- US President Joe Biden finally signed the Infrastructure Act.
- The $1.2 trillion plan has stalled due to differences.
- The bill has the support of both parties, but social spending is still pending.
Hit by criticism and terrible polls, US President Joe Biden signed the largest infrastructure reform bill in the United States in more than half a century in a rare bipartisan celebration held at the White House on Monday.
Read | Biden uses infrastructure czar to oversee billions of dollars in funding
The $1.2 trillion package will repair bridges and roads, replace unhealthy lead water pipes, build electric vehicle charging networks, and expand broadband Internet. This is the most important government investment since the establishment of the national highway network in the 1950s.
Biden told hundreds of invitees on the South Lawn of the White House: “We have heard countless speeches… but today we finally finished it.”
“So my message to the American people is: America is acting again, and your lives will get better.”
Most of the crowd are Democrats, but there are also a few Republicans. Notable among the Democrats are Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin. These two moderates are fighting more left-wing members of the party and slowing Biden’s agenda.
Narrow control
Read | U.S. Congress passes huge Biden infrastructure bill
Biden said the bill is “a testament that Democrats and Republicans can work together to achieve results.”
He added:
Let us believe in each other, let us believe in America.
Infrastructure spending is popular, but Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, has failed to achieve this goal for four years, making the upcoming “infrastructure week” his administration often promised into a joke.
Even now, Biden has to fight for months to get the Democratic Party who is arguing with him to vote, risking a humiliating defeat.
The Democrats could barely control the severely divided Congress, but at a moment of little cooperation, they eventually joined a large number of Republicans in the Senate and a symbolic minority in the House of Representatives.
“We agree that this will be a true bipartisan process,” Republican Senator Rob Portman from Ohio said at the White House gathering:
This should be the beginning of a new effort to work together on the major issues facing our country.
Feeling good moments can be difficult to maintain.
Biden’s approval rate is declining in a spiral, and the latest Washington Post-ABC poll shows only 41% approval rate. What worries the White House most is that the approval rating is not only declining among key independent voters, but also in his own Democratic foundation.
Although some Republicans reached out to help, most of the opposition parties were not in the mood to declare a truce.
Mid-term congressional elections
It is widely expected that Trump will seek to return to the White House in the 2024 election, but the 13 Republicans who voted with Democrats in the House of Representatives were slammed.
He said Republicans who crossed the aisle should be “ashamed.” They are not true Republicans.
The far-right Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, especially Trump supporters, called them “traitors.” She tweeted the office phone numbers of 13 Republicans, some of whom reported extensive violent abuse.
The Senate is also under pressure, and Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who voted for the bill, is one of the prominent figures away from the South Lawn celebrations.
At the same time, Portman was more free to make generous comments to Biden because he has announced that he will not seek re-election.
Since the Republican Party will almost certainly win the mid-term congressional elections in less than a year, Biden’s control of Washington is already fragile and is facing increasing pressure.
What is still pending is a $1.75 trillion package of childcare, education and other social expenditures, which Biden said is a historic effort to correct social inequality.
Again, internal partisanship hinders this, and the Republican support of the proposal is zero. However, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the White House meeting that “hopefully we will pass” the bill this week.
His press secretary, Jen Psaki, told reporters that after taking power during the first 10 months of Covid-19 and the congressional quarrel, Biden was “frustrated with negativity and infighting”.
However, Biden’s infrastructure sales promotion will be aimed at changing the tone.
Biden will travel to New Hampshire on Tuesday to visit a bridge that provides funding for infrastructure, and on Wednesday to Detroit to meet with union workers.
Psaki said: “The president wants to spend some sustained time there to communicate.”
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