes them impractical outside metropolitan areas.
No matter. Democrats believe that if government subsidizes EVs enough, Americans will buy them. If not, they will eventually be forced to, as California has signaled it will do. The United Auto Workers has warned EVs will destroy jobs, but Mr. Biden promises that cars will be made by workers with “good”—i.e., union—jobs. Will non-unionized auto makers not qualify for subsidies?
Mr. Biden also wants to force-feed green energy onto the U.S. electric grid—especially after the embarrassment of the last year’s power outages in California and Texas due to their over-reliance on solar and wind. He wants $100 billion to “decarbonize” the grid by 2035—e.g., banish coal and natural gas.
This will require 20 gigawatts of “high-voltage capacity power lines” to transport solar power from California to Texas and wind power in reverse. Good luck getting the permits to build those lines, as environmental groups have blocked transmission lines to transport hydropower from Canada to the Northeast.
On that point, missing from the Biden plan is any mention of easing National Environmental Policy Act reviews. These have delayed and raised costs for countless public works over the years, and Donald Trump wanted Congress to streamline permitting. Democrats refused, and Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to care how long these projects will take.
Mr. Biden is also redefining infrastructure as social-justice policy and income redistribution. He promises to target 40% of “climate and clean” investments “to disadvantaged communities”—defined in part by race—and tie federal spending to union prevailing wages.
His plan also includes $213 billion for affordable housing, $100 billion for retrofitting public schools, $25 billion for child-care facilities and $400 billion for increasing home-health care. “We think that caregiving is an essential American infrastructure,” says Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry.
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Note the political irony of all this. Mr. Biden says “public investment” has fallen as a share of the economy since the 1960s, and he has a point. But the main reason is that government spending on social welfare, entitlements and public unions have squeezed out public works. Now he’s redefining social welfare as public works to drive more social-welfare spending, which will further crowd out money for public works and government R&D to compete against China.
As usual, Mr. Biden professes to want to make this bill “bipartisan,” but also as usual he let Democrats on Capitol Hill write his plan. That explains its money-for-everybody-and-everything character. Along with his gigantic tax increases (see nearby), Mr. Biden has proven to be the perfect political front for the Warren-Sanders agenda.
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