After Stimulus, Biden to Tackle Another Politically Tricky Issue: Infrastructure

President Biden’s two immediate predecessors had ambitious goals to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, but both left office having made little progress in fixing the nation’s bridges, roads, pipes, and broadband. President Donald Trump announced so many meaningless infrastructure weeks that the term became a running joke of his administration. While the goal of addressing the United States’ infrastructure is bipartisan, the details are not. That includes how much to spend, what programs count as “infrastructure” and, most important, whether to raise taxes to pay for it. As a result, President Biden could have an even tougher time gaining Republican support for an infrastructure bill than what he has faced in his first big legislative push, a $1.9 trillion economic aid package that passed the House with every Republican voting no and that faces a similar fate in the Senate. Unless the parties can agree on how to fund an infrastructure plan, President Biden might have to try to push through another sprawling spending package with only Democratic votes. The task could prove exceptionally difficult given the competing pressures the president will face from centrists and progressives in his party — and the absence of a pandemic emergency to help fuse those factions in support of the bill.