Consider This from NPR - President Biden's Next Big-Ticket Item: A Transformational Infrastructure Plan

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

America's infrastructure GPA is a C-minus, according to the American Society Of Civil Engineers, which this month called for massive investment in the nation's roads, bridges and transit system. The Biden administration is preparing to propose that kind of investment — along with green energy policies and progressive programs that would total more than $3 trillion. NPR's Mara Liasson reports on the plan, which Biden has signaled he wants to pass with Republican support. That's just one political balancing act Biden will have to negotiate. Another is with a key part of his political coalition: labor unions. NPR's Don Gonyea explains. Additional reporting in this episode from NPR's David Schaper. In participating regions, you'll also hear from local journalists about what's happening in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The U.S. is actually spending a lot of money on infrastructure. Just not the way you think. The average household will lose $3,300 a year over the next 20 years due to underperforming infrastructure. That's Christina Swallow with the American Society of Civil Engineers. That money we all lose each year comes from things like potholes that damage our vehicles, water main breaks, lost productivity sitting in traffic or waiting for the subway, even food that costs more because our outdated freight system makes it more expensive to transport. Our chronic underinvestment in

infrastructure is having real world impacts for American families and businesses. Swallow chairs a committee that every every four years, puts together an infrastructure report card for the nation, the latest unveiled at an event this month. That's actually up from a D-plus four years ago. 8% of bridges in America are structurally deficient. 40% of U.S. roads are crumbling in fair or poor condition. Airport terminals are badly outdated.

Too many people lack access to broadband internet. HVAC systems in schools need to be replaced or repaired. The disinvestment in infrastructure that's been going on, frankly, for a lifetime is catching up to us. That's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. It doesn't have to be this way, but it also won't change unless we make different choices. And that means a meaningful generational investment in our country's infrastructure. Consider this. President Biden is about to propose just that, a generational investment in infrastructure. But will that proposal become a reality? From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Tuesday, March 23rd.

This message comes from NPR sponsor 3M, supporting communities in the fight against COVID-19. Since the outbreak, 3M has responded with cash and product donations, including surgical masks, hand sanitizer, and respirators, through local and global aid partners. In addition, 3M plants are running around the clock, producing more than 95 million respirators per month in the U.S. Learn how 3M is helping the world respond to COVID-19. Go to 3M.com slash COVID. 3M science applied to life.

What does it take to really make amends? And how should we navigate our digital spaces? I'm Anoush Samarody. Each week on NPR's TED Radio Hour, we go on a journey with TED speakers who help us answer some of life's biggest questions. Join us. Listen now. It's Consider This from NPR. And it's not a surprise that President Biden wants to go big on infrastructure. His campaign slogan, Build Back Better, was not just about the pandemic. We'll build back better with modern roads, bridges, highways, broadband, ports and airports as a new foundation for economic growth. With pipes that transport clean water to every community. With 5 million new manufacturing and technology jobs so the future is made in America.

That was Biden last summer when he accepted the Democratic nomination. Now this week, two months into his presidency, reports emerged that the White House is putting together an infrastructure plan worth more than $3 trillion. Hours after those reports on Monday, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said this on Capitol Hill. We're hearing the next few months might bring a so-called infrastructure proposal that may actually be a Trojan horse for massive tax hikes and other job-killing left-wing policies. Republicans seem prepared to make an argument that the green energy elements of Biden's plan are not good for the economy.

And they're certain to oppose parts of the plan that would invest in what progressives call human infrastructure. That means, according to The New York Times, heavy spending on education, on programs meant to increase the participation of women in the labor force by helping them balance work and caregiving. The Build Back Better bill is the legacy bill. It's the bill that will define the meaning of the Biden presidency because it's the bill that could potentially reshape the trajectory of the country. Bill Galston, a former domestic policy advisor in the Clinton White House, says Biden's plan could remake huge parts of the economy, investing in 5G, a green electric grid, semiconductors, and carbon-free transportation. If passed, it could transform the country. A country that has not invested in itself for a very long time.

A country that is on the verge of losing its technological and economic superiority to the rising power at the other side of the Pacific. While the need to out-compete China is one thing both parties can agree on, it may not be enough to win bipartisan support for Biden's infrastructure plan. Here's NPR national political correspondent Mara Liason on the road ahead. The latest thinking among Democrats is that there are pieces of an infrastructure agenda that could be broken off and passed as smaller individual bills with Republican votes. Things like universal broadband, anything that confronts China. But Republicans are skeptical after the COVID relief bill. Here's Ohio Senator Rob Portman

on Fox. The notion is we can get together there because Republicans and Democrats both believe our infrastructure needs help. It's crumbling. It'll help the economy if done right. My concern is once again, they're going to ignore the Republicans as they did this time around. Democrats hear that and think Republicans will do what they did to President Obama, refuse to compromise, then attack the president for failing to get them to compromise. And it's possible that the relationship between the two parties on Capitol Hill is just too broken for bipartisanship, especially after January 6th, when a majority of Republicans voted to overturn the 2020 election. In the White House, bipartisanship is seen as something to strive for. It's part of Biden's political DNA.

