National Review: The Bipartisan Infrastructure Mess

National Review:

“Some time ago, President Trump’s team produced a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan, which was really a $200 billion infrastructure plan with some wishful thinking attached. The president now says he never supported any such thing — “Gary’s thing,” he calls it, referring to Gary Cohn, the Democrat and Goldman Sachs veteran who once served as Trump’s principal economic adviser — and now the president has joined forced with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer on something new: a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which also is composed mainly of wishful thinking.

Call us bipartisan, but when Trump, Pelosi, and Schumer all agree to spend $2 trillion — without quite deciding what they’re going to spend it on or where the money’s coming from — we start to hear from our inner Patrick Henry. …

Congressional Republicans already have made known some reservations about this plan. In particular, they have preemptively said no to rolling back the 2017 tax cuts, which Senator Schumer insists is a precondition for exploring other options, such as raising the gasoline tax. The thing is already a mess before it has got started.

It is not going to get any better. The infrastructure scheme deserves to die an early and unlamented legislative death. It’s just another variation on Gary’s thing.”

Of course.

Such has been the dismal reality of the “conservative-populist” coalition for the last 40 years. The disaffected populists provide the votes for Republican electoral majorities by getting whipped into a frenzy by conservative media over fake “social issues.” Meanwhile, the conservatives call the shots and pocket all the policy victories like on the Blompf tax cuts or the MIGA agenda.

65% of the American electorate supports a massive investment in America’s aging infrastructure – the other 35% are the Right or conservatives and lolbertarians. It is populists and progressives who agree on tax hikes and infrastructure spending and health care and student loan debt forgiveness, but it turns out that it is the Left that is polarized and divided over social issues: