Will the win by Biden and congressional Democrats of his $1.3 trillion infrastructure deal change the country's mood that saw the Democrats lose closely watched state races in last Tuesday's elections and the gubernatorial race in Virginia?....By editor and associate publisher Kathy Wray Coleman of Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader
United States President Joe Biden
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor, associate publisher
Clevelandurbannews.com and-Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
WASHINGTON, D.C.- President Joe Biden's $1.3 trillion infrastructure deal, bipartisan legislation passed by Congress on Friday after months of negotiations and weeks of congressional infighting, is a welcome relief for the first-term president as midterm elections loom and the coronavirus pandemic rages on. But will the president's infrastructure win change the mood of the country that saw the Democrats lose closely watched state races and a gubernatorial race in Virginia to Republicans in last Tuesday's election, a political mood that also threatens the Democrats' narrow control in the U.S. Senate?
The bill awaits the president's signature to become law.
The 228-to-206 vote late on Friday in the House of Representatives of the ambitious spending bill is, no doubt, a substantial victory for Biden and his Democrats. And it furthers the president's domestic agenda, one that conservative-leaning Republicans, let alone some moderate members of his own party, continue to question as over broad and unnecessarily expensive.
Biden expressed gratitude for support of his infrastructure deal from the White House with Vice President Kamala Harris, the nation's first Black vice president, by his side.
Supported especially by the progressive wing of Congress, particularly in the House, the measure includes significant infrastructure investments, including relative to bridges, roads, bridges, railways, drinking water, and broadband internet in poor and rural communities in particular.
“Finally. Infrastructure week,” Biden said in response to passage of his infrastructure legislation last week, alluding to the failure by his predecessor, former president Donald Trump, to get mass infrastructure bills through Congress.
The former vice president under former president Barack Obama who ousted Trump from the White House in 2020 with a promise of bringing calm and economic stability to a country burdened by a partisan divide and never-ending congressional bickering, Biden hastened to contribute Tuesday's election night losses by Democrats in major races nationwide to the delay in getting his infrastructure deal approved by Congress by expressed some regret that it did not pass sooner.
The president said that his infrastructure deal is the first of its kind and the first time in history that Congress has approved such a massive investment. It comes behind passage of a massive stimulus package by Congress in March that President Biden championed.
The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, also called the COVID-19 Stimulus Package or American Rescue Plan, is Biden's $1.9 trillion economic stimulus bill, a bill passed by Congress in March in response to the economic, physical and other effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has claimed the lives of over a half million Americans, and even more worldwide.
First proposed in January of this year, the American Rescue Plan builds upon many of the measures in the CARES Act from March 2020 and in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, from December.
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