Republicans Pretend Not To Understand That
All over the country, Republicans who voted against Biden’s infrastructure bill have been trying to take credit for the benefits it’s brought to their districts and regions. Now they may get a do-over— to reclaim the unspent money! Americans like what the bill is doing but you know who doesn’t? Señor T realizes it makes him look bad— and he wants his allies in Congress to stop it. He tried to pass an infrastructure bill for 4 years and, because of the chaos that defined his White House, failed and failed and failed. Now his enemies— from both parties— have been pointing that out.
Yesterday, Tony Romm and Ian Duncan reported that “It took decades for Congress to deliver on its promise to pour new money into the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections. Now, House Republicans are trying to slash some of the same funds. A series of GOP bills to finance the federal government in 2024 would wipe out billions of dollars meant to repair the nation’s aging infrastructure, potentially undercutting a 2021 law that was one of Washington’s rare recent bipartisan achievements. The proposed cuts could hamstring some of the most urgently needed public-works projects across the country, from improving rail safety to reducing lead contamination at schools. Some of the cuts would be particularly steep: Amtrak, for example, could lose nearly two-thirds of its annual federal funding next fiscal year if House Republicans prevail. That includes more than $1 billion in cuts targeting the highly trafficked and rapidly aging Northeast Corridor, which runs between Boston and Washington, prompting Amtrak’s chief to sound early alarms about service disruptions.”
Yesterday I got into an unrelated tussle with very vulnerable New York freshman Congressman Mike Lawler, who twists himself into a pretzel trying to placate MAGAts while insisting to moderate voters in his swing D+3 district that he’s one of them. His name wasn’t on a news report with several of his NY GOP colleagues who had pledged to vote to censure George Santos, so I pinged him when I pointed that out on Twitter. A few minutes later, he pointed out that he had made the same pledge on Monday and then referred to me, condescendingly, as “smart guy.” You can see the thread here:
When I responded by asking him about the House Republicans' threat to the infrastructure improvements for the Hudson Valley (his district), a very commuter-heavy district, he instantly disappeared.
I expected nothing more from Lawler. “In recent days,” continued Romm and Duncan, “Republicans have defended their approach as a fiscally responsible way to reduce the burgeoning federal debt. They’ve largely tried to extract the savings by slimming down federal agencies’ operating budgets next year, technically leaving intact the extra funding that lawmakers adopted in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But the effect would be the same: The GOP bills would reduce the federal money available for repairs. The cuts would come at a time when the country is grappling with the real-life consequences of its own infrastructure failures, from train derailments in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the collapse of a key portion of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia last month.
Chris Deluzio represents a Pennsylvania swing district between Pittsburgh and Ohio. This morning he told me that “Extreme House Republicans do
not want us to rebuild America’s infrastructure if it gets in the way of their trickle-down fantasy of tax cuts for the rich and powerful. They want to slash funding for rail safety, and so much else, bending over backward for big corporations even after the East Palestine derailment hurt so many in Western PA and Ohio.”
And Congressman Mark Takano, who represents a sprawling district southeast of Los Angeles in Riverside County, was on the same page, telling last night that “The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was a historic bipartisan solution to better the lives of my constituents in Riverside and all Americans with critical investments in our nation’s roads, bridges, public transit, rail, and broadband, and I was proud to vote for it. This once-in-a-generation funding is desperately needed to meet the urgent needs of aging infrastructure and destruction caused by climate change, and it will also create good-paying jobs for workers in my district. Instead of supporting its implementation, House Republicans want to walk back their commitment to their own constituents, ignore failing infrastructure nationwide, and needlessly slash funding. I won’t stand for this partisan destruction when my constituents need this federal funding to repair the roads, bridges, and rail they rely on every day.”
In a deal to stave off a first-ever federal default, Biden worked out an agreement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in June to pursue modest voluntary spending caps on federal agencies and programs starting in the 2024 fiscal year. In exchange, Republicans permitted lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the United States to resume borrowing money to pay its bills.
Even as Republicans touted that vote as a victory, however, some in the party’s far-right flank signaled they planned to continue the fight. They pledged to force Democrats to accept massive spending cuts through the annual appropriations process that funds the government— or risk a shutdown if lawmakers fail to act by the Sept. 30 deadline.
So far, the standoff has largely simmered behind the scenes. In recent weeks, Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, has worked methodically to process a dozen funding bills, which McCarthy on Monday said he hopes to start bringing to the chamber floor as soon as next week.
In a sign of the acrimonious debate to come, each of the House appropriations bills features sharp spending cuts that Democrats vehemently oppose— even targeting some federal infrastructure programs that until recently had enjoyed bipartisan support.
Two years after Congress approved $55 billion to improve the nation’s water supply, for example, House Republicans last week proposed to eliminate $1.7 billion from the two primary federal sources for drinking water and wastewater grants to states.
Those programs had received supplemental funding as part of the bipartisan infrastructure act. Rather than undo that law, the GOP bill would dramatically reduce the initiatives’ annual budgets, compared to what they received in the 2023 fiscal year, while underfunding a slew of other federal water infrastructure operations. That includes two programs to help schools and low-income communities reduce lead contamination, which together could receive about $85 million less next year than lawmakers previously had authorized, according to an analysis of data released in January 2022 by the Congressional Research Service.
“I’ll be real honest with you: If you’re looking for a pretty bill, this is not it,” acknowledged Rep. Mike Simpson (R-ID), the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that produced the proposal, at a hearing last week.
