The thing that is more predictable is that social spending becomes popular with beneficiaries after it goes into effect. Voting for the ACA lost a lot of democrats their seats in 2010 (it also didn’t help that the crisis at the time was viewed somewhat similarly to the one we have now), but now that it’s been implemented it’s a massive boon for the Dems and the GOP is afraid to touch it. And the GOP realized it at the time which is why they calculated that blocking the medicaid expansion as much as possible would hurt Obama. The neoliberal/Reaganite opposition to social spending is only effective at framing potential future spending - once people see the benefits the spending becomes popular.
The ACA was a bit of a special case because the timeline and implementation of the rollout meant that in 2010 people weren’t seeing benefits but did get to see stuff that the right could scare them with. However even then - the impact of it long-term on the Democrat’s electoral success can’t be overstated.
The big risk the Dems are taking is that if a Democratic president is in charge with a split or GOP congress when we hit a social spending cliff, the opportunity for the GOP to kill this and then sink that Democrat’s popularity/credibility could screw them.
I agree, non Federal roads and bridges should be funded through local taxes. The fact that NY, NJ and Connecticut are large tax contributors, would mean, IMHO, that Federal taxes should be lowered and state and local taxes in those jurisdictions should be raised to fund those local projects.
Also the fact that those locations are tourism places, means that those locations are economically benefitting from the tourism and should foot the bill for those improvements.
But, we’ve been funding local infrastructure, education, and healthcare for the welfare states for decades now. Are you opposed to all federal spending on local communities (policing, education, student loans, FEMA and other disaster relief, electrification, etc.)? Or, just that spending that happens to help something climate friendly like mass transit? Or, just that spending that helps those states that helps other states?
This post was unnecessarily harsh. Being against all state and local spending by the feds is certainly a position you can have in good faith. It just doesn’t comport with how federal spending has been done for the last 100 years or whatever.
I’m sorry for the harsh tone and stupid questions at the end.
Exactly- in today’s political setup, the role of the Progressives is essentially to try and pull the center of the Democratic party’s positions leftward.
I think any attempts to actually get items of their agenda passed is… maybe not entirely futile, but certainly counterproductive. The party infighting tends to weaken the party’s overall brand and message, and so do the mixed messages that come out of that.
Are you saying that people in rural areas do not rely on trucks and trains to move their products to market, or to bring in goods that they want to use?
In any case, they are not the ones who will be paying, as they pay very little in federal taxes compared to the larger cities and urban areas. They will be receiving tax dollars, both in money to pay for local employees to build that infrastructure, as well as having that infrastructure for their use.
If we went your way, we’d have excellent infrastructure in the urban areas, and dirt roads in the rural areas.
Maybe you do have a point here, do the people living in rural areas actually want anything more than dirt roads? Do they need electricity, water, gas, or internet? I mean, it would be easy enough to stop subsidizing those things for the rural areas, and let them live with the 1700’s infrastructure that they could pay for themselves.