The NPR Politics Podcast - Americans Support An Expanded View Of "Infrastructure" But Not How To Pay For It

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that Americans generally support making things like broadband part of infrastructure, but they don't agree on how to pay for it. Plus, Republicans shift away from corporations to shore up their support from the white working class.This episode: White House correspondent Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and senior editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is John from Golden Valley, Minnesota, where I'm sitting at my home office desk reminiscing on a year ago when two friends, my husband and I, were in beautiful Tromsø, Norway. I guess my home office is pretty cool, too. This podcast was recorded at 205 Eastern on Thursday, April 15th. As always, things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor and Correspondent. Happy Thursday, everyone. Happy Thursday. Friday Eve. Friday Eve. As if it matters anymore. This joke is getting old. I've been making it for a year. I never heard it. I like it.

Wow. Dads see dads. So, Domenico, you're here because a new poll dropped. Surprise poll. As usual from NPR, PBS NewsHour, and Marist College. A lot of stuff in here, including the fact a majority of Americans are on board or approve of the idea of this $2 trillion infrastructure proposal. I assume this is news the White House wants to hear. Is there anything under that top line that complicates it a little?

Yeah, there's a lot under that. I mean, you know, we've talked about for years that the difficulty here is in paying for these kinds of measures. And, you know, they certainly do not agree, Republicans, Democrats, independents on what they want to pay for. In fact, they don't believe that there are a lot of things that Biden has proposed that they're in favor of in these payfors. You know, the most popular thing is taxing people who make more than $400,000 a year. Almost everything else is tough, is tough to get through. Republicans in Independence, for example, very much against raising the corporate tax rate above what it is at 21%, even though it had been 35% before Trump's tax cuts. So that's going to be a tough sell. We know that there's Democrats who are not

totally on board with that in Congress. So there's going to have to be some real thinking about ways to pay for this thing. Not to mention, you know, Republicans are very much against this bill. Yes, it has 56% majority support for this bill. But that's Democrats and about half of independents and Republicans not even close to supporting this. What was the breakdown of Republicans? Republicans only 18% supported said they supported the bill. Three quarters of Republicans said that they were against it. Domenico, we're having this big debate in Washington about what should even be in this infrastructure bill or what should even be considered infrastructure. Does the poll illuminate at all how the country views infrastructure or what should be in this?

Yeah, I mean, when it comes to roads, bridges, ports, that's pretty universal. Ninety six percent of people say that's infrastructure. Pipes that supply public drinking water, also about 9% and 10%. The electric grid, 85%. Broadband internet service, almost two-thirds, 62%, say that that is part of infrastructure. But that's where you start to really lose Republicans. Long-term health care still has majority support, 58%. But again, Republicans not on board with that. And electric vehicle charging stations and some of these climate measures is where this starts to fall off. Only 51 percent say that that is part of infrastructure. Still a slim majority, but independents are split and only a quarter of Republicans are on board with that. this, right? I feel like public opinion can shift quickly depending on who gets the upper

hand in the framing of the conversation. Biden is making this pitch that these are long overdue projects that are needed for the US to compete, to be healthy economically. Republicans are saying this is way too broad. You're taking all the liberal wishlist things and putting them into one package. So Republican lawmakers seem to have not been too swayed or too threatened by this ongoing theme from Biden that bipartisan means things that most of the country wants. My policies are popular, so therefore I don't care if you vote for them. Do you see a poll like this changing that? You know, not really, but I think there's a couple of things happening in real time on the Hill. You know, you do have a group of Republicans, especially in the Senate, moderate Republicans who are still really trying to work with the White House, especially on this infrastructure question. West Virginia and Mitt Romney saying that they would be willing to support an infrastructure bill and might be even offering their own counter proposal of the six to eight hundred billion

dollar range is what we're hearing. The thing is, is that Democrats just don't really honestly seem all that interested in compromising with Republicans this time around. I think that they see paths where they have votes, where they can do it without them. I think that they want to go bigger and bolder than Republicans want to go because they see that as potentially the path to holding on to their majorities in Congress. And, you know, when we talk about sort of who's incentivized to compromise right now, I don't actually see much incentive for Democrats to compromise, regardless of what polls say, as long as they believe they have the votes to do what they want to do, and they think it's the right thing to do. Yeah, I mean, if they can get it passed, I mean, that's sort of the name of the game, right? And, you know, Scott, to your point

about the argument being made, Democrats do start in a hole, you know, I was talking to the pollsters a little bit about this, and the fact that, you know, the idea of government doing more outside of emergencies has been wildly unpopular for a very long time. And that has started, you know, in a lot of ways, before Ronald Reagan, but he really accentuated it saying government was the problem. It wasn't the solution to the problem. Even Democrats like Bill Clinton, you know, said that the era of big government was over. And I've been struck that Joe Biden is trying to make a different argument and believes that he can win that. But when he says things like Republicans are going to have to face Republican voters for not being on board with the infrastructure plan, when you look at these numbers, Republican elected officials are perfectly happy to go face Republican voters. I think the problem Republicans have is with independents. On almost everything, they are out of step with independents. They need them in presidential elections, and they need them, especially in

the suburbs, if they want to win back the House next year. All right, we're going to take a quick break when we come back a little bit more about this poll, and we're going to look at a story that, Sue, you did about how the Republican Party is really reframing itself on a lot of big picture ways in this post Trump period. Whether you're looking to discover a new series to binge, find your next great read, or check out that movie everyone's talking about. NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast is your guide to all things entertainment. Every weekday, we keep pop culture in high spirits. Listen now to the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR. We are back.

