United States: Biden snatches adoption of massive infrastructure plan

Published on : 11/06/2021 – 7:16 AM

In pain, the US Congress definitively adopted, Friday, November 5, the vast infrastructure investment plan desired by Joe Biden, a victory obtained by the Democratic president who was unable to convince parliamentarians to also vote on the social component. and ecological of its ambitious reform projects.

It took 218 votes for Democrats to pass this $ 1,200 billion plan to modernize roads, bridges, high-speed internet and considered one of the most ambitious in modern American history. They obtained 228 against 206, thanks to the contribution of a few Republican votes, and the approval of the law was greeted by a round of applause.

The president will only have to sign it for it to come into force.

Joe Biden, who urgently needs to relaunch his presidency, hoped Friday morning to advance two major texts in the House of Representatives: this investment plan and a vast program to overhaul the social protection system and the fight against global warming valued at $ 1.7 trillion. In total, spending of some 3 trillion over a decade.

The Democratic leaders had to give up a vote of approval of the second text, the centrist wing of the party demanding clarification of the costing. The moderate and progressive fringes of the party finally agreed on a procedural vote to start the parliamentary process.

Democratic divisions

By adopting the only infrastructure program on Friday night, Democrats are saving the furniture despite the deep divisions running through their party.

Joe Biden, faced with a decline in popularity one year before the mid-term parliamentary elections, assured that his vast social program should for his part be voted on by the House in the week of November 15 at the latest, before the Senate do not grab it.

The latter notably provides for kindergarten for all, a profound improvement in health coverage and significant investments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – a real redefinition of the welfare state in the United States.

But it is the subject of very difficult negotiations within the Democratic Party, between the left wing and the moderate camp.

Throughout the day, Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi tried to get her troops in order, and to build support for the president’s plans.

“The program that we are putting forward is innovative, historic, and this is what makes it a challenge,” she said in a letter to the Democrats, as if to explain these internal quarrels between elected officials of the party.

The progressive wing of the Democratic Party had repeatedly warned that it would not support the text on infrastructure without a guarantee of the passage of the social and climate component of Joe Biden.

Some elected Democrats thus joined the Republicans in voting “no” to the adoption of the plan.

To throw money around

Biden’s trips to the Capitol, breakfasts with elected officials … The White House has spared no efforts in recent weeks to garner support.

Because the US executive repeats it over and over again: the president’s spending programs are very popular with Americans. However, the Democrats will call into play in a year their narrow majority in Congress during parliamentary elections of mid-term, always perilous for the presidents in place.

But Joe Biden, who praised his negotiating skills during the presidential campaign because of his long career as a senator, stumbles on these internal disputes.

And the president is not at the end of his sentences.

If it obtains the green light from elected officials in the Chamber after mid-November, its major social component will still have to be approved in the Senate, where it risks being significantly altered.

Its fate is more particularly in the hands of an elected official from West Virginia, Senator Joe Manchin, who says he fears that the plan will further widen public debt and fuel inflation.

>> To read: United States: for Joe Biden, a Democratic nightmare named Joe Manchin

From Friday evening, however, he welcomed the adoption of the text on infrastructure, an unprecedented investment “for three decades”.

In view of the very thin Democratic majority in the Senate, he virtually has a right of veto over presidential projects.

With AFP