Law Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act: Signed into law 11/15/21

What an absolutely bizarre display today by Biden. First he supports the bipartisan deal then 30 mins later he won’t sign it Then he rambles on about how it’s businesses own fault that the govt is paying their employees not to work. The guy is an embarrassment.
 
Fix roads, make more electric vehicles and charging stations, upgrade public transport etc. have the multitude of companies that base their entire business model around our infrastructure pay their fair share.
 
What an absolutely bizarre display today by Biden. First he supports the bipartisan deal then 30 mins later he won’t sign it Then he rambles on about how it’s businesses own fault that the govt is paying their employees not to work. The guy is an embarrassment.

There isn't anything to sign yet. It hasn't even passed the Senate yet. At the moment, 21 senators are on board and he gave a nod to it today. Seems like the stipulations though are mainly just making this all or nothing with what he could accomplish. I think this shifts the focus to what will the reconciliation deal even be if the range is going from 2.2T to 6T and they have a couple weeks to figure that out if the two track thing is happening in July.
 
Likely, we are going to hear more details the next week about the reconciliation deal and negotiations.

Manchin says Democratic-only infrastructure bill 'inevitable'
The Hill

Manchin, on Thursday, didn't specifically endorse a specific size or scope for the Democratic-only bill but appeared to signal that the details of the bill, not whether or not it would happen, were what needed to be debated.

"There's going to be a reconciliation bill. We just don't know what size it's going to be," he added.

Democrats are moving their infrastructure proposals on a two-track system. On one track is the bipartisan proposal and on the other is the Democrat-only bill.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that he wants to vote on the bipartisan bill and the budget resolution that lays the groundwork for the multitrillion-dollar Democratic bill in July.

"Today was a big step forward in the two step strategy," Schumer told reporters. "Our plan continues to have a budget resolution and a bipartisan bill on the floor of the Senate in July. Everyone in our caucus knows you can't do one without the other."

Joe Manchin balks at backing $6 trillion in infrastructure spending sought by Bernie Sanders, Senate Democrats
Business Insider (bleh)
Sen. Joe Manchin on Thursday expressed concern about the $6 trillion price tag put forth in an economic package drafted by Sen Bernie Sanders along with other Senate Democrats, which increases odds of major cuts from that blueprint.

The West Virginia Democrat called the proposed number "extremely, extremely high" and said he's unsure whether it's appropriate for the federal government to "take on that much debt."

"I have a hard time swallowing that," he told reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday. Other Democrats like Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia have also said they were uneasy with the price tag.

Manchin's comments came moments before he joined a bipartisan group of 10 senators to meet with Biden at the White House and discuss the details of a smaller, $1.2 trillion infrastructure package.

 


A bipartisan group of senators, working with the Biden White House, agreed yesterday on a broad framework for an infrastructure bill including hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending allocated across various budgets and a mix of fiscal offsets that everyone could agree on.

There honestly aren’t enough details here for me to do the kind of deep dive into what it actually means for transportation policy that I would like to. It’s a framework, it’s not a legislative text or even really an outline of a bill.

But I do think this is the kind of thing where the takes can kind of skip ahead too closely to the details and miss the forest for the trees. Here’s thirteen slightly scattered observations — but what I think it leads up to is that we’re now seeing a clear path toward a very successful 117th Congress that could get a lot done for the American people. But even though we can now see what that path looks like, it’s still a fairly treacherous trail.

  1. Context for the infrastructure deal: As of November 1, 2020 progressives were looking at polls that told them to expect 55-56 senate seats and an expanded House majority. Their legislative goals were adding states, ending gerrymandering, possibly packing the Supreme Court, and enacting the most sweeping progressive legislative agenda in American history. Once the actual numbers come in and it’s a 50-50 senate and a six-seat House majority everything is bound to disappoint.

  2. Context for the infrastructure deal: This package is almost as big as Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, and in terms of fresh spending on infrastructure it’s bigger than ARRA and that’s coming after the much larger American Rescue Plan already took place.

  3. Context for the infrastructure deal: Biden said he would make old-school legislating work again. USICA (née endless frontier) passed the senate through regular order. We’ve done feel-good bills on Juneteenth and hate crimes. Tim Scott and Karen bass say they have a deal on police reform. They did this water bill nobody cares about. These are singles or doubles, not home runs, but the impact exists in the aggregate.

  4. Context for the infrastructure deal: Stuff in a reconciliation package basically has to be paid for with tax increases, but since Democrats need unanimity to pass partisan bills it’s inherently challenging to get all of Biden’s tax ideas enacted. In the bipartisan bill, congress is agreeing to roughly $1 trillion in new spending without using up any of Biden’s tax hike proposals so those revenue-raisers are now avaiable for the reconciliation package.

