Consider This from NPR - The Latest On Biden's Infrastructure Plan, With A Vision For A New 'Climate Corps'

Episode Date: May 19, 2021

The White House is courting influential Democratic senators and making a public relations push for President Biden's infrastructure proposal, while Republicans draw a red line around corporate tax increases. Biden also spent part of this week test-driving Ford's new electric F-150 Lightning. But for all the talk of energy innovation and electric cars, one part of Biden's infrastructure plan is based on a pretty old idea — one from another era when millions of Americans were out of work. NPR's Scott Detrow and Nathan Rott report on Biden's proposal to revamp the nearly 100-year-old Civilian Conservation Corps — with a new focus on climate change. Read more from their reporting here. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

The Ford F-150 pickup truck is the most popular vehicle in America. It has been for 40 years. And now it's going electric. Mr. President. This sucker's quick. How's it drive? How does it feel? Would you buy one of these? I would.

It's called the Lightning. Ford Motor Company unveiled it this week. President Biden took one for a test drive in Michigan on Tuesday. Hey, fellas. How are you? Good. Michigan on Tuesday, where he also toured the factory and gave a speech. The future of the auto industry is electric. There's no turning back. But the future isn't here quite yet. Biden wants to step on the accelerator by investing billions in electric vehicle technology. That includes charging stations and tax credits. And he wants it to be part of his massive infrastructure spending plan. We have to move fast.

And that's what you're doing here. Republicans in Congress, well, they're not in a hurry. There is certainly a bipartisan desire to get an outcome. Senator Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, met with Biden at the White House last week. And I think the first step is obviously to define what infrastructure is. McConnell was there with Kevin McCarthy, the top Republican in the House. What is the definition of infrastructure? And the Republican definition does not include spending

that has been described as human infrastructure, child care, paid leave, or free community college. Bridges, highways, airports, broadband, those are the places we could find common ground and work together. So the Republicans' red line? They say they will not support any infrastructure spending that's paid for by scaling back Trump-era corporate tax cuts. This discussion about the way forward on infrastructure will not include revisiting the 2017 tax bill.

Consider this. When it comes to the way forward on infrastructure, President Biden may have no choice but to compromise. And not just with Republicans, but with members of his own party. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Wednesday, May 19th. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Keap. Grow your business with sales and marketing automation for serious entrepreneurs. Keap has everything you need to organize client info, follow up fast, and automate sales. Learn more at keap.com slash NPR. I'm Yoé Shaw.

I'm Kia Miyakunatis. We're the hosts of the NPR podcast, Invisibilia. You can think of Invisibilia kind of like a sonic blacklight. When you switch us on, you will hear surprising and intimate stories. Stories that help you notice things in your world that maybe you didn't see before. Listen to the Invisibilia podcast from NPR. It's Consider This from NPR. When Democrats passed a massive coronavirus relief bill this year, they did it without any Republican support in Congress.

And that's because they used a procedure called reconciliation. It allows budget-related bills to pass with a simple Senate majority, which the Democrats have. So why can't they just do that again but for infrastructure? Well, some of them don't want to. All right, U.S. Senator Joe Manchin's with us. Let me switch gears and talk about this infrastructure plan. Last month on West Virginia's talk line on Metro News, Senator Joe Manchin was asked about reconciliation. They could do it by reconciliation, Joe. They could.

No, they can't, not unless we vote to get on it. And if I don't vote to get on it, it's not going anywhere. That's why the White House has been courting Manchin on infrastructure. He if I don't vote to get on it, it's not going anywhere. That's why the White House has been courting Manchin on infrastructure. He met with the president last week and later traveled to West Virginia with First Lady Jill Biden. And Senator Manchin, you know, you've been a champion for West Virginia and you've always found ways to bring people together. And they visited a vaccine clinic in Charleston. They were joined by the actress Jennifer Garner. She grew up there. We have a lot of work ahead to get COVID crushed

and to get our little kids in school ready to learn. I'm looking forward to working with Republicans, Democrats, and even Senator Manchin. I'm teasing you. That's a little Manchin joke. The joke, of course, is that it's sometimes hard to tell which side mansion is on. But he's not the only Democrat who signaled they want Republican support to guarantee the durability of a long-term infrastructure plan. And if those Democrats insist, President Biden may have no choice but to compromise. I want to know, what can we agree on? Here's what he told MSNBC last week.

