One leitmotif of former President Donald Trump's tenure was his administration announcing "infrastructure week" at the White House — only to have Trump, or circumstances beyond the president's control, intervene and demolish any such plans. President Biden, however, appears determined to make "infrastructure week" something other than a punch line. And this week, a sort of infrastructure week, should test his resolve.
"Biden is putting his foot on the gas pedal and moving ahead with his plans to sell an expansive infrastructure proposal this week," even as he "faces mounting pressure to act on other legislative priorities that have become increasingly difficult to ignore," USA Today reports. He will lay out the contours of his infrastructure plan, expected to cost up to $3 trillion, at an event in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
"I will say that I don't think Republicans in this country think we should be 13th in the world as it relates to infrastructure," Psaki said, referring to a World Economic Forum ranking. "Roads, railways, rebuilding them — that's not a partisan issue." Biden will release the second proposal, focused on the "caregiver economy" — expanding access to child care and health care, for example — in April, she added.
Biden is probably wise to take "a kind of hard-nosed assessment about what's politically possible and moving forward on those items," William Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, tells USA Today. "The politics of infrastructure aren't like the politics of gun violence. It's about decaying roads and bridges that are not quite as safe as they once were. If you say we've got to always respond to the latest crisis, most of the time, you're going to put infrastructure on the back burner."
-
US to take 15% cut of AI chip sales to ChinaSpeed Read Nvidia and AMD will pay the Trump administration 15% of their revenue from selling artificial intelligence chips to China
-
NFL gets ESPN stake in deal with DisneySpeed Read The deal gives the NFL a 10% stake in Disney's ESPN sports empire and gives ESPN ownership of NFL Network
-
Samsung to make Tesla chips in $16.5B dealSpeed Read Tesla has signed a deal to get its next-generation chips from Samsung
-
FCC greenlights $8B Paramount-Skydance mergerSpeed Read The Federal Communications Commission will allow Paramount to merge with the Hollywood studio Skydance
-
Tesla reports plummeting profitsSpeed Read The company may soon face more problems with the expiration of federal electric vehicle tax credits
-
Dollar faces historic slump as stocks hit new highSpeed Read While stocks have recovered post-Trump tariffs, the dollar has weakened more than 10% this year
-
Economists fear US inflation data less reliablespeed read The Labor Department is collecting less data for its consumer price index due to staffing shortages
-
Crypto firm Coinbase hacked, faces SEC scrutinySpeed Read The Securities and Exchange Commission has also been investigating whether Coinbase misstated its user numbers in past disclosures