  5. Reconciliation linkage: A lot is being made of progressive sour grapes about how they don’t want to agree to this deal unless they are guaranteed a later reconciliation package with more partisan ideas. I think the real linkage goes the other way — Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (and quietly the dozen other senate Dems who kinda agree with them) now get to say that bipartisan legislating is happening, and it’s happening thanks to them. They are now open to a reconciliation bill on its own terms.

  6. Personally, I am not that jazzed up about the idea of spending a bunch of money on infrastructure so I am not per se throwing a party over this bill.

  7. But if you accept the premise that we should be doing an infrastructure bill and not just redefining various things as “infrastrcucture” then this is a good bill. Notably the highway/transit split at 2/1 is very favorable to transit in historical terms. A lot of the money, appropriately, goes to electrical grid, water, resilience, and broadband rather than transportation. Doing this as a non-reconciliation bill also lets it include policy measures (around emissions standards, road safety requirements, etc.) that might not fly with the parliamentarian.

  8. There’s $15 billion for EV charging and bus electrification and I think it’s good to see that stuff in the bipartisan bill since turning electrification into a culture war food fight could be very harmful.

  9. House Democrats’ bad ideas about freight rail are not in the package, but instead there is $66 billion in fresh money for freight and passenger rail upgrades.

  10. If you know me, you know there are a lot of policy questions about how transportation money gets spent. The deal that was announced does not address any reforms in that regard. But the negotiators do have ideas on these fronts, and there is desire on both sides to incorporate some as the deal gets fleshed out. This is a broad framework and not a legislative text, so the answer to a lot of specific questions is TBD.

  11. The very best and most important ideas that Biden has put forward in his administration — housing reform, clean energy R&D and deployment money, and the expanded Child Tax Credit — have all been deferred to a reconciliation bill. As I said in (5), I think that’s a win not a loss. This deal coming together makes it easier not harder to do a reconciliation bill.

  12. In the reconciliation process, prioritization is going to matter. Moderate Democrats are unreasonably leery of taxing the rich. There will be money to work with, but not the full amount called for in Biden’s Jobs Plan and Families Plan. But that means some of Biden’s ideas will make the cut and some won’t. That’s why I’m laying down the market here — expanded CTC, clean energy, and housing are the most important bits. Whatever you can get of the other stuff is good, but those three are the most important.

  13. This whole thing could still fall apart! The painstaking negotiations were driven by the perceived political needs of moderate Senate Democrats, who wanted to make a deal with Senate Republicans. But Democrats’ House majority is very thin and it’s not clear that bipartisanship in the Senate will carry over into votes from House Republicans. I don’t think anyone on either side of the aisle in the House is thrilled about having been cut out of these talks. Watch what happens there!
 
Gee, and how much of that money will actually be used for real infrastructure work like roads, bridges, dams, etc.
Safe bet that politicians will get richer somehow through kickbacks once these projects get going.

Who needs suitcases full of money when you can pay your corrupt politicians in cryptocurrency.
 
I would be excited to see a large investment in real infrastructure work. It's an excellent use of funds. But the constant whining about America's 'crumbling infrastructure' is not really on point.

A lot of the poor infrastructure you see is your city's or states. Not America's. Many states and cities sell their souls to get large business in. Large capital expenditure to get them set up all cozy. Then cut them absurd rebates on the funds and taxes that are supposed to pay for their infrastructure investment. That's why you have pot-holes.

Here is something few people know. In states with a state income tax, there are thousands and thousands of corporations that get to keep some of their employees state personal income tax. Without their knowledge or consent. You read that right. The company collects the state income tax from their employees, which they see on their pay stubs. But the state let's them keep some of it. Many of you are literally being taxed by your employer and you don't even know it.

But for a nation as geographically large as we are, we're not doing that bad.

It's unlikely you will ever again see our infrastructure equaling the likes of Singapore, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany or Japan, just due to size and scale. For perspective, Germany is a little larger than Texas. And you could put all of Singapore, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Japan into Texas and still have room to to cram in Minnesota.

One hugely important area where we have galactically failed is our mass transit and high speed rail systems. Other countries are punching out HSR reasonably quickly and at a cost per mile a fraction of what the hot mess in CA is turning into. I would really like to see us get that right.
 
I would be excited to see a large investment in real infrastructure work. It's an excellent use of funds. But the constant whining about America's 'crumbling infrastructure' is not really on point.

A lot of the poor infrastructure you see is your city's or states. Not America's. Many states and cities sell their souls to get large business in. Large capital expenditure to get them set up all cozy. Then cut them absurd rebates on the funds and taxes that are supposed to pay for their infrastructure investment. That's why you have pot-holes.

Here is something not a lot of people know. In states with a state income tax, there are thousands and thousands of corporations get to keep some of their employees state personal income tax. Without their knowledge or consent. You read that right. The company collects all the state income tax they are supposed to from their employees, which they see on their pay stubs. But the state let's them keep some of it. Many of you are literally being taxed by your employer and you don't even know it.