But in the end, as long as voters see that Biden tried hard to work across the aisle, it's not a political necessity. Elaine Kamark is a former Clinton White House aide and the author of Why Presidents Fail. She says the only thing bipartisanship buys you is that both parties end up owning the policy they just passed, for better or for worse. If it's bipartisan, you weather those hiccups better than you do if you've only passed it with one party. In the end, it doesn't really matter that much, as long as it gets implemented. In other words, to voters, the process isn't as important as the product. But Bill Galston thinks this may be misreading the politics. He thinks getting Republican votes is a political necessity for Biden because, Galston

says, the president made another important campaign promise. That he would work harder than his predecessors did to restore the ability of the two parties not only to talk to each other civilly, but also to work together. Galston says that campaign promise really mattered to swing voters in the suburbs, the voters that made the difference between victory and defeat for Biden. And those voters took Biden's promise of bipartisanship seriously and literally. On ABC last week, Biden was asked by George Stephanopoulos about his prediction that Republicans would see the light after the election and be willing to compromise. They haven't had that epiphany you said you were going to see in

the campaign. No, no. I've only been here six weeks, pal. OK, give me a break. I've been here six weeks. Biden went on to talk about how popular his COVID rescue bill was with ordinary Republicans, if not with Republican members of Congress, and he revealed how important those voters are to him. I'm not saying I'll do it again, but I want those Republican voters in suburbia. The president won't be on the ballot in 2022, but his agenda will. And Democrats need to do better with those Republican voters in suburbia if they are to hang on to their tiny majorities in both houses of Congress. How Biden goes about passing his next big proposal may determine whether his party wins them or not. NPR national political correspondent Mara Liason.

Now, as for the timing on all this, as you just heard, Democrats could break up Biden's plan into packages and try to pass a number of small infrastructure and public works bills through the summer and potentially into the fall. Then a large scale bill could come closer to September. Whatever the timing, it may be difficult to pass anything using reconciliation. That's the parliamentary procedure Democrats used for COVID relief, which allowed them to move forward without Republican support. Reconciliation is not a team sport, and it's not a healthy situation, and it's something we should not repeat. A key Democratic vote, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, told Axios

this month he's opposed to passing infrastructure using this reconciliation process. If my Democrats have bought on, my fellow Democrats have bought on, that you have no Republican friends that will work in a reasonable manner, I don't subscribe to that and I am not going to get on a bill that cuts them out completely before we try to make something up. That's just one political balancing act President Biden will have to negotiate. Another is with a key part of his political coalition, labor unions. Biden has already been pitching them on his infrastructure plans.

NPR national political correspondent Don Gagne has more on that story. Every once in a while as president, you get to invite close friends into the Oval. Biden met with 10 labor leaders weeks ago. The guests were from unions expecting to get jobs out of Biden's infrastructure plan. Iron workers, machinists, building trades, electrical workers and others. This president really does get it. AFL-CIO President Richard Tromka was there. He spoke to NPR. First of all, the tone of it was the tone of a partnership. People trying to work together to improve our communities and make our economy better and get people back to work. Also singing Biden's praises after the meeting was Kerry O'Sullivan, who heads the Laborers

International Union of North America, which represents construction workers. He's comfortable talking about, you know, bread and butter issues, issues that affect working class, middle class. And he's not bashful. He'll tell you what he's thinking. But O'Sullivan offers a bit of caution. He says there'll be areas of disagreement. I mentioned the loud complaints I heard from union members when Biden killed the Keystone pipeline on his first day in office. You probably didn't hear as many as I did, but we were disappointed that it happened on the first day. But he says it was expected. As a

candidate, Biden had pledged to stop the controversial pipeline, an issue important to progressives. But O'Sullivan and Trumka both say Biden should have paired the announcement with an infrastructure bill that would have more than offset the Keystone job losses. It's telling, though, that the moment did not create a significant rift between the administration and its labor allies. Still, union worries about the transition to a green economy will likely persist. Kate Bronfenbrenner is a labor professor at Cornell University. She says complicating this are the big changes in the labor movement.

The new growth in union membership is not in the classic industrial and construction unions, those that met in the Oval Office with Biden that day. You also have to remember that the labor movement is much bigger than the unions that were in that room. The teachers and the health care workers and the retail workers, and if you poll them, they support climate change. Those unions were a huge help to Biden in some of the most hotly contested states during the election, places like Nevada and Georgia. Now, if you work in a coal mine or in natural gas, all the talk of green jobs could be seen as a threat to your livelihood. The key for the White House is to make sure new jobs in renewable energy come fast and pay well. Joe Uline is president of a group called the Labor Network for Sustainability.

His roots are union. He once worked construction at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. He's also a committed environmentalist. Uline says this of Biden's task. He wants to be the best union, you know, pro-union president ever. But at the same time, he's also said he wants to be the climate president. He wants to be the president that finally does something real about addressing the climate crisis. That's going to be a very difficult balancing act.

Biden has said over and over that his climate plan is a jobs plan. Here's the AFL-CIO's Richard Trumka again. People want to make everybody believe it's an either or, that you have to have climate change and no jobs, or you have to have good jobs and no climate change or no infrastructure. That's just not true. There's a path to navigate where you can fix climate change and get good jobs. And if Biden disappointed many of these union members with his Keystone Pipeline decision, he also came out with a video reinforcing his support for workers' right to organize and how, as Biden put it, union membership should be encouraged. He did

this as Amazon workers are voting on whether to form a union at a warehouse in Alabama. It's a form of reassurance to union members broadly as the difficult work on the infrastructure package gets underway. NPR National Political Correspondent Don Gagne. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Adi Cornish.