Biden signs $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. What it means to the Modesto area
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill that President Joe Biden signed into law represents a historic achievement at a time of deeply fractured politics. But the compromises needed to bridge the political divide suggest that the spending might not be as transformative as Biden has promised for the U.S. economy.
Faced with flagging support as the U.S. continues to slog through a pandemic and rising inflation, the president has treated infrastructure as proof that government can function again. Ahead of Monday’s signing ceremony, he instructed his Cabinet on Friday to rigorously police the coming investments in roads, bridges, water systems, broadband, ports, electric vehicles and the power grid to ensure they pay off.
“It’s hard, but we can still come together to get something big done for the American people,” Biden said. “It will create millions of new jobs. It will grow the economy. And we’ll win the world economic competition that we’re engaged in in the second quarter of the 21st century with China and many other countries around the world.”
Biden held off on signing the hard-fought infrastructure deal after it passed on Nov. 5 until legislators would be back from a congressional recess and could join in a splashy bipartisan event. The gathering Monday on the White House lawn included governors and mayors of both parties, along with labor and business leaders. On Sunday night before the signing, the White House announced Mitch Landrieu, the former New Orleans mayor, would coordinate the implementation of the infrastructure spending.
Rep. Josh Harder, D-Turlock, was among the several hundred people on hand for the ceremony on the White House lawn. He had worked to to include water storage, wildfire fuel reduction and other local needs in the bill. The exact projects are not yet chosen.
“There’s a lot in this bill for the Central Valley,” Harder said in a phone interview after the signing. “... Highway 99, 132, water infrastructure historically have been deeply underfunded in the Valley.”
Harder said the bill could complete the federal portion of the funding for Del Puerto Reservoir, which could be built by 2030 west of Patterson.
He said work could start as soon as this winter on the increased wildfire fuel reduction in the Sierra Nevada and other areas. He pushed for an increase in firefighter pay and for year-round employment to reduce fuel.
Harder said this was the first bill signing he has attended since he was elected in 2018. This includes bills he authored, which did not have signing events due to COVID-19.
The president began the process of selling the infrastructure bill to the broader public with a trip last week to the Port of Baltimore. He’ll go to New Hampshire on Tuesday to visit a bridge on the state’s “red list” for repair and to Detroit on Wednesday for a stop at General Motors’ electric vehicle assembly plant.
A bipartisan deal
In order to achieve a bipartisan deal, the president had to cut back his initial ambition to spend $2.3 trillion on infrastructure by more than half. The bill that became law on Monday in reality includes about $550 billion in new spending over 10 years, since some of the expenditures in the package were already planned. Yet the administration still views the bill as a national project with a broad range of investments and the potential ways to improve people’s lives with clean drinking water and high-speed internet.
Historians, economists and engineers interviewed by The Associated Press welcomed Biden’s efforts. But they stressed that $1 trillion was not nearly enough to overcome the government’s failure for decades to maintain and upgrade the country’s infrastructure. The politics essentially forced a trade-off in terms of potential impact not just on the climate but on the ability to outpace the rest of the world this century and remain the dominant economic power.
“We’ve got to be sober here about what our infrastructure gap is in terms of a level of investment and go into this eyes wide open, that this is not going to solve our infrastructure problems across the nation,” said David Van Slyke, dean of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University.
Biden also tried unsuccessfully to tie the infrastructure package to passage of a broader package of $1.85 trillion in proposed spending on families, health care and a shift to renewable energy that could help address climate change. That measure has yet to gain sufficient support from the narrow Democratic majorities in the Senate and House. Biden continues to work to appease skeptics of the broader package such as Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., while also holding on to the most liberal Democrats.
For his part, Biden has treated compromise as both a necessity and a virtue. It’s evidence to the rest of the world that democracies can function and counters the economic and technological rise of an authoritarian China. When the agreement with Republican senators was first announced in June, he noted that everyone had to give up a little in order to achieve an infrastructure deal that eluded former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
“Neither side got everything they want in this deal,” Biden said at the time. “That’s what it means to compromise.”
The agreement ultimately got support from 19 Senate Republicans, including Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell. Thirteen House Republicans also voted for the infrastructure bill. An angry Trump issued a statement attacking “Old Crow” McConnell and other Republicans for cooperating on “a terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan.”
McConnell says the country “desperately needs” the new infrastructure money but indicated that he planned to skip Monday’s signing ceremony, telling WHAS radio in Louisville, Kentucky, that he has “other things” to do.
This story was originally published November 15, 2021 at 3:57 PM.
