The White House unveiled an enormous $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan last week that has very little to do with actual infrastructure and a lot to do with unrelated, leftist pork. Only $115 billion in Biden’s proposal addresses the traditional public works, such as roads, highways, and bridges, that need fixing. Another $25 billion is allocated to airports and $17 billion more to ports and waterways. However, the rest of the $620 billion is dedicated to climate regulation, racial equity initiatives, and other leftist policies that are impossible to take seriously.
Some of the more absurd costs included in Biden’s infrastructure plan include: $25 billion “for states to build a supply of infant and toddler care in high-need areas,” $12 billion for states to invest in “community college facilities and technology that helps protect the health and safety of students and faculty and addresses education deserts,” and several billion more to reduce “racial and gender inequities” in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math research and development.
Then there’s $100 billion set aside to build new public schools and upgrade existing ones, specifically the schools’ kitchens, “so they can … go green by reducing or eliminating the use of paper plates and other disposable materials.” And, best of all, the Biden plan includes a $174 billion investment in the electric vehicle market, which includes money for customer “incentives” on top of the $7,500 tax credit electric vehicle owners already receive.
Biden wants to spend more on electric vehicles, which are much too expensive and impractical for everyday people, than he does on the public works people use every day. This is telling because it shows that, for all his talk on the campaign trail about being Middle Class Joe, Biden is not interested in being the guy on the side of ordinary people — the auto workers and coal miners who would have their livelihoods upended by Biden’s green energy initiatives, the everyday drivers who need better roads, not more charging stations.
Rather, Biden wants to be the guy who forced those ordinary people to become progressives. He’s tired of trying to convince energy and auto workers to find a more sustainable line of work, so he’s decided to take their careers away by requiring that the U.S. electric grid “decarbonize” by 2035, by forcing the auto industry to move toward electric vehicles, and on and on. And he’s doing all of this under the guise of “infrastructure.”
But don’t miss the bigger picture: Biden’s plan would make the government bigger than it’s ever been, which is really the point. If he can normalize a $2 trillion expansion of the government’s role, who’s to say he wouldn’t get on board with a $10 trillion Green New Deal? Why not spend $1.6 trillion to forgive all student loan debt?
Biden’s infrastructure plan would move those policies out of the leftist pipe dream and into the realm of the possible. He knows that the more he spends, the more aggressive he can be, which means the prices are only going to go up from here.