By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
“We have a deal.”
So said President Biden today as he announced a bipartisan agreement to overhaul the nation’s infrastructure.
Now … is this the perfect deal? No. It isn’t. It is the product of Democrats and Republicans coming together, demanding things from the other side, then deciding that absent being able to get all the things they wanted in the deal agreed to a package that is a good bit less than what President Biden wanted to spend.
This is how government is supposed to work.
Fascinating! As The Hill reported: Biden acknowledged the deal would not include proposals he’s made for spending to help American families, but firmly endorsed the deal on infrastructure in unusual remarks just outside the White House with the bipartisan group of senators looking on.
The deal agreed upon would spend $1 trillion. It would repair thousands of miles of roads and bridges, provide high-speed Internet to virtually every home in the country.
More from The Hill: The framework includes $579 billion in new spending for a total of $973 billion over five years and just over $1.2 trillion over eight years.
It allocates $312 billion for transportation programs, including roads, bridges, airports and electric vehicles infrastructure. The remaining $266 billion would go to water infrastructure, broadband, environmental remediation, power infrastructure and other areas.
Biden announces bipartisan deal on infrastructure | TheHill
The deal announced today strikes me as a classic ploy that President Biden played with perfect pitch. He wanted to spend $2.2 trillion — or so he said. Biden might have known from the get-go he wouldn’t persuade GOP members of Congress to agree to spending that kind of dough. So he settled on a still-significant amount of money.
He said he didn’t get all he wanted. Conservatives in Congress didn’t, either. Nor did their progressive friends.
However, the negotiating team of equal numbers of congressional Republicans and Democrats were all smiles today as they announced the framework of a deal.
Let’s get it done. Shall we?
This type of give and take is what good government is built on. This is what President Joe Biden has done for over 40 years. He’s amazing. Very different from the irrational irritating shyster that was before him who claimed accomplishments that never happened or that he had little, or nothing, to do with.
Exactly. It’s precisely the kind of expertise and knowledge of government many of us believed Joe Biden would bring to the presidency.
Biden showed compromise with his reconciliation condition that MUST be with the infrastructure bill! LOL!!!