Biden faces fresh challenges after infrastructure victory
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden doesn’t need to look any further back than his time as vice president to grasp the challenges that lie ahead in promoting his new $1 trillion infrastructure deal to the American people and getting the money out the door fast enough that they can feel a real impact.
When President Barack Obama pushed through a giant stimulus bill in 2009, his administration faced criticism that the money was too slow to work its way into the sluggish economy, and Obama later acknowledged that he had failed to sell Americans on the benefits of the legislation.
Obama’s biggest mistake, he said in 2012, was thinking that the job of the presidency was “just about getting the policy right” rather than telling “a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose.”
Biden has begun his own effort after his infrastructure bill cleared the Congress, notching a hardfought win on a $1.2 trillion piece of legislation he called a “once-in-a-generation investment” that will tangibly improve Americans’ lives in the months and years to come.
It addresses such challenges as crumbling roads and bridges, gaps in access to affordable internet, water tainted by lead pipes, and homes and cities ill-prepared to cope with increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions.
In an effort to correct past messaging mistakes, the White House is planning an aggressive sales campaign for the infrastructure bill, with Biden planning trips across the U.S. to speak about the impacts of the legislation.
He’ll visit a port in Baltimore on Wednesday and promises a splashy signing ceremony for the infrastructure bill when legislators are back in Washington.
The administration is also deploying the heads of the Transportation, Energy, Interior and Commerce departments, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency administrator and top White House aides to speak about the bill on national and local media and African American and Spanish-language press.
And they’re putting out explainers across the departments’ digital platforms to help Americans better understand what’s in the bill.
But even as White House officials speak about what’s in the bill, they’ll also have to ensure the money gets spent.
It’s a challenge with which Biden is intimately familiar, having overseen the implementation of the 2009 stimulus as vice president. Then, despite promises to prioritize “shovel-ready projects,” challenges with permitting and other issues led to delays, prompting Obama to joke in 2011 that “shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”
Biden, for his part, said Americans could start to see the effects of the infrastructure bill in as little as two to three months.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday that once Biden signs the measure into law, his department will start doling out the first of about $660 billion in federal money, with some projects just waiting for funding, but others, like investments in new electric vehicle chargers, promoting safer streets for bicyclists and pedestrians, and efforts to reconnect communities divided by highways, taking longer.
In contrast to the 2009 stimulus, Buttigieg said, Biden’s infrastructure bill is “short term, but it’s long term.”
“This is about many, many years ahead, starting now,” he said. “This is how we do right by the next generation.”