The Biden administration gets rolled in infrastructure negotiations

Speaking Security Newsletter | Advisory Note for Organizers and Candidates, n°100 | 3 August 2021

If you find these notes useful, you can support this newsletter here and SPRI, here. Sharing these newsletters also helps. Thank you!

**Many thanks to MM, the latest supporter of SPRI. Please consider joining MM and others, here.**

Situation

Earlier this week, the Times ran a story on the current infrastructure bill being a mere shell of its former self. Some say it’s not as bad as it looks because some of the stuff that fell out of the bill will reportedly end up in the $3.5 trillion budget proposal Democrats intend to pass through reconciliation (particularly the climate provisions, which were virtually eliminated during the course of the Biden-Republican negotiations).

But signs point to that budget being cut down, too, despite avoiding cuts being the point of passing the thing through reconciliation. Moreover, its topline number suggests it doesn’t even come close to compensating for what was lost in the infrastructure bill.

The Senate’s supposed to vote on the bill this week.

Visualizing the decline

Below, I’ve plotted out each Biden administration proposal* made across four months of negotiating with Republicans. Given the decline by more than three-fourths, it doesn’t seem like much negotiating went on at all; just capitulation. Not a good look for the Biden administration.

*Proposal dates:

• March 31: $2.25 trillion

• May 21: $1.7 trillion

• June 3: $1 trillion

• June 24: $579 billion

• July 28: $550 billion

Thanks for your time,

Stephen (@stephensemler; stephen@securityreform.org)

Find this note useful? Please consider becoming a supporter of SPRI. Unlike establishment think tanks, we rely exclusively on small donations.