He’s not kick the can down the road Joe for nothin’.
2 Likes
Looking into the aggressively concealed Biden family history, I can’t believe a Biden does anything for “nothing.”
4 Likes
Infrastructure = bridges, roads, railroads, harbors, navigable rivers, the great lakes.
Electric power generation and distributions. Commuter Passenger rails and subways
Do we even have enough experienced engineers, designers, and skilled tradesmen to do the work?
A lot of what is on the want list in this article is trickle down economics. The method that DC operates under. One trillion each year for ten years would have already been paid for except for Cheney’s wars in the muddled east - most of the wasted dollars are in Dubai accounts. Yes, theft, bribes, etc. has heavy play in our War Dept. 50% waste.
The barebones minimum of $5 trillion to migrate our baseload energy supply from fossil fuels to renewables is required to properly address global warming. That’s $5 trillion by 2030, or about $550 billion per year for the next nine years, and possibly continuing at that pace into the future. Infrastructure investment pays for itself over time and doing this will be cheaper in the long term than doing nothing. There’s enough slack in the economy that it can be done without seeing much inflation at all, as the amount of extra goods and services will only serve to improve the economy in the process. We’ve seen the same results once before following the Great Depression, and we’ll need to push the #GreenNewDeal forward. That said, Democrats have a bad habit of offering half-measures to problems that are absolutely vital to our society. Name a problem ~ global warming, living wages, universal healthcare, student loan relief, etc ~ democrats never push for a bold platform, as if giving up prematurely against republican obstructionist opposition. To be clear, global warming is an existential threat against which humanity has less than a decade remaining to properly act with a World War 2 level response. Delay any longer or put up an insufficient effort and climate change will be out of our hands.
2 Likes
If this bill restores ‘bonus’ to regular income rather than capital gains, I’ll be happy.
If this bill restores progressive income taxes to about 10 steps instead of three, I’ll be happy. Top of the ladder is about 87% and includes those stock option easy loot.
If none goes to NFL stadiums, I’ll be happy.
If none goes overseas for design, material, labor - I’ll be happy.
If all school buildings acquire excellent air handling for improved student health and virus / cold / flu avoidance, I’ll be happy. Otherwise, let’s go outdoors more and use tents, which are easier to clean quickly and get every corner.
3 Trillion is Biden's opening offer and who says Congressional Democrats ( governors, mayors ) can't counter-offer? If they've got the hard #s to prove $8 Trillion is necessary; well, they should go there and make an argument that sticks it. Personally, I’ve heard $8 Trillion is closer to the need. Falling short is not an option. Neither is using public works projects to line the pockets of a bunch of bamboozlers, hoodwinkers, grifters or pikers. No " bridges to Nowhere, Alaska " please.
Joe Biden and most Boomers won’t live to see the full fruits of this labor or most of the projects fully completed, and thus all the benefits. Oh well, they shouldn’t feel like The Lone Ranger on that score. So it goes…
1 Like
like most of Biden’s environmental proposals–this too is --as the saying goes–a dollar short and a day late–incrementalism will be the death of us
I’m not surprised you all are complaining that $3 trillion is too low. Leave aside that it’s the largest spending bill we’ve ever seen coupled with all of the spending we’ve already seen preceding it. But it must be too low. It must be.
As with almost all of the topics you all discuss, I think you all have an endlessly moving goalpost. The highest number I’ve read in these comments as a recommendation is $8 trillion. I’d bet bottom dollar that even if Biden proposed $8 trillion (where in the world would we find the money for $8 trillion…) you would still claim it wasn’t enough and was just a “starting point.”
Back in 2005 when I was a member of the society of civil engineers, that group gave a report to the then president Bush that stated it would take approx 2.5 trillion dollars just to repair the existing infrastructure of that time. It also estimated it would take another 3 trillion to add to the current infrastructure (of 2005) in order to meet the needs of America’s growing population in the next ten years.
Well, it’s 16 years later and there has not been a major infrastructure bill in that time (arguably, there hasn’t been one in decades) And now, while there hearts are in the right place, the democrats and Biden administration seem to not understand the scope of the problem, or are classically just trying to make it look like they are doing something, however inadequate that something might be.
Just remember, this original proposal is for 3 trillion. Now imagine what it will be negotiated down to.
And now imagine it passing with the the filibuster in place.
6 Likes
Welcome to the anti politicians site.Even if Biden had already done everything the gripers wanted, it would have been too slow. A month or two on the job is supposed to be ample time to accomplish everything in a four year program.
If it isn’t a third party ruling the roost, governing is inadequate around here.
Some good points, but no patience.
Here ya GO, then:
~https://www.energyindepth.org/
~https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/about/
~https://www.ogj.com/
~https://reason.com/2021/03/22/dump-pandemic-era-authoritarianism-and-let-capitalism-rebuild-prosperity/
~https://www.albrightstonebridge.com/news/category/in-the-news
I’m guessing our uppity negativity will go away, real SOON?
~https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-biden-appointees-troubling-views (SEO us all down Google’s memory hole)
1 Like
Patience was 50 years ago. We don’t have time for patience. We need to act and act now, not when most of us are dead.
1 Like
The mugwumps want it both ways as that takes care of when they alternate between remorse and elation.
2 Likes
Go to steel bridges replacing pre-stressed concrete. 100 year service life replacing 25 years.
Consider steel sections acorn plate decks, welded, 8 foot x 50 foot spans made in factories and trucked to sites and dropped into steel framing. Baily bridge thinking as a start.
We had the steel truss bridges everywhere in PA, OH, the midwest and south from about 1900 on thru the depression years.
Sorry if " we all " have our aspirations clearly aligned with the realities in, above and around, ground level in the U. S. today.
See Big Bees comments. This is the historical record for the last 25 years, at least. We are not investing adequately in the country’s " infrastructure " needs. End of story. Deal with it.
1 Like
My point is, what is your spending target? Do you even have one, or will always say we could spend more no matter what?
$8 Trillion at less than 1% interest? Plus, tax increases and closing loopholes as a further sweetener? Works for me.
Where we going to get that steel? That capability with jobs, were sold out from under the American People with Democratic facilitation and bi-partisan support.
1 Like
Cleveland Cliffs just purchased steel mills in East Chicago and Burns Harbor, Indiana.
US Steel has a fully integrated mill in Gary, Indiana. Cleveland has steel mills and Detroit area also.
Yes, the bankruptcies of the mills were at Federal Court in Youngstown, Ohio and auctioned off to foreign firms except Midwest Steel at Portage, Indiana went to US Steel.
Americans can produce high quality carbon steel beams, angles, channels, etc. if we choose to.
I do not know where Cleveland Cliffs acquired the billions of dollars to purchase the mills from Arcelor.
1 Like
Glad some is left.
1 Like