And Sue, before we talk about your reporting, Domenico, one other thing I wanted to ask about. The other week, you and I were on the podcast talking about the latest twist and turn in the ongoing grievance culture wars, and that is the Republican backlash to companies and sports leagues taking a stand on these bills in Georgia and elsewhere, putting more restrictions on voting. How do people feel about this? You know, Americans are not overall in favor of professional sports teams and organizations or corporations using their role, position, or events to influence political, cultural, or social change. And it's interesting because there's this dichotomy where you're seeing it happen more often, and yet Americans are not generally in favor of it. And there's a big partisan split on this. I

mean, when you look at professional sports teams, for example, only 40% of the country overall says that they think that they should be speaking out. Two-thirds of Democrats agree with that. Only a third of independents and only 13% of Republicans say so. When it comes to corporations, it's just 36% of Americans overall who think that they should be speaking out. And interestingly, it's only about half of Democrats who agree with that. And again, a third of independents and only 17% of Republicans. So, Stu, on the topic of grievances. Yeah. You know, President Trump obviously lost the presidential election last year. We have established that fact in this podcast. But a lot of shifts in who voted for him made Republicans feel a little more optimistic than they may be expected to going into the election. And you have been reporting on what looks like it could be the beginning of a big

realignment of how the parties present themselves and the ways that Republicans are really working to court working class voters. I mentioned grievance because cultural grievances are a big part of it. But before we get to that, let's start with how we're defining working class voters. Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. And I don't have an easy answer for you. And it's because even people that study the working class and the working class vote say there's no perfect metric. A lot of times when we talk about it on NPR and sort of the broadly accepted metric is educational standards, people with college degrees and without. That's obviously a very imperfect metric because a lot

of people that don't go to college go off to make lots of money and are not considered working class people. We also look at income, right? Income thresholds tend to be part of that too. And the intersection of the two. There's also how you see yourself. A lot of people may be working class by sort of how much they make, but they might view themselves as middle class. They might not self-identify that way. But I think when we're talking about the working class vote in the context of the Republican Party and who they're appealing to, it's a group we've talked a lot about. It's mainly white, right, in the context of the Republican Party, although nearly half of the working class in

this country are people of color. And they're trying to sort of embrace this realignment of the Republican Party and say very directly and clearly, we need to be seen and truly be the party of working class America. And it's interesting, you see how both parties are trying to court this type of voter, and they're doing it in very different ways, right? The Biden White House is really betting on economics, trying to tie their policies directly to these people's lives in ways they understand, stimulus checks, things like that. At the same time, you have seen a lot of congressional Republicans really go back to those broader cultural issues with kind of a grievance type

approach. I mean, a lot was made about how much so many Republicans talked about Dr. Seuss at a time when Biden was passing a $2 trillion spending bill. Well, I think, you know, as Domenico pointed out in the poll, I mean, one of the reasons you focus on these cultural issues is they really resonate with people and people feel really strongly about it. And I think cultural issues among working class voters have often tended to drive their vote. If you think of things like abortion, right, a lot of times working class women will vote for abortion as their number one issue, even if their economic situation could be improved by voting for the other party. I mean,

that's one of the consistencies in politics. But I think it speaks to how expansive Republicans are viewing this now. As I talked to one congressman, Jim Banks of Indiana, and he's the chairman of the Republican Study Committee. And the RSC is like the conservative faction of the House Republicans. It was started after the 94 revolution. And he's now out there like strongly advocating for this working class appeal. All of the statistics and polling coming out of the 2020 election show that Donald Trump did better with those voters across the board than any Republican has in my lifetime since Ronald Reagan. And if Republicans want to be successful as a party, when the majority in 2022 went back to the White House in 2024, I think we have to learn

lessons that Donald Trump taught us and how to appeal to these voters. But it is largely anchored in these resentment issues. You know, he wrote a memo where it's focused on things like still being really tough on immigration, sort of isolationist policies, tough on big tech, tough on China, a lot of that rhetoric we've been hearing from Republicans in recent years. And also what I think is most fascinating now is corporate America. And we've seen this play out in recent weeks, but Republicans have really shifted their tone, especially as being the party of corporate tax cuts, right, to be the party of corporate critics. And that is one of these cultural issues I think we're just going to hear a ton about

going into the midterm elections, because Republicans like banks just see a country that isn't on the side of sort of elite American culture. But within all of this, there is a focused economic push, too, at least from some quarters, right? There is, but it's more scattershot. You see it more acutely in the Senate, where Republicans, and we should note some of these Republicans want to run for president, like Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri. He's been talking about embracing the working class long before the 2020 election. And he's also done some really interesting things that break from party

orthodoxy. Remember, he was the one standing right next to Bernie Sanders calling for stimulus checks before the election. He's also come out in favor of a mandatory $15 minimum wage for certain companies that make over a billion dollars a year. So I do think in the Senate that you see it more acutely, but they are thinking of economic policies that are absolutely more populist. And the kind of ideas that top Republicans, especially Republicans who wanted to run for president, would never have even been thinking about just four to five years ago. All right, that is a wrap on this today. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.