The Big Gun Or The Good Package(s)?

President Biden and the White House are preparing to release their budget plans for two massive Marshall Plan/Public Works Authority-style infrastructure and family care bills that will of course get zero GOP support, and be the impetus for abolishing the filibuster.

White House officials are preparing to present President Biden with a roughly $3 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that includes numerous sweeping domestic policy priorities, according to three people familiar with internal discussions.

After completing the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package earlier this month, Biden administration officials are piecing together their next major legislative priority. While no final announcement has been made, the White House is expected to push a multitrillion jobs and infrastructure plan as the centerpiece of the president’s “Build Back Better” agenda.

That effort is expected to be broken into two parts — one focused on infrastructure, and the other focused on other domestic priorities, such as universal prekindergarten, national child care, and free community college tuition. Many details of the plan were first reported by the New York Times. The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations, stressed planning was preliminary and subject to change. Some aides stressed that the final price-tag of the package remained unclear.

The sprawling package, although still in the works, follows weeks of uncertainty about Biden’s second big legislative effort following the relief package. Crucial decisions will still have to be made about how the administration seeks to advance the measure. Congressional Republicans are unlikely to support trillions more in additional spending or the tax hikes that the White House is eyeing to fund these initiatives.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement that the administration had not decided on its next step. “President Biden and his team are considering a range of potential options for how to invest in working families and reform our tax code so it rewards work, not wealth," Psaki said. "Those conversations are ongoing, so any speculation about future economic proposals is premature and not a reflection of the White House’s thinking.”

The infrastructure part of the plan includes hundreds of billions of dollars for repairing the nation’s roads, bridges, waterways, and rails. It also includes funding for retrofitting buildings, safety improvements, schools infrastructure, and low-income and tribal groups, as well as $100 billion for schools and education infrastructure.

The infrastructure component of the proposal includes $400 billion in spending to combat climate change, including $60 billion for infrastructure related to green transit and $46 billion for climate-related research and development. The plan also would aim to make electric vehicle charging stations available across the country. The measure would also include $200 billion for housing infrastructure, including $100 billion to expand the supply of housing for low-income Americans.

The second component of the effort would include many of Biden’s other domestic priorities. Those include universal prekindergarten and free community college tuition. The package would also dramatically expand spending on child care. The measure would also extend for several years the expansion of the Child Tax Credit recently signed into law for just one year as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus plan.

The legislation would also include extending subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, as well as free and reduced tuition at Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

 

This is basically everything we've been badly needing for the last two decades, folks. This bill has zero, I repeat, zero chance of any GOP support, and I suspect that should the bill miraculously pass because the filibuster is gone, that the GOP red state attorneys general will sue the pants off the Biden administration to stop anything from happening, and then blame the Democrats. They may even win in the Supreme Court outright on much of the plan.

But then the GOP owns all of that failure. And with no filibuster, Biden can add to the courts.

This is where the real battle of my lifetime begins.