FINALLY, IT IS INFRASTRUCTURE WEEK

As he and President Joe Biden promised, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., intends to move forward this week on two tracks to achieve the most extensive investment in infrastructure in living memory. On one track, he has a $3.5 trillion reconciliation package for “human infrastructure”; on the other, there is the bipartisan

$1.2 trillion deal for hard infrastructure.

Contrary to Republican spin (and the credulous punditry that regurgitates it), Democrats hold the cards here. Should Republicans balk at the $1.2 trillion deal — thereby reneging on their public announcement standing shoulder to shoulder with the president — Schumer will simply dump the contents of that bill into the reconciliation package.

If Republicans were gambling that Democrats could never agree on the reconciliation deal, they misread Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who has not operated like the hard-line socialist they painted him to be as chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Sanders, who initially supported a $6 trillion reconciliation package, confirmed last week that Senate Democrats and the administration had reached an agreement, which he called a “pivotal moment in American history.”

Recent polling should force Republicans tempted to back away from the deal to pause. The latest CBS-YouGov poll showed approval for Biden’s infrastructure deal at 59%, with only 41% disapproval. By a 51% to 31% margin, parents of children under 18 think the child tax credit will help them. Support also remains astoundingly high for more spending on roads and bridges (87%); more broadband connectivity in rural areas (73%); and child care and care for the elderly (71%). (It is noteworthy that the last item is part of the reconciliation plan that all Republicans in the Senate oppose.)

In remarks on Monday, Biden recalled claims from those in the MAGA crowd that he would destroy capitalism and sink the economy. “Capitalism is alive and very well,” he said with a chuckle. And he did not hesitate to remind Republicans that they “shook hands” on the hard infrastructure deal. He also highlighted his pro-free-market executive order that banned or limited practices such as noncompetitive deals and reiterated its aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement.

The message was plain: Rather than a radical socialist, as Republicans have attempted to label him, Biden is presenting himself as the savior of capitalism. “We can’t slow down now,” he declared. As for the tax increases included in the reconciliation package, Biden was more than happy to make the popular pitch that big corporations should not get away with paying little or nothing in taxes.

Biden’s view of the economy is not the unbridled capitalism of libertarians nor the crony capitalism in which favorable tax breaks and regulations magnify economic inequality. If he has a thumb on the scales, it is in favor of middle- and working-class Americans. Whatever one might think of the strength of that approach, it is a political winner — which is why Republicans find it so difficult to derail his agenda despite Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s pledge to devote “100%” of his energies to blocking Biden’s proposals.