More like a sop to the lobbyists of the powerful unions and engineering firms who stand to benefit from all the work, and who fund various politicians. ‘Infrastructure’ bills are always full of this kind of political payola.
This is one reason why a good political reform would be to end these giant ‘omnibus’ style bills. You want high speed rail? Vote on a high speed rail bill. You want internet connectivity for your rural areas? Write an internet bill.
Giant overarching bills containing huge numbers of unrelated projects and initiatives are a good way to get your pork voted on. “I’ll vote for your crappy, wasteful idea so long as you vote for mine!” So you get two crappy ideas in one bill. Rural internet buys support from rural politicians. ‘Buy American’ gets union support, even though it works against the other provisions, making them harder to do and more expensive. And so it goes.
BTW, reminder: there are extensive (though less than at the start) climate/CO2/“green” provisions, in the other big bill, the Build Back Better Act, the one we are supposed to hear from tomorrow. That’s why it was supposed to be a two-fer, with the fixed-structures-centered Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework being passed with across-the-aisle support, and the more money-to-people-oriented BBBA being the one for which they’d rely on the reconciliation mechanism as they’d have to pass it with the Dems alone, if at all.
One objection from the right is passing BIF equals saying there is such a thing as a valid, worth-it trillion-plus bill a Dem president can propose and pass, and keeps alive the possibility of some version of BBBA passing before the midterm. One objection from the left is that taking the easy win with BIF without waiting to also have BBBA can open the door for some needed members to say “well, we got something the people needed and wanted, let’s call that enough, bye”.
FWIW according to REPEAT Project, a climate think tank, the estimated impact of the reconciliation agreement back in September ignoring the bipartisan bill was much bigger than the impact of either the bipartisan bill alone or the bipartisan bill when added to the bipartisan bill.
I think part of that is that some of the climate investment in the bipartisan bill is technology that is hard to model because if it winds up being an effective tool , but a lot of it is that building the infrastructure doesn’t do enough to change the incentives without the explicit incentives in the reconciliation bill.
Also REPEAT is supposed to release an analysis of the latest reconciliation agreement this week. This agreement doesn’t have CEPP and it seems to me like the replacements won’t make up the gap.
By the time the bill became law, 306 Republican-proposed amendments appear on the record, 228 Democratic, and 4 Independent. But it’s not necessarily the proportion of amendments proposed/approved that counts… there are a number of reasons Republican amendments may not have survived long enough to be voted on by the House.
For example, if the Republican sponsor withdraws the amendment. In June Rep. Kat Commack (FL-03) withdrew her amendment to “exempt livestock haulers from hours-of-service requirements for the last 150 air miles to their final destination”, presumably because it had bipartisan support on the merits and Republican leadership wanted to hold it hostage in the Senate. You have to remember in June, it wasn’t apparent that Progressive House Democrats would vote against the infrastructure bill. From Republican leadership’s point of view they had leverage in the Senate, not the House.
From what I can tell the substance of that amendment made it into the final bill, as part of an amendment proposed by Republican Sen. Deb Fischer (NE). She voted yes on the final bill. Rep. Commack ultimately voted no.
Infrastructure is a major factor, along with things like speed of regulatory approval, tax and geographic considerations. Here’s an interesting story I found about the locationing of Tesla’s gigafactory in Nevada. Quote, from the Governor of Nevada’s liaison to Tesla at the time,
“We had a period of time where we were moving pretty quickly to kind of give them an outline of what we had to offer,” Hill said. “We provided information on what sites were available, what their specifications would be, what kind of utility coverage they had, road infrastructure, that kind of thing.”
Broadband access as a utility is not to be underestimated - not necessarily for the factory itself, which will have the fiber cable installed - but as a benefit for its employees who will live in the surrounding community. If you are Tesla and you want to open a factory that needs 500+ workers, and the State tries to sell you some site with about 100 people living nearby, the reality is that you have to attract workers to move out there. Those workers are probably going to want broadband internet access because it is the norm for most people. They will want to stream, do online shopping, get emails, &etc. More importantly their kids will want it because young people these days want fast & reliable internet and cell coverage 24/7/365 - not only for social purposes, even for school. I graduated high school in 2014 and even then we had internet videos assigned as homework. Some teachers announced homework assignments not in class, but in a video posted to the class Facebook group. The kids without reliable computer/internet access at home had a clear disadvantage, and you would see them using library computers or leaning on a friend.
I listened to an interview by SD Rep Dusty Johnson. His objection was that the projects in the future were not funded. That’s what leads to the, “OMG we have to raise the debt ceiling.” later on so if you want to have budgeting that stays within the debt ceiling you would oppose this bill
Just to clarify, the budget already passed for FY2022recommends a net deficit. It is literally impossible to write legislation within the existing budget framework that avoids the debt ceiling later on.
Read it for yourself, right near the top of the text. Recommended federal revenue, $3.4+ trillion. Recommended budget outlays, $4.6+ trillion. Recommended deficits, $1.2+ trillion. FY2022 only.
To answer the OP without assuming what Congressional members are thinking, I pointed out one objection an actual Representative (who supports improving infrastructure) gave was that as unfunded mandates beyond the current budget (2023, 2024, etc.) it leads to having to raise the debt ceiling later on. Your statement
It is literally impossible to write legislation within the existing budget framework that avoids the debt ceiling later on.
My counterpoint was and is that the current budget already leads to having to raise the debt ceiling later on. Well, not even later on, but during FY2022. In fact, we already approached the ceiling and had to raise it.
Here is where we raised it by $480 billion, on October 14. The current limit is about $28.9 trillion.
The limitation under section 3101(b) of title 31, United States Code, as most recently increased by section 301 of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 (31 U.S.C. 3101 note), is increased by $480,000,000,000.