Providing affordable, high-speed Internet service to every American would be equivalent to the 1930s federal government project on rural electrification, says President Joe Biden.
“It laid the groundwork for a massive, sustained economic boom that would follow World War II.”, President Biden said Tuesday in Wisconsin about President Franklin Roosevelt’s plan.
High speed internet is not a luxury. “Now it is a necessity, like water and electricity,” the president said during his last speech outside the US capital in a bid to push for the approval of a $ 1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package.
The package aims to boost middle-class employment by creating “good-paying jobs, repairing roads and bridges,” said President Biden at the Wisconsin State Transportation Service in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
The White House notes that 90% of jobs created by infrastructure spending may be for employees without higher education.
The legislative package, reached through compromise, was negotiated last week with a group of 10 centrist senators, five Republicans and five Democrats. The package includes the largest public transport investment in history, according to the White House. It also aims to build a nationwide network for charging electric vehicles and eliminate lead pipelines.
A White House document says the reconstruction package is four times larger than the infrastructure investment approved after the Great Recession of 2008-2009, and the largest since the 1930s depression, which was followed by the at the expense of President Roosevelt.
The package includes the largest investment in passenger rail services since the creation of the Amtrak system. In Wisconsin alone, the White House said, the package will help repair 979 bridges and more than 3,100 miles of highways in poor condition.
Mr Biden’s efforts to pass the infrastructure package had a difficult start last week as he announced the consensus reached along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers.
The president told reporters he would reject the package if Congress also did not approve another multi-trillion-dollar bill for families in need and clean energy, which is strongly opposed by most Republican lawmakers.
Mr Biden said on Saturday that his comments had “given the impression that I was vetoing a plan I had just agreed on, which was certainly not my intention”.
Withdrawing from the veto threat to the infrastructure package, President Biden said he wholeheartedly supports both the bilateral infrastructure package and the social spending legislation still under development, noting that Republicans will try to defeat it. the so-called “human infrastructure” legislation.
If Congress finally passes social security legislation, it is likely that only Democratic lawmakers will vote on it.
The president expects to sign “both bills into law, and he will leave it to congressional leaders to determine the order,” said White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Senate Republican Opposition Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday that the president “has appropriately separated a possible bipartisan bill from massive, unrelated tax and spending plans that Democrats want to pursue on a partisan basis.”
He said he now wanted President Biden to engage with Democratic Party leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives to “make sure they follow his example.”
The White House on Tuesday rated a new Yahoo / YouGov poll showing that 51% of American adults support the bilateral infrastructure deal and 60% of Republicans can support it.
Some observers believe the compromise will lie behind Mr Biden’s clarifications and repeated assurances that the two bills will be dealt with separately.
“The argument for concluding a bilateral agreement with future legislation must be understood in the context of this competition between priorities. “The president has aptly clarified that he is committed to pursuing his full agenda, but will not condition the success of one component on another.”, said Jason Grumet, founder and president of the Center for Bipartisan Policy.
Mr Biden “has been an effective legislator for 30 years and acknowledges that the ‘all or nothing’ policy produces a predictable outcome, and is not ‘everything’,” Mr Grumet said.
Meanwhile, climate activists are expressing concern that the president is abandoning campaign promises regarding global warming in order to reach an agreement with opposition lawmakers. A group of protesters gathered near the White House on Monday.
“In some cases, people need to remember which community put them in the game.” Democrat lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told protesters. “We invite the White House to the game.”