And let's see if we can get an agreement, kickstart this, and then fight over what's left and see if I can get it done without Republicans, if need be. Whether enough Democrats would be open to that depends on how politically popular Biden's plans are. And the White House, well, they've been working on that. When you think about infrastructure, making sure that that infrastructure reaches rural communities. Advisor Heather Boucher, she's been doing dozens of local TV news interviews over the last month.

We spoke with Biden economic advisor Heather Boucher this morning. Heather Boucher is a White House economic advisor. White House economic advisor Heather Boucher says... The appearances first reported by Axios are strategic. Biden advisors offer state-specific data about the president's plan. They highlight how it would help with things like broadband access in rural areas or drought resistance for farmers. But then also things like making sure that the drinking water is safe, that there's a commitment to make sure that there is no lead, no lead pipes going into homes. A lot of Americans support basic infrastructure improvements like that.

But according to a recent NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll, when it comes to the definition of infrastructure, the White House has more convincing to do. Just 51% of people say infrastructure includes things like charging stations for your electric car or pickup truck. For all the talk of energy innovation and electric cars, one small part of Joe Biden's infrastructure plan is based on an old idea from another era when millions of Americans were out of work. In magnificent natural beauty of the American national parks have gone many companies of the Great Depression, then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt created one of the most celebrated public programs in U.S. history, the Civilian Conservation Corps. It was part of FDR's attempt to transform the economy in a time of great economic crisis. And Joe Biden wants to do the same thing with his infrastructure plan. He also wants a new kind of civilian workforce to be part of it.

NPR's Scott Detrow in Washington and Nathan Rott in Montana explain how that might work. Nearly a hundred years since the creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps, much of its legacy is still being put to use. Of everything we did here,

this tunnel's the most impressive piece of work. Tom Forwood is the assistant manager of Lewis and Clark Cavern State Park in west-central Montana. 538 feet long. Blasted from the outside in. The tunnel is big. You could walk down it comfortably. Until the passage opens into a massive dark cave where the air is heavy with a chilly humidity. This cave, Forwood says, was discovered by a member of the Conservation Corps who decided to do a little non-sanctioned exploring.

Like I said, slid through all that and came out into just this. He hits the lights. Whoa. So it's by far the largest room we know of in the cave system. It has the biggest formations in the whole cave that we know of as well. Ribbed columns of rock stretch from ceiling to floor, looking like glistening coral reefs. Some of these formations are still at least a million years old. And every year, 70,000 to 80,000 people get to enjoy them. That's not to mention the millions more who use trails,

the campgrounds, the bridges, the dams, and other work that was done by the Civilian Conservation Corps. That's one of the things I hear the most from our visitors when they talk about the history at all. They lament the loss of that type of an organization, the CCC. Here in Washington, it makes sense. President Biden is so drawn to the idea of rebooting one of the most popular enduring programs from the New Deal. Biden has draped himself in FDR symbolism, and like Roosevelt, he's made big government spending and programs a key part of his agenda. A once-in-a-generation investment in America itself. This is the largest jobs plan since World War II.

In fact, Biden has positioned himself as the first president in generations to, like FDR, unapologetically pitch the federal government and government spending as the solution to big problems. In last month's joint address to Congress, Biden ticked through major government projects over the years. Everything from the Transcontinental Railroad to Mars rovers. These are investments we made together as one country, and investments that only the government was in a position to make. Time and again, they propel us into the future. Jonathan Alter wrote a book about Roosevelt's first hundred days.

