From: Peter Myers
Subject: WaPo: Biden Advisors fear Infrastructure Investments may help White Working-Class Men
To: Peter Myers
WaPo: Biden Advisors fear Infrastructure Investments may help White Working-Class Men
(1) WashPo: Biden Advisors fear Infrastructure Investments may help White Working-Class Men
(2) WaPo: Liberal economists urge Biden to fund child care rather than infrastructure - Minorities rather than White Working Class men
(3) Russia Warns of Anti-White Racism, 'Aggression' against Whites in U.S.
(1) WashPo: Biden Advisors fear Infrastructure Investments may help White Working-Class Men
https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=62135
Chris Menahan
Apr. 01, 2021
The Washington Post is reporting that "people close to the White House" expressed concerns that investing in "major physical infrastructure investments" may help the "White Working-Class male worker."
Rather than focus on building bridges, roads and physical infrastructure, Biden's advisors instead told him to focus on "major caregiving investments," such as child care and public health care -- even if they don't "normally fall into [the] definition of infrastructure" -- because caregiving investments will disproportionately help "minorities and women."
From The Washington Post, "White House dramatically increased tax proposal as it sought to address tensions over next big spending plan":
Democrats may use the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to approve an infrastructure package with a narrow majority that would not require Republican votes, the same way they approved the coronavirus relief bill. Bill Hoagland, senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, citing conversations with Senate Democratic staffers, said: "The difficulty is all the advocacy groups have seen the possibility of using reconciliation to move their agendas [for] things that do not normally fall into definition of infrastructure -- child care; public health care. The moderates and the center will say, 'Wait a minute; let's deal with those through the normal appropriations process.'"
Some people close to the White House said they feel that the emphasis on major physical infrastructure investments reflects a dated nostalgia for a kind of White Working-Class male worker. In private discussions with the White House National Economic Council, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Domestic Policy Council, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry urged the administration to follow through on its promise to approve major investments in the care economy.
Henry said she reminded the White House of promises Biden had made in person to low-wage service workers -- disproportionately minorities and women who also helped elect him in the fall.
On National Equal Pay Day, Council of Economic Advisers economists Cecilia Rouse and Heather Boushey talked at the White House media briefing about the need for major caregiving investments.
On a private Zoom call earlier this month, economists Heidi Shierholz, Darrick Hamilton and Larry Katz presented Rouse, Boushey and other senior Biden officials with evidence that federal investments in care work would do more to generate jobs and economic growth than physical infrastructure, Shierholz said.
"We're up against a gender and racial bias that this work is not worth as much as the rubber, steel and auto work of the past century," Henry said. "The key job right now is we have to in the public imagination and in the congressional debate widen the lens, so that people understand that investment in caregiving is an investment in infrastructure."
The $2 trillion infrastructure plan Biden unveiled on Wednesday spends less than 6 percent on roads and bridges.
More money is spent on building "500,000 electric vehicle charging stations" and "electrify 20% of school buses and electrify the federal fleet" ($174 billion) than on modernizing bridges, highways, roads and upgrading air travel, airports, waterways and coastal ports ($157 billion).
In contrast, $400 billion -- the single biggest chunk of the plan -- goes towards "caregiving" as his advisors requested.
Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab, Minds, Parler and Telegram.
(2) WaPo: Liberal economists urge Biden to fund child care rather than infrastructure - Minorities rather than White Working Class men
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/03/29/biden-infrastructure-taxes-spending-plan/
30 Mar 2021 19:50:40 UTC
White House dramatically increased tax proposal as it sought to address tensions over next big spending plan
Biden aides see next major legislative effort as comparable to LBJ's Great Society but face divisions among key allies
By Jeff Stein
March 29, 2021 at 9:41 p.m. UTC
When President Biden's team began putting together his infrastructure and jobs package this February, the White House National Economic Council circulated an internal proposal calling for about $3 trillion in new spending and $1 trillion in new tax hikes, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. ...
The two-pronged package Biden will begin unveiling this week includes higher amounts of federal spending but also significantly more in new tax revenue — with possibly as much as $4 trillion in new spending and more than $3 trillion in tax increases, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private dynamics. One person familiar with the matter said that the early infrastructure draft did not include every tax increase the White House was eventually considering including in its ultimate proposal, and that the administration believes the tax hikes can also advance its goal of reducing income inequality. ...
Biden's "Build Back Better" agenda is ambitious in scope, aiming to confront global climate change, rebuild the nation's infrastructure, revive domestic manufacturing and transform U.S. child care, among other goals.
The path toward crafting the legislation has exposed the White House to crosscutting demands from key allies. This account is based on interviews with seven senior administration officials involved in the effort, as well as more than a dozen congressional officials, labor leaders, activists and economists involved in the crafting of the package.
One core tension is to what degree Democrats should emphasize investments in traditional physical infrastructure seen as more likely to garner GOP support — such as roads and bridges — rather than child care and other social spending that liberal economists increasingly have emphasized as critical to ensuring robust economic growth.
It is unclear to what extent Biden has the political capital to do both. Already, the administration has decided to trim its sails somewhat and is not expected to make a child anti-poverty initiative permanent or embrace a plan from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) to devote as much as $500 billion to push mass transit away from fossil fuels. ...
But White House officials assembling the package also faced demands from key constituencies to not let the caregiving proposals be of secondary importance to more-traditional infrastructure investments.
Some people close to the White House said they feel that the emphasis on major physical infrastructure investments reflects a dated nostalgia for a kind of White Working-Class male worker. In private discussions with the White House National Economic Council, the Council of Economic Advisers and the Domestic Policy Council, SEIU International President Mary Kay Henry urged the administration to follow through on its promise to approve major investments in the care economy.
Henry said she reminded the White House of promises Biden had made in person to low-wage service workers — disproportionately minorities and women who also helped elect him in the fall. ...