Infrastructure Week: Biden's Big Win

It was literally a running gag during the trump years that whenever trump was looking bad in the news he would go to Twitter and announce a massive INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK where he would push for Congress to pass him a massive government program to repair our nation's aging roads, bridges, electrical grids, etc. Only for Congress to go "Well, um, any ideas on that boss?" and for trump to scream back "LET'S BUILD MY WALL!" Even with full Republican control of Congress before 2019, it never happened. Even with the Democrats controlling the House and actively wanting a deal even a weak bipartisan package, it never happened. trump himself kept nuking it.

In short: Nothing ever happened with Infrastructure Week.

So of course, now it's 2021 and it's Joe Biden's turn in the White House and while it's taken months since he rolled out his Infrastructure proposals for Congress to pass, it finally happened last week with a $1 trillion bill passing the U.S. House - after sitting on it for a month or three trying to get the Senate to agree to a budget deal the Progressives wanted passed first - and ending up in front of President Biden for his signature this afternoon.

HOLY SHIT IT'S REALLY INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK! 

...So what the hell's actually in it (via NPR)?

Roads, bridges, major projects: $110 billion - This could go a long way towards upgrading aging bridges, something we needed done for decades.

Passenger and freight rail: $66 billion - the rail system has also aged out, although public transportation may be less affected than the improvements to shipping and supply chains.

Public transit: $39 billion

Airports: $25 billion

Port infrastructure: $17 billion

Transportation safety programs: $11 billion

Electric vehicles: $7.5 billion - there needs to be a big push towards installing more charging areas to extend electric cars' viability.

Zero and low-emission buses and ferries: $7.5 billion - the possibility of electric buses for our cities and suburbs.

Revitalization of communities: $1 billion

Broadband internet: $65 billion - this is a big fucking deal where I live in Central Florida, where my county doesn't have broadband/cable connections across most of the rural areas (Libraries are helping out with lending Hotspots for Internet availability to our communities, but it's not enough...).

Power infrastructure: $73 billion - Hello, Texas, care to upgrade that broken grid? 

Clean drinking water: $55 billion - what this offers is the chance for poor communities like Flint to get rid of lead-based piping for real, get better filtration systems, and bring healthy water to everybody.

Resilience and Western water storage: $50 billion - this looks like a plan to deal with the ongoing droughts of the Southwest and California states...

Removal of pollution from water and soil: $21 billion - always a must, always needed especially here in Florida...

There's still a major social works (Build Back Better) bill that has to pass the Senate - and thanks to Manchin and Sinema it probably won't - but for now this is a major legislative win for the Democratic Congress and for Joe Biden's administration.

Here's hoping they can build on this for 2022 and 2024.