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Why the White House hasn't benefited much from investing in infrastructure

Published

3 hours ago

November 15, 2024

Why the White House hasn't benefited much from investing in infrastructure

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg at the Baltimore and Potomac Tunnel North Portal in January 2023 in Baltimore. The tunnel, which is more than 150 years old, will be replaced with funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law.

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WASHINGTON — Three years after President Biden signed the bipartisan infrastructure law, his administration has a new name for it: the “Big Deal.”

Biden signs the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill into law

It is, indisputably, a lot of money: more than a trillion dollars in spending on roads, bridges, airports, railroads, ports and more.

But for all that investment, the White House has seen surprisingly little political benefit.

“You know, I don’t think it did,” said Ray LaHood, a Republican who served as Transportation Secretary during the Obama administration. “I was shocked.”

During the first Trump administration, infrastructure week became a running joke in Washington. President Biden took it seriously, betting that voters would reward his administration for delivering where others had not.

But this month, that bet fell flat with voters, who didn’t seem to give his Democratic party much credit.

Here's what's included in the bipartisan infrastructure law

“The most important thing is that the projects actually get done,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg in an interview at the Department of Transportation this week. “From the point of view of the country, it is more important that they get done than it is who gets the credit.”

For the past three years, Buttigieg has spent much of his time on the road, attending ribbon cuttings and ground-breakings for projects all over the country. The DOT has announced $570 billion in funding from the infrastructure law for over 66,000 projects in all 50 states — from $400 million to shore up the Golden Gate Bridge, to $1 million for a new terminal at a tiny airport in Chamberlain, South Dakota.

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“It’s everything from these backyard projects to the cathedrals of American infrastructure,” Buttigieg said.

In noting the anniversary on Friday, President Biden called the law, “the largest investment in our nation’s infrastructure in a generation,” he said in a post on X. “On that day, we showed we can get big things done when we work together.”

So why haven’t these investments resonated more with voters?

From left, Pennsylvania Secretary of Transportation Mike Carroll, U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Dave Brown, owner of Splits and Giggles Cafe, and Lancaster, Pa., Mayor Danene Sorace speak next to one of the city's new protected bike lanes in June 2024.

Part of the issue, Buttigieg argues, is timing. “Some of these projects can be done quickly, but many of them, by their very nature, are projects that take the better part of a decade,” he said. “So it will be a long time before ribbons are cut.”

There are some other theories about why the message didn’t cut through. Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, calls the infrastructure law a “slam dunk success,” but says voters were more concerned about inflation.

“People are paying a lot more for groceries and rent and gasoline than they were a few years ago. So no matter what you did that was good,” Zandi said, “it just gets drowned out by the reality of higher inflation.”

There’s also a theory that the infrastructure law wasn’t ambitious enough.

“These investments are not producing the sorts of results that would get people excited,” said Beth Osborne, the director of the non-profit Transportation For America, which recently released a report on the climate effects of the infrastructure law.

“We are told that it’s going to bring down emissions, but we just released a report that showed it did not do that,” Osborne said.

There’s yet another theory that the Biden and Kamala Harris campaigns just didn’t talk enough about the infrastructure law and the jobs it’s already created.

“I think there should’ve been a lot more focus on the infrastructure bill, on the jobs. I think it would have resonated with voters,” said LaHood, the former transportation secretary who also served as a Congressman from Illinois. “There’s a lot of people working, there’s a lot of orange cones on the highway.”

In the three years since I signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, my Administration has launched over 66,000 projects across the country.
And today, we’re investing an additional $1.5 billion in the Northeast Corridor, the most heavily trafficked rail corridor in our nation.
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— President Biden (@POTUS) November 15, 2024

Back in 2021, 19 Republicans in the Senate and 13 in the House supported the infrastructure law. But many more voted against it, arguing it was overstuffed with too many pet projects.

“This bill, this $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, isn’t true infrastructure,” said Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) in an interview on FOX.

Two years later, Mace was happy to celebrate funding for a new public transit hub in her district.

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“What do you want me to do? Turn my back on the Low Country, when we can get funding for public transit? Absolutely not,” she said at a press conference for the project.

Mace wasn’t the only Republican who voted against the infrastructure law only to cheer its accomplishments later. That was sometimes frustrating to watch, said Transportation Secretary Buttigieg. And he expects it to keep happening.

“I think we’re about to have an entire administration doing that because of course, the President-elect also opposed this infrastructure package. But will, I’m sure, not hesitate to celebrate things that are done because of it,” Buttigieg said.

The DOT is doing everything it can to speed up the grantmaking process to make sure money continues to flow to these projects, Buttigieg said. He worries that the Trump administration could try to claw back some of the money in future years, but hopes it won’t come to that.