But for a nation as geographically large as we are, we're not doing that bad.

It's unlikely you will ever again see our infrastructure equaling the likes of Singapore, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany or Japan, just due to size and scale. For perspective, Germany is a little larger than Texas. And you could put all of Singapore, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Japan into Texas and still have room to to cram in Minnesota.

One hugely important area where we have galactically failed is our mass transit and high speed rail systems. Other countries are punching out HSR reasonably quickly and at a cost per mile a fraction of what the hot mess in CA is turning into. I would really like to see us get that right.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that there might need to be some major type of state local tax collection overhaul where the Fed enforces tax uniformity across the states to stop this "race to the bottom".

I'm just not sure how we would even approach it or if a real fix is even constitutional
 
I would be excited to see a large investment in real infrastructure work. It's an excellent use of funds. But the constant whining about America's 'crumbling infrastructure' is not really on point.

A lot of the poor infrastructure you see is your city's or states. Not America's. Many states and cities sell their souls to get large business in. Large capital expenditure to get them set up all cozy. Then cut them absurd rebates on the funds and taxes that are supposed to pay for their infrastructure investment. That's why you have pot-holes.

Here is something few people know. In states with a state income tax, there are thousands and thousands of corporations that get to keep some of their employees state personal income tax. Without their knowledge or consent. You read that right. The company collects the state income tax from their employees, which they see on their pay stubs. But the state let's them keep some of it. Many of you are literally being taxed by your employer and you don't even know it.

But for a nation as geographically large as we are, we're not doing that bad.

It's unlikely you will ever again see our infrastructure equaling the likes of Singapore, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany or Japan, just due to size and scale. For perspective, Germany is a little larger than Texas. And you could put all of Singapore, Switzerland, The Netherlands, and Japan into Texas and still have room to to cram in Minnesota.

One hugely important area where we have galactically failed is our mass transit and high speed rail systems. Other countries are punching out HSR reasonably quickly and at a cost per mile a fraction of what the hot mess in CA is turning into. I would really like to see us get that right.

That is simply how it’s implemented though. For example, an R&D credit might be given by offsetting those WH taxes with the credit. You could still have the credit and have the government write out a check after the company filed their return but they instead choose to have them do it over payroll. It actually probably helps with cash flow doing it that way and also ensures they can only use as much credit as they generate with the employees they have and pay in the state. I think it isn’t necessarily right to see that as inherently bad.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that there might need to be some major type of state local tax collection overhaul where the Fed enforces tax uniformity across the states to stop this "race to the bottom".

I'm just not sure how we would even approach it or if a real fix is even constitutional

Doesn’t sound constitutional at all. There’s more success doing that internationally than what you could ever get to with states.
 
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Not sure why any Rebublicans should consider voting for it at this point. It is not really a “compromise” if the Dems open plan is to ram every concession they made through budget reconciliation anyhow. It’s pretty pointless to move forward for any Republican that thought the Dems were making honest concessions in good faith. What a waste of time. I guess Manchin gets a little political cover to vote for a massive budget bill after “trying” a bi-partisan route.

I am curious though, if this thing gets zero Republican votes, will the New York Times of the country continue to call it “Bi-Partisan”?
 


These tweets are missing the point. Republicans knew Dems would do reconciliation. That isn’t what’s the problem here. They didn’t know that Biden and Pelosi would do an ultimatum on Manchin and other democrats that the bipartisan bill only goes through if the reconciliation bill goes through. That now incentivizes republicans to be less supportive of the reconciliation bill because by giving it enough votes to pass, it pressures Manchin to go forward with reconciliation.
 
These tweets are missing the point. Republicans knew Dems would do reconciliation. That isn’t what’s the problem here. They didn’t know that Biden and Pelosi would do an ultimatum on Manchin and other democrats that the bipartisan bill only goes through if the reconciliation bill goes through. That now incentivizes republicans to be less supportive of the reconciliation bill because by giving it enough votes to pass, it pressures Manchin to go forward with reconciliation.

Lol wot?!?!

That's being willfully ignorant on their part.

Biden was being generous enough to give the GOP a bill they can sign off on. Everyone knows the Progressive's won't sign off on this unless they get the bigger bill in reconciliation.
 
Not sure why any Rebublicans should consider voting for it at this point. It is not really a “compromise” if the Dems open plan is to ram every concession they made through budget reconciliation anyhow. It’s pretty pointless to move forward for any Republican that thought the Dems were making honest concessions in good faith. What a waste of time. I guess Manchin gets a little political cover to vote for a massive budget bill after “trying” a bi-partisan route.

I am curious though, if this thing gets zero Republican votes, will the New York Times of the country continue to call it “Bi-Partisan”?

If it polls well with Republican voters, you bet your ass they will
 
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