Everything In the $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill: New Roads, Electric School Buses, and More

Everything In The $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Bill: New Roads, Electric School Buses And More
Jonathan Ponciano

President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law one of the largest infrastructure packages in U.S. history after months of bipartisan negotiations and tense political infighting, shoring up $1.2 trillion in funds, including $550 billion in new investments for the nation’s bridges, airports, waterways, public transit and more
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanponciano/2021/11/15/everything...

KEY FACTS

Roads and bridges: Headlining the 2,702-page bill’s spending, roughly $110 billion of new funds would go toward improving the nation’s roads and bridges, and investments in other major transportation programs.

Public transit: The package also includes the largest-ever federal investment in public transit, allotting $39 billion to modernize systems, improve access for the elderly and people with disabilities, and repair more than 24,000 buses, 5,000 railcars and thousands of miles of train tracks.

Amtrak: The legislation marks the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago, with $66 billion earmarked for high-speed rail, safety improvements, Amtrak grants and modernization of the rail route connecting Washington, D.C., to Boston.

Broadband internet: Tacking on to billions authorized by last year’s American Rescue Plan, the infrastructure bill includes $65 billion to bolster the country’s broadband infrastructure and help ensure that every American has access to high-speed internet, with one in four households expected to be eligible for a $30-per-month subsidy to pay for internet access.

Electric grid and energy: Though many clean-energy measures were cut from the bill to satisfy spending-weary lawmakers, a $108 billion investment will help upgrade the nation’s electricity grid, with thousands of miles of new transmission lines and funds for environmentally friendly smart-grid technology.

Electric cars, buses and ferries: In addition to $7.5 billion for the nation’s first network of electric-vehicle chargers along highway corridors, lawmakers have shored up $5 billion for zero-emission buses (including thousands of electric school buses) and $2.5 billion for ferries.

Clean drinking water: Following high-profile water-supply crises plaguing cities like Flint, Michigan, the legislation includes a provision for $55 billion to replace all the nation’s lead pipes and service lines, representing the largest investment in clean drinking water ever

Great rivers and lakes: Among the bill’s more than $50 billion for water infrastructure improvements, about $1 billion is slated to go toward the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a sweeping clean-up measure targeting toxic hot spots—or areas of heavy industrial pollution—around the Great Lakes region, and $17 billion will be allocated to ports and waterways.

Airports: More than $25 billion has been allocated to help modernize America’s airports—funds the Airports Council International says will help tackle more than $115 billion worth of project backlogs.

Road safety: The deal invests $11 billion in transportation safety programs, including a new program to help states and localities reduce crashes and fatalities in their communities, particularly among cyclists and pedestrians.

Normal funding: In addition to the $550 billion in NEW SPENDING, the package also includes roughly $650 billion in previously authorized funding for roads and other infrastructure, including nearly $300 billion for the Highway Trust Fund and $90 billion for public transit over the next five years.

BIG NUMBER is $256 billion: That’s how much the Congressional Budget Office estimates the infrastructure bill could add to the nation’s budget deficit over the next 10 years, meaning nearly half of the package’s proposed NEW spending could end up tacked on to the nation’s $29 trillion debt load!!!

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Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on November 19, 2021 at 11:45am

Let's Go Brandon

Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), has catalogued many of the most radical policies in the Build Back Better Act.

Banks noted:

  1. Innovation-killing Socialist Price Controls: The bill would institute government price-setting of prescription drugs which has shown to be likely to lead to significantly decreased private investment in new cures. (page 1977)
  2. Funds Biden’s Banking Surveillance Apparatus: The bill would spend $500 million to hire new DOJ Tax Division agents to bring civil and criminal cases against Americans (page 878).
  3. Removes Funding Prohibition Regarding Uyghur Muslins in China: Democrats have removed a provision in the previous draft of the reconciliation bill (Sec. 90027) (pg. 1082) which prohibited any funding provided by the Title on Science, Space and Technology to award a contract, subcontract, grant or loan to an entity involved with using the forced labor of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province in China. This would remove protections preventing taxpayer dollars from going to entities using Uyghur Muslim slaves in China.
  4. Tax Pork for Trial Lawyers: (pg. 1970) This provision modifies current law expensing rules to allow plaintiffs’ attorneys to deduct out of pocket litigation costs in the year they are incurred, rather than waiting until the conclusion of the litigation. The provision applies to amounts paid, incurred, or received in taxable years beginning after the date of enactment

