By Brandon Moseley
President Joe Biden (D) picked up a big win Friday with the passage in the U.S. House of Representatives of the $1.2 trillion public-works bill, the largest investment in U.S. infrastructure in nearly a century. Congresswoman Terri Sewell (D-AL07) called passage of the infrastructure bill "historic."
“Today we’ve made history!” Sewell said Friday. “Alabama’s infrastructure has been falling behind for far too long. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act contains transformational provisions that will revitalize the 7th District by creating good paying jobs, fixing our crumbling roads and bridges, expanding access to broadband, and finally addressing our broken water infrastructure. I fought to ensure that equity is a central focus of this bill, and I’m proud that it will uplift hard-working Alabamians from our biggest cities to our most rural communities.”
The infrastructure bill passed, 228 to 206, late Friday with 13 Republicans voting in favor and six progressive Democrats opposing the measure.
The Alabama delegation voted along party lines, with the state’s lone Democrat representative, Sewell (AL-07), voting for the bill.
Republicans warned that the bill wasn’t fully paid for—the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would increase the federal borrowing by $256 billion over 10 years—and said only a small portion of the legislation was devoted to rebuilding roads and bridges.
Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL06) said, “Democrats have been in disarray and arguing amongst themselves for weeks over the specifics of their infrastructure and spending bills, and tonight the infrastructure bill was finally passed. But the fundamental problems with both bills haven’t changed. Our economy is struggling, and our national debt already presents a serious national security threat, but the Democrats have shown they are willing to recklessly push through a bill that costs over a trillion dollars with only about 10 percent going to roads and bridges.”
Palmer said the only good thing about the bill was that it included funding for the Northern Beltline, which would complete the I-459 perimeter around Birmingham, an amendment which Palmer introduced along with Congressman David Trone (D-Maryland).
Reaction was similar among the other Republican members of the Alabama delegation.
“In the middle of the night, I voted NO against President Biden and Speaker Pelosi’s $1.2 trillion 'infrastructure' bill,” said Congressman Barry Moore (AL-02) on social media. "Only about 10% of this bill will go to roads and bridges, and the other 90% of the bill is hijacked by the Democrats' radical progressive wish list. We need actual infrastructure.”
Congressman Robert Aderholt (R-AL04) also voted against the bill.
“I voted no Friday night to the Biden Infrastructure bill,’' Aderholt said in a statement. “Most people agree our infrastructure needs a lot of work, but only around 10 percent of this bill goes to what most of us would call infrastructure, you know, like roads and bridges and utilities like water and broadband. The other 90 percent goes to liberal wish list items like the Green New Deal. It is also tied now to the even bigger Build Back Broke bill. Voting for one, increases the likelihood the other gets passed too. We need to focus on actual infrastructure.”
Congressman Mo Brooks (R-AL05), who is running for Senate, said, “I joined nearly 200 colleagues in sending a letter to Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer demanding that they not schedule a vote on Biden’s socialist spending monstrosity before the CBO reports the REAL cost of the bill. HINT: There's a reason they don’t want you to know.”
Sewell’s office said that this legislation will create millions of good-paying jobs, repair Alabama’s crumbling roads and bridges, expand access to high-speed affordable internet, and make transformational investments in Alabama’s drinking water and wastewater infrastructure. Sponsors claim that the bill's many provisions will supercharge America’s global competitiveness and put our nation back on track to have world class infrastructure.
But political obstacles loom for the White House as attention shifts to an even bigger spending bill.
Congress is set to take a week-long recess and return on Nov. 15 with a long list of items to be completed in order to avert a government shutdown and move forward on the more expensive education, healthcare, and climate package that has proven difficult to negotiate with the party’s slim majority in Congress.
The infrastructure bill had already passed the Senate after getting the support of centrist Democrats Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona). The President signed it on Saturday.
The bill has only $110 billion reserved for traditional infrastructure, like roads and bridges, and includes tens of billions in public broadband subsidies that opponents say will preempt private investment. Amtrak and the railroads get $82 billion, for Amtrak to build a high-speed line in the Northeast corridor and for a national rail network.
The bill also includes $7.5 billion for electric-car charging stations that the Transportation Department will allocate. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm gets $21.5 billion for a new Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations.
Democrats still have much work to do on the second part of President Biden's domestic program: a sweeping expansion of the social safety net and programs to fight climate change, a bill the party has struggled to unite behind.
Prior to the vote, Palmer spoke out against the expansion of the social programs the President wanted passed as part of this bill.
"For over two centuries, America has stood as the land of opportunity and freedom around the world,” Palmer said. “It has been a place where anyone, regardless of background or circumstance, can rise above challenges and become successful and independent with hard work and perseverance. This freedom to live self-sufficiently and work as one chooses has yielded prosperity and flourishing throughout the United States for generations.
“Unfortunately, many politicians in Washington today would prefer for Americans to forget this original version of the American dream. In fact, they're actively trying to put more roadblocks on the path to individual success. Consider the graphic the White House recently released to advertise the massive Democrat spending bill, which they've called the Build Back Better Act. The pictures depict a hypothetical single mother named Linda and her son Leo. Various scenes of these two people include descriptions of the different government programs that will assist them as their lives progress and needs change. The graphics herald free education, grants, union jobs, and other measures that will supposedly help Linda and Leo get ahead in life. But I hope you see the underlying assumption in this imagined scenario - that success depends on government intervention and assistance.
“That is decidedly not the America that our Founding Fathers envisioned, not the model that led our nation to generations of flourishing and success, and not a viable way forward for the country,” Palmer continued. “Democrats in Congress and the White House would have you believe that the government will take care of you. They would have you become dependent on bureaucrats who do not know you. I am confident that the American people know better, and I'm committed to fighting against every measure that Democrats are trying to pass to make Americans more dependent on a government that is actually failing them on many levels. America has always been a land of opportunity and promise, and it can be that again, but it will take leadership. As Ronald Reagan once said, 'The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things.' Americans are capable of great things, and I'm determined to fight government measures that would prevent them from accomplishing them.”
Democratic leaders had hoped to pass both bills out of the House on Friday but postponed action after centrists demanded a nonpartisan accounting of its costs - a process that could take weeks, meaning they could still be working on the legislation until the end of the year.
In addition, Congress is rapidly approaching a government funding deadline of Dec. 3, which is also the date that lawmakers will need to negotiate a debt-ceiling increase in order for the government to be able to pay its bills. Both the spending bill and debt ceiling increase are must-pass pieces of legislation that will require intense negotiations and are likely to go down to the wire.