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“I still believe the jobs that are being created and the infrastructure being improved is so beneficial to so many people that it is going to be hard for ideologues to do away with these good efforts,” Buttigieg said. “That’s why it was bipartisan in the first place.”

Buttigieg argues that the legacy of this infrastructure law will be felt for decades to come. But others worry that the political lessons may linger as well.

“It’s going to be hard to do anything big,” said LaHood.

“We need better infrastructure. We should continue to invest,” said economist Mark Zandi. “But that’s going to be hard to do politically because lawmakers are seeing what’s happening here and they’re not getting credit for it.”

News

Donald Trump’s cabinet picks: key players in the president-elect’s administration

Published

2 hours ago

November 15, 2024

Press Room

Donald Trump’s cabinet picks: key players in the president-elect’s administration

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Donald Trump has moved quickly to name candidates for the top jobs in his incoming administration. The picks show that loyalty appears to have been a crucial criteria for a post — and in many cases, the president-elect’s picks have shocked Washington’s political establishment.

Many of the nominees could face gruelling Senate confirmation hearings in the new year before they are confirmed, but here is a handy guide to those likely to be among the most powerful players in the second Trump White House.

Marco Rubio

Secretary of state

Florida senator Marco Rubio, 53, is set to become America’s chief diplomat in Trump’s second administration. Rubio, a former political rival to Trump, is known for his hawkish views on China and Iran — and is not as isolationist as some other Trump allies.

Pete Hegseth

Secretary of defence

Pete Hegseth is a 44-year-old army veteran and Fox News host with no government experience who has been asked to lead an organisation with almost 3mn military and civilian employees. Hegseth’s views of the US military align with Trump’s instincts, including rooting out “socially correct garbage”.

Susie Wiles

White House chief of staff

Trump’s first decision after winning the 2024 presidential election was to pick his campaign manager, Susie Wiles, as chief of staff. Wiles, 67, is a seasoned Republican campaign operative who has established herself inside Trump’s orbit, in part by keeping the public spotlight on others.

John Ratcliffe

CIA director

John Ratcliffe, 59, director of national intelligence in the final year of Trump’s first term, is a staunch ally who sharply criticised special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election when he was a congressman.

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy

Government efficiency

Elon Musk, 53, and Vivek Ramaswamy, 39, are being put in charge of a promised effort to slash rules, bureaucracy and spending throughout government. They will lead a yet to be established “department of government efficiency”.

Mike Waltz

National security adviser

Mike Waltz, 50, is a decorated military veteran, Nato critic and China sceptic. The Florida congressman and retired Army Special Forces officer has called China an “existential” threat. He served several tours in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Africa.

Kristi Noem

Homeland security secretary

Governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem, 52, has been nominated to lead the Department of Homeland Security with a mandate to stem immigration. Her autobiography, which recounted how she shot her puppy Cricket for misbehaviour, became a national talking point earlier this year.

Tom Homan

Border tsar

Tom Homan, 62, previously served as Trump’s immigration and customs enforcement director, backing the policy of separating parents from their children to discourage irregular migration. He has been asked to crack down on undocumented immigrants crossing the US-Mexico border and deport those already in the US.

Elise Stefanik

US ambassador to UN

Republican New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik, 40, is a former White House aide to George W Bush who rose to prominence for questioning the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania about antisemitism on their campuses, leading to their resignations.

Mike Huckabee

US ambassador to Israel

Mike Huckabee, 69, is the former governor of Arkansas and a prominent evangelical Christian. He is adored by the Israeli right for unflinching support of Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon, and his support for their desire to annex the occupied West Bank.

Stephen Miller

Deputy chief of staff for policy

Stephen Miller is among the most vocal and influential immigration hawks in Trump’s inner circle. The appointment of the 39-year-old will put the conservative firebrand and longtime adviser at the heart of the president-elect’s effort to reduce illegal immigration.

Tulsi Gabbard

Director of national intelligence

The former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii is known for her pro-Russian views, including blaming Nato and President Joe Biden’s administration for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Tulsi Gabbard, 43, ran for president in 2020 from the far left of the Democratic party but has since embraced Trump and the Republicans.

Matt Gaetz

Attorney-general

The nomination of Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, 42, to run the Department of Justice has stunned Washington. Gaetz, a loyal Trump backer, was previously under investigation by the House of Representatives for alleged ethics breaches. Trump wants him to overhaul the department in retaliation for criminal investigations launched against the president-elect.

Robert F Kennedy Jr

Health secretary

Robert F Kennedy Jr, known as RFK, dropped his independent presidential campaign in August and backed Trump despite coming from the Democratic dynasty. Trump said he would allow 70-year-old Kennedy, a vocal vaccine sceptic and critic of the pharmaceutical industry, to “go wild” in reforming the US health and food system.