OTHER REVIVED POLICIES

  1. Nicotine Tax: The bill would add back language imposing a new tax on nicotine, which is a clear violation of President Biden’s pledge not to tax people that make under $400k. (page 1973)
  2. Tax Credit for Journalists: The bill would add back in language creating a tax credit applied against Medicare employer taxes for wages paid to journalists (page 1957).
  1. 21st Century Segregation: The bill would add back $500 million for schools of medicine prioritizing funding based on racial demographics, and requiring faculty to be hired and students to be recruited based on prioritizing racial and demographic characteristics. (page 658)
  2. Left-wing divisive race-baiting. The bill would add back language that continues the left’s divisive and race-baiting attempts to portray everyday Americans as racist and oppressive, claiming all minorities are ‘denied a full opportunity’ to participate in American life. (page 1157)

OTHER NOTABLE EXISTING POLICIES

  1. Billions for “Tree Equity”: The bill would include a $2.5 billion slush fund that would send taxpayer dollars to radical environmental groups to plant trees and advance “tree equity.” (page 18)
  2. Public Health Indoctrination: The bill uses funding for maternal mortality as a tool to advance critical race theory, climate change, and SOGI language. Specifically, it promotes funding for racism and discrimination training curriculum (page 682), funding for health care risks training to promote the left’s climate change agenda (page 689), and refers to pregnant women as pregnant “individuals.” (page 676)
  3. Tax Credits for Electric Bicycles: The bill would create a tax credit worth up to $900 when someone purchases an electric bicycle. And the credit wouldn’t start to phase out until a family makes at least $150,000 a year. (page 1527)
  4. Obamacare Propaganda: The bill would require HHS to advertise the expanded Obamacare tax credits in States that haven’t expanded Medicaid directly to “racial and sexual minorities,” among others, and claims that they are “hard-to-reach.” (page 472)
  5. Subjects small business to reckless tax penalties: The bill subjects small businesses with over $600 in transactions to backup tax withholding requirements if they fail to comply with IRS regulations (page 1932).
  6. Makes it easier for the IRS to target taxpayers: The bill would make it easier for the IRS to issue penalties against taxpayers by removing the requirement that each penalty assessments be approved by a supervisor. Instead, the bill would merely require supervisors to provide quarterly reports on whether IRS employeesare following the proper guidelines and requirements (page 1934).
  7. Money for Gun Control: The bill would spend $2.5 billion for “Community-based Violence Intervention initiatives” which could be used to deny the individual exercise of the 2nd Amendment without due process. (page 876).

HIGHLIGHTED FROM PREVIOUS LISTS

  1. Perpetuates labor shortage: Continues welfare benefits without work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents at a time where there are 10.4 million job openings—more openings than there are people looking for work.
  2. Pushes Green New Deal in our universities: Democrats include a $10 billion “environmental justice” higher education credit program to indoctrinate college students and advance Green New Deal policies (page 1571)
  3. Forces faith-based child care providers out: The bill blocks the ability of many faith-based providers from participating in the childcare system and will lead to many of their closures (page 214).
  4. Hurts small and in-home daycares: Requires pre-K staff to have a college degree. (page 245)
  5. Includes new incentives for illegal immigration: Illegal immigrants would be eligible for federal student aid (page 78) and the enhanced child tax credit (page 1647)

21. Includes legislative hull for Biden’s vaccine mandate: Increases OSHA penalties on businesses that fail to implement the mandate up to $700,000 per violation (page 105) and includes nearly a billion dollars in funding for the Department of Labor to increase enforcement of these penalties (page 103).
22. Gives unions near-total control: The bill creates a new civil penalty against employers up to $100,000 and subjects directors and officers to penalties that wouldn’t apply to union bosses and officials (page 108). It coerces businesses to meet union boss demands by increasing Fair Labor Standards Act penalties by an astronomical 900% (page 105).

