How politics is shaping Biden's infrastructure proposal - The Washington Post - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...ucture-politics-weatherization
politics biden infrastructure proposal policy
shared by Javier E on 21 Apr 21
- No Cached
-
e new administration’s governing style. Rather than seek the perfect policy answer — an approach touted by the Obama administration — they are focused on solutions that can muster a broad base of support.
-
The plan also includes funding electric vehicles without setting a timeline for when the nation will stop selling gas-powered cars and trucks, and funding highly subsidized inland waterways without spelling out how much industry will pay for new locks and dams.
-
“We have to pass policies that people actually want,” said Leah Stokes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “In an economics textbook, it’s efficiency all the time. That’s not the way it is in politics. The goal should be improving people’s lives.”
- ...11 more annotations...
-
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) said he supported the infrastructure plan’s inclusion of the Pro Act, which would make it easier for workers to unionize
-
The fraught politics of personal cars, SUVs and diesel trucks, meanwhile, meant some highly effective climate policies didn’t make it into Biden’s plan.
-
White House Deputy National Climate Adviser Ali Zaidi said in a phone interview. “It’s about making sure that the investments are made in a way that stretches the geography of opportunity to every Zip code, that fully avails the environmental justice upside and totally leans into the supply- chain and domestic manufacturing opportunities that all this presents.”
-
Josh Freed, who leads the climate and energy team at the center-left think tank Third Way, said in an email, “The 'best’ use of taxpayer funds isn’t always the one that maximizes economic efficiencies.”
-
“In the climate space, if we cared only about optimizing economic efficiency we’d probably only consider a carbon price,” he added. “But as we’ve learned from over 15 years of carbon-pricing around the globe, that works out better on economists’ whiteboards than it does in reality.”
-
“The focus across the board is to try to deliver the upside in small towns and big cities and all the places in between, with an emphasis on communities that are very often left behind and left out,
-
Some of the biggest emissions savings in transportation would come from ending the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, followed soon after by heavy trucks. The plan avoids those politically dicey mandates.
-
The incentives and other policies mirror those championed by Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has called for major rebates when drivers buy electric vehicles.
-
The president’s infrastructure ambitions depend on Schumer’s ability to shepherd a package through the evenly split Senate.
-
Even supporters of the infrastructure push say it has elements that bend to political forces. Some economists, for instance, believe the plan’s call for “Buy American” provisions to ensure infrastructure is made by American workers will drive up the cost of the measures for the federal government. But those provisions are fiercely supported by unions and other liberal groups because they boost the amount of federal spending that has to be directed to American workers.