The Senate moved closer to passing a $1 trillion infrastructure package Saturday after lawmakers from both parties came together and voted to clear a key procedural hurdle, but the action soon stalled out as opponents tried to slow the rush to approve one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities. [Reuters]
The roughly $1 trillion bill includes about $550 billion in new spending over the next decade, which is a lot of money but far smaller than the $2.3 trillion plan the Biden Administration was promoting last spring. That plan famously defined essentially everything as “infrastructure” as long as a Democratic apparatchik got paid. Home care workers were infrastructure, art was infrastructure, and literally demolishing existing roads for being racist was infrastructure too.
Many Republicans will oppose the bill, for expanding the deficit or empowering federal agencies. But that opposition only captures part of the problem. The tragedy of the infrastructure bill is that it exposes how far America has fallen in its ability to even imagine achieving greatness.
