By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
President Biden wants to go big on infrastructure repair, renovation and revitalization.
I’m all in.
This gives me a bit of the willies to say this, given the immense amount of money that Biden wants to spend. I realize our debt is mounting. We’re going to run a huge deficit again this fiscal year; given that I am a deficit hawk, that prospect alone gives me the cold sweats.
Here’s the thing: If any president in the past 50-plus years — probably since President Lyndon Baines Johnson left the White House in 1969 — can shepherd legislation through Congress, it is Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.
What might happen? Well, he wants to spend, reportedly, $3 trillion to repair roads, highways, bridges, rail lines, ship channels, airports … all of it. Whereas his predecessor, Donald Trump, talked a good game about infrastructure repair, he was, as NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd noted, more interested in “frittering away his days hitting the links and tweet-trashing Bette Midler.”
Opinion | Joe Biden Should Just Give It a Go – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Trump couldn’t legislate his way out of a wet paper bag. President Biden stepped out of the legislative mold into the executive branch of government in 2009 when he became vice president in the Obama administration. Now he is The Man, the chief exec, head of state, head of government, commander in chief. However, he hasn’t forgotten the legislative skills he learned in 36 years serving in the U.S. Senate.
What else might happen? There will be jobs handed out to hundreds of thousands of Americans who have seen their livelihoods vanish in this COVID era. I cannot, and I damn sure won’t try to, predict that all those jobs will generate enough of a tax boost to reduce the deficit and carve into the debt, but we’ve traipsed down this road before.
In 2009, Barack Obama inherited an economy in collapse. He and Vice President Biden managed to persuade Congress to enact an economic relief package that jump-started the economy. They did so over the objection of damn near every Republican this side of Ronald Reagan’s grave. The package worked. It got the job done. The economy revived. Oh, and the deficit whittled its way down to about two-thirds of what it was when Obama and Biden took office.
Can history repeat itself? Maybe it can. My hunch is that President Biden is willing to go big on infrastructure reform.
Go for it, Mr. President.