Reporting by Alex Rogers, Lauren Fedor, Oliver Barnes and Sophie Spiegelberger

News

Donald Trump picks Robert Kennedy Jr to run US health department

Published

14 hours ago

November 15, 2024

Press Room

Donald Trump picks Robert Kennedy Jr to run US health department

Donald Trump has nominated vaccine sceptic and former Democrat Robert F Kennedy Jr as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the latest in a series of controversial picks for top cabinet jobs.

The appointment will put Kennedy, who sowed doubts about Covid-19 vaccines and has been critical of the pharmaceutical industry, in charge of a department with a $1.8tn budget with wide-ranging influence over drug regulation and public health.

The move hit the stock market, as investors digested the prospect of tougher political outlook in the world’s biggest pharmaceutical market. US-listed vaccine makers including Moderna and BioNTech both closed down over 5 per cent on Thursday. On Friday European pharma groups fell, with GSK and Sanofi losing more than 3 per cent.

Trump said in a statement on Thursday that he was “thrilled” to nominate Kennedy to the role. “For too long, Americans have been crushed by the industrial food complex and drug companies who have engaged in deception, misinformation, and disinformation when it comes to Public Health,” the president-elect said.

Donald Trump welcomes Kennedy on stage during a campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona, in August © Olivier Touron/AFP/Getty Images

Trump has roiled Washington in recent days with a series of controversial cabinet nominations, raising questions about how many will make it through the Senate approval process. On Wednesday, he tapped loyalists Matt Gaetz as attorney-general and Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence.

Trump said that as head of HHS, with oversight of agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, Kennedy would “restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!”

During the final weeks of his presidential election campaign Trump had said he would “let [Kennedy] go wild on health, go wild on the food . . . go wild on medicines”. Drugmakers had expressed concern about the possibility of Kennedy being given a formal role in the administration.

Thanking Trump for his nomination, Kennedy wrote on X: “I look forward to working with the more than 80,000 employees at HHS to free the agencies from the smothering cloud of corporate capture so they can pursue their mission to make Americans once again the healthiest people on Earth.”

The Consumer Brands Association, whose members include Nestlé and PepsiCo, noted that the agencies within HHS “operate under a science and risk-based mandate and it is critical that framework remains under the new administration”.

Kennedy, the son of the late attorney-general Robert Kennedy, beat a number of other candidates for the job, including former housing secretary and neurosurgeon Ben Carson and ex-Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, according to a person close to discussions.

Robert F. Kennedy Carrying Son Robert Kennedy Jr. — A young Kennedy being carried by his father © Bettmann Archive

The nomination repays Kennedy for dropping his own campaign for the presidency and backing Trump instead, helping to deliver votes for the former president, the person said.

Kennedy’s nomination as the country’s top health official is likely to spark alarm among public health experts and pharmaceutical groups. He has described the Covid-19 jab as “the deadliest vaccine ever made” and last year said the virus was “ethnically targeted” to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

Democrat Senator Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate finance committee, said after the announcement that Kennedy’s “outlandish views on basic scientific facts are disturbing and should worry all parents who expect schools and other public spaces to be safe for their children”.

Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate health committee, praised the pick, and said Kennedy “championed issues like healthy foods and the need for greater transparency in our public health infrastructure”.

Kennedy has said he would reorient government resources to tackle chronic disease instead of spending money on prescription drugs, as well as floating the idea of removing fluoride from the water system and to take on food companies over the additives in food.

In an interview with NBC News last week, Kennedy insisted that “if vaccines are working for somebody, I’m not going to take them away. People ought to have choice.” But he added that he would remove “entire departments” of the FDA.

Kennedy’s appointment sets the stage for some of his allies to be appointed to other health agencies, such as the FDA, CDC and the National Institutes of Health. Healthcare influencers and entrepreneur siblings Calley and Casey Means, who are advising Kennedy, as well as Stanford professor Jay Bhattacharya, who opposed the widescale rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, have been jockeying for positions, according to a person close to discussions.

Health officials from Trump’s former administration, including Joe Grogan, Eric Hargan and Paul Mango, are also in the running for roles.

Trump also said on Thursday that he would name North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as secretary of the interior, giving the billionaire businessman a powerful role in the incoming administration’s efforts to boost domestic energy production.

Additional reporting by Gregory Meyer

News

What would Robert Kennedy junior mean for American health?

Published

14 hours ago

November 15, 2024

Press Room

What would Robert Kennedy junior mean for American health?

AS IN MOST marriages of convenience, Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy junior make unusual bedfellows. One enjoys junk food, hates exercise and loves oil. The other talks of clean food, getting America moving again and wants to eliminate oils of all sorts (from seed oil to Mr Trump’s beloved “liquid gold”). One has called the covid-19 vaccine a “miracle”, the other is a long-term vaccine sceptic. Yet on November 14th Mr Trump announced that Mr Kennedy was his pick for secretary of health and human services (HHS).