“Cutting funding is never easy and can often be an ugly process … But with the nation’s debt in excess of $32 trillion and inflation at an unacceptable level, we have to do our jobs to rein in unnecessary federal spending,” he said.
After weeks of haggling, House appropriators are expected to finalize that bill this week. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the panel, described the spending measure in a recent hearing as “one of the most harmful attacks on America’s efforts to tackle climate change.”
The proposed cuts to infrastructure spending come at a time when new federal money has started to flow more rapidly. The White House estimates it has announced about $225 billion in awards under the 2021 law, which has benefited roughly 35,000 projects nationwide, a figure Biden has touted regularly as he tours the country to promote his economic agenda.
For both parties, the $1.2 trillion package marked a major achievement after years of false promises and jokes about botched “infrastructure weeks.” It took months of late-night negotiating sessions among a small group of moderate Democrats and Republicans before they could reconcile their competing visions about the size and scope of new federal spending.
Even then, though, lawmakers acknowledged their compromise only addressed a fraction of the United States’ true needs. In its latest national report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers projected the nation faces a roughly $2.6 trillion, 10-year backlog in projects to repair the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections— a gap about twice the size of the infrastructure law.
“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Emily Feenstra, the chief policy and external affairs officer at ASCE. “We need every cent.”
Some of the greatest needs are in transportation, where House Republicans on Tuesday convened a hearing to finalize a 2024 spending bill that includes $6.6 billion in cuts. The spending reductions predominantly target transit and rail, while curbing Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s work to promote environmental and racial equity.
“This bill is another example of the real progress we’re making to reduce overall spending while funding our highest priorities,” Granger told committee lawmakers.
…Republicans would extract another $2 billion from a federal infrastructure program used to fund the construction of new transit lines. That could jeopardize a slew of projects now underway— including the Gateway tunnel system between New York and New Jersey, one of the largest infrastructure endeavors in the nation, which hopes to receive $7 billion to make urgently needed repairs.
The GOP bills also provide no new funding in 2024 for a series of grant programs that Republicans historically have supported. That would equate to a roughly $800 million cut from the initiative known as RAISE, which provides money to cities and states so they can construct bridges over rail lines, create new pedestrian paths and finance street redesigns.
The program is so popular the Transportation Department received $15 billion in requests last year, though the agency could only award 162 projects totaling $2.2 billion in funding in June. Some of those requests came from GOP lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee: 17 panel members wrote the Biden administration in search of funds for dozens of local projects in 2022 and 2023, according to letters backing requests for funds that the department released to The Washington Post last week.
The members include Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-IA), who wrote in support of five RAISE applicants in her state. Her office accused the Biden administration of “playing political games” in releasing the letters and said the congresswoman “will remain focused on bringing investments back to Iowa while reining in overall government spending.”
Biden, for his part, only sought in 2024 to fund the RAISE program at the level adopted under the infrastructure law. But the president did request— and Republicans ultimately denied— $1.2 billion in new money for infrastructure megaprojects. That would have included funds for the long-sought overhaul of the Brent Spence Bridge between Ohio and Kentucky and the Calcasieu River Bridge, which carries Interstate 10 in Louisiana.
In an early hearing last week, the top Republican overseeing transportation spending— Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK)— defended the bill as one that “meets the challenge before us to reduce spending and get our debt under control.”
On Tuesday, he added of the fierce debate to come: “These things tend to start out in one place. They always tend to end up some place else.”
Yesterday, CNBC did two reports— the 10 states with America’s worst infrastructure, in dire need of federal dollars and the 10 best states for infrastructure, making daily life reliable for residents. For the 10 in the first story, their share of the $1.2 trillion in the bill “could not come a moment too soon. Roads, bridges, utilities, ports and airports across the country have been crumbling for decades. Connectivity keeps falling behind in an increasingly connected world. And climate change is adding new and growing stress.” These are the 10 states most in need of the federal help with their infrastructure grades:
1- Maine (F)
2- Alaska (F)
3- Mississippi (F)
4 Louisiana (F) and Arkansas (F) tied
6- New Mexico (F)
7- Rhode Island (F)
8- Hawaii (F)
9- New Hampshire (D-)
10- West Virginia (D-)
The opposite are states, both red and blue, that have invested in the upkeep and expansion of their infrastructure— from best to less good:
1-Georgia (A+)
2- Illinois (A)
3- Minnesota (A-) and Tennessee (A-) tied
5- Indiana (A-)
6- Ohio (A-)
7- Arizona (B+)
8- South Carolina (B+)
9- Nevada (B+)
10- Colorado (B) and Kansas (B)
UPDATE FROM TED LIEU (D-CA)
"I've had the great honor to serve in Congress for nearly a decade and in my leadership capacity I've had the opportunity to meet with Americans from every corner of our incredible nation-- from Alaska to Florida, New England to Arizona, and of course my home district in beautiful southern California. And something I have never once heard anyone say is, "please spend less money repairing our roads, rail, and bridges." Americans have been calling for significant investment in our national infrastructure for decades and last Congress Democrats delivered by enacting a law to do just that. If you want to know the source of dysfunction in our nation's capital look no further than the Republican party. Whether it is the bipartisan infrastructure law that we passed last Congress or the debt deal Speaker McCarthy struck with President Biden earlier this year, Republicans have a problem keeping their word. No one expects Democrats and Republicans to agree on everything. But once we come to an agreement we should keep our word and move the country forward. The problem right now is that the Republican party is controlled by its most extreme members, people who apparently can't even work with Democrats to invest in American infrastructure."