23. Makes unions bigger and more powerful: The bill revives a provision from an earlier version that would subsidize union dues that would only serve to strengthen the influence of union bosses and not American workers (page 1955).

24. Pushes Democrats’ wasteful and confusing school lunch agenda: $250 million for, among other things,“procuring…culturally appropriate foods” (page 275)

25. Furthers radical abortion agenda: The bill would also further Democrats’ radical pro-abortion agenda by allowing taxpayer money to fund elective abortions, subsidizing plans that cover them, and creating new ways taxpayer money could spent on pro-abortion facilities.

26. Drives up costs on Americans’ utility bills: Includes a tax on natural gas eventually up to $1,500 per ton that could cost the American economy up to $9.1 billion and cost 90,000 Americans their jobs (page 361).

27. Includes kickbacks for the Left’s green energy special interest network: $3 billion for “environmental and climate justice block grants” (page 373) and tens of billions more for green energy special interest subsidies, loans and other carve outs.

28. Gives wealthy Americans tax credits: Hundreds of billions of dollars in “green energy” tax credits will be given to those who can afford expensive electric vehicles and other “green” innovative products (page 1434).

29. Furthers Democrats’ social justice agenda: Includes “equity” initiatives throughout the bill. In fact, the word is mentioned 32 times.

30. Grants Deportation Protection and Work Permits to Illegal Immigrants: The bill would grant 5-year parole to certain illegal aliens who file for parole, pay a fee, and complete a law enforcement background check “to the satisfaction of [Biden’s DHS Secretary].” Such a parole would include both travel and work permits, a REAL ID driver’s license, and would be extendable until 2031 (page 862).

31.Increases visa limit: Democrats would bypass annual limits on immigration by adding unused employment-based visas on top of the existing 226,000 family-preference visa floor and “recapturing” hundreds of thousands of previously issued visas from past years. The bill would also give lottery visas to anyone who was denied one due to the Pandemic or because of President Trump’s immigration policies. (page 865).

32. Grants fast-tracked green cards for those seeking middle-class careers in America: Language included in the bill exempts certain aliens from the annual green card statutory limits and has been described as a “hidden pipeline for U.S. employers to flood more cheap foreign graduates into millions of middle-class careers needed by American graduates” (page 867).

33. Increases energy dependence on OPEC, Russia and China: The bill includes mineral and energy withdrawals on federal lands (page 912) and overturns provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that authorized energy production in the Arctic that will result in 130,000 Americans losing their jobs and $440 billion in lost federal revenue (page 933).

34. Exacerbates the chip shortage: The bill would fund the conversion of the Postal Service and General Services Administration vehicle fleet from internal combustion engines to electric engines at a time when there is a global microchip shortage and crippled supply chains (page 936).

35. Democrats’ feckless China bill is included: Concepts from the insanely weak Endless Frontier Act included, including billions of dollars in research funding that will likely result in American intellectual property going to China (page 954)).

36. Punishes red states for failing to adopt Green New Deal provisions: Mandates “consequences” for conservative states that don’t meet the radical Left’s “green” climate standards while at the same time adding nearly $4 billion for “Community Climate Incentive Grants” for cooperating states (page 1013).

37. Paid Worker Leave Entitlement for the Unemployed: The new paid leave entitlement would mandate workers get 4 weeks of paid leave under which workers could “self-attest” their eligibility and do not even need to be currently employed. (page 1065).

38.Advances a totalitarian and paternalistic view of the federal government: Includes grants for organizations to treat individuals suffering from “loneliness” and “social isolation.”(page 1252)

39. Further detaches individuals from employment and more reliant on government handouts: The bill spends hundreds of billions on welfare through manipulating the tax code [not even including the expansions of Obamacare subsidies] (page 1636).

40. Tax benefits for the top 1%: The bill would increase by more than seven-fold the cap on state and local tax deductibility, meaning many