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by Ralph Jemmott
Deep into the night of November 5, 2021 Congress finally passed the first part of President Joseph Biden’s Bill that promised to “Build Back Better” America’s physical and human infrastructure. It was a bold two part plan to spend some US$3.5 trillion.
The physical infrastructure Bill would focus on the construction and rebuilding of road, bridges, highways and rail communications. The second Bill still to be passed related to social policy, reinforcing the human infrastructure and included among other things child and family support funding.
Both Bills were urgently needed. In fact Donald Trump in announcing his candidacy in 2016 had himself promised to splurge a trillion dollars to repair America’s roads, railways and in his inimitable words the, “many, many, many bridges that are in danger of falling down.”
Of course, he did not say much about the human infrastructure and instead gave a tax break to the rich. In fact at a speech at Mara Lago, a few days later, he would tell his millionaire friends, “I have made you guys very rich today.”
It has been just over a year that Biden announced his Build Back Better program. For a while both Biden and the Agenda seemed stalled. As the host of BBC’s Dateline London joked, he was beginning to look like what Trump had called him “Sleepy Joe.”
This failure to carry through the legislation was not all Biden’s fault. The vast majority of Republicans true to form, refused to support the President’s agenda, particularly the social policy components of the Bill which some labelled as too “liberal” or even worse “socialist”, very dirty words to those on the American right.
In addition, two recalcitrant Democrats, Joe Manchin of Virginia and Kyrsten Senema, senior senator from Arizona, refused to lend support, particularly to the human infrastructure elements of the Biden policy.
American politics is very constrained and very constraining and as the German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck once said, “politics is the art of the possible”. Democracy is invariably messy.
Over the past weeks Biden’s ratings have dropped considerably, particularly after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban. He seemed on the defensive.
Even his supporters question whether he was up to the task. To those of a liberal, “progressive” persuasion, the Biden policy is a masterpiece of economic and social engineering and one much needed in America at this time.
It envisages the repair of 20,000 miles of road, stripping lead piping from 400,000 schools and installing 500,000 charging outlets for electrical cars.
Biden would spend some US$400 billion on the car industry and $U.S.180 billion on research and development on low carbon technologies as part of the effort to stem climate change.
All this expenditure would be in addition to the expenditures earmarked for COVID-19 relief. A report in The Economist of April 3, 2021 noted that on G5 telecoms, transport networks and much else, America lags China, among many other countries.
Firstly, all this has to be paid for, one way or the other. Biden proposes to pay for it by hiking the taxes on corporations and very wealthy individuals.. A plan that has already evoked the ire of the far right.
Secondly, the program has to gain passage through a Congress in which the Democrats hold a very slim majority. In addition, a surprising number of Republicans are still wedded to the cult of personality and the Trump mythology, ridiculous as that might seem.
Arguably the most difficult issue facing the President is an ideological division within the Democratic Party itself, between moderates like Joe Manchin and avowed socialists like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
As a Senator of long standing, Joseph Biden earned a reputation for being able to bring opposing sides to a compromise, but in today’s world the differences are wider and far more acrimonious.
One promising aspect of the passing of bill on the night of November 5, is that 13 Republicans actually voted in support of the legislation.
However, it is doubtful whether at a cost of $1.5 trillion, the human infrastructure part of the Bill will evince such bipartisan compromise. That part is due to come before congress in mid-November. Biden will need all the political guile and charm he can muster at time when the tide may be turning against him.
This raises the question as to whether in terms of real politik, the Biden Build-Back Better initiative was too ambitious to begin with… too ambitious for the United States, that is.
The debate generally and the discourse on the human infrastructure aspects in particular, has shown that the United States of America is not at heart a collectivist society. The unapologetic socialism of an Ocasio-Cortez will not fly in wider America, far less in Peoria.
On CNN on Sunday November 7, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, noted that the United States is the only industrial state that does not adequately support families with child care. America is a country that adores the rugged individual who is expected to pull himself up by his own bootstraps.
Labour studies have shown that the Unites States supports a higher income differential than most other countries especially those in western European. Obama Care was derided by the Right as “socialised medicine”.
In much of America, individual failure is still viewed as a consequence of personal moral inadequacy…. the you did it to yourself mentality.
Already some moderate democrats are saying that they did not elect Joseph Biden to be another Franklin
Roosevelt pursuing some kind of what has been called a “New, New Deal”.
A lot will depend on how the Democrats perform in the 2022 mid-term elections, whether the Republicans can regain control of Congress and whether Donald Trump maintains his hold on the GOP. If, by any chance, he should run and regain the Presidency in 2024, then God help us all.
Ralph Jemmott is a respected retired educator.