Well, we've been living in the shadow of Reagan's America. Now it's back to the future. We're going to start to live in the shadow of FDR. Alter says it fits that as Biden tries to connect government to people's lives again, he'd want to signal to a project as broad and lasting as the CCC. They planted three billion trees. This, you know, saved the topsoil of the United States. It created all kinds of state parks. But how would this actually work? To begin with, there would be a couple major differences from the original CCC. The first, scope. Biden wants to spend $10 billion on his new CCC, a sliver of the infrastructure plan, not to mention

the original program adjusted for inflation. That means far fewer jobs would be created. But they'd be offered to a broader group of people. For all the nostalgia the CCC brings up among progressives, there's the reality it was racially segregated, closed off to women, and paid almost nothing. Colin O'Meara, the head of the National Wildlife Federation, has been pushing for a reboot for a long time, but says there's no question that dynamic would need to be different. If this is simply a gap year for college kids from the suburbs, we will have absolutely failed on every level.

And so I think that means more inclusive hiring. I think it means doing work in both urban and rural environments. It means specifically doing outreach to Black, Latino, Latina, Indigenous, Asian American organizations to help build strong partnerships to do work on the ground. Biden wants to focus this CCC on climate change. It would be the climate core, not the conservation core. It's not necessarily about the program's cutting carbon emissions, says Ali Zaidi, one of Biden's top climate advisors. Instead, Zaidi says the project would be much more about mitigation, better preparing for the extreme weather already here.

We need to recognize that one of the risks that our infrastructure faces today comes from the unleashed impacts of a changing climate, whether it's wildfire or flood or heat waves. There are several versions of the plan in Congress right now, plus an executive order. Colorado Congressman Joe Neguse, a Democrat, is playing a key role in shaping the bills. He sees the program as similar to AmeriCorps or the Peace Corps. Trail construction and maintenance, fence construction and removal, fire fuels, mitigation in our forests and wildland fire suppression, invasive species treatment and

eradication. To get a sense of what that work would look like, spend a day with the Montana Conservation Corps, one of more than 100 smaller corps modeled after the original. The crew of mostly early 20-somethings are rehabbing a popular hiking and biking trail here in northwest Montana, removing downed trees and encroaching plants. Jeez Louise. 22-year-old Emily Brown is from North Carolina. Yeah, yeah, I'm kind of doing that. Crews like this do work throughout Montana and other states every year, helping improve trails, fixing aging infrastructure, clearing vegetation to slow fires. And it is hard, hard work.

The crew comes from all over the country. I'm from Maine. Dayton, Ohio. New York. Chicago. Pennsylvania. Do you have friends back home that are like, what are you doing? Absolutely.

What do you tell them? Having more fun than you. Most join the Montana Conservation Corps because they have an interest in the outdoors or in dealing with climate change. That includes 23-year-old Jack O'Hanlon from New York. You want a future, right? You know, like if you're going to have kids, you want them to enjoy outside, you know, being in nature. For Kaylee Kimball from Maine, the inspiration came from her own past. My grandfather joined the CCC when everyone lost their jobs, actually, to provide for his family. He helped construct the Appalachian Trail. So it's a cool feeling to be doing the same type of work. Part of the goal of this Corps and the original CCC was not just to provide jobs, but create a place for young people

to develop. Joe Spaforth is 21 and from Columbus, Ohio. There's big pushes in education these days to, you know, go right from high school to college and then to graduate in exactly four years. And that was my plan until COVID hit and I decided to come out here. And I sort of realized after taking a step back that I had no idea what I was doing. So coming out here and working has given me a great opportunity to sort of find out more about myself and my interests and what I want to do. Andy says he hopes more people will soon have a similar opportunity. NPR's Nathan Rott in Montana, reporting there with White House correspondent Scott Detrow in Washington, D.C.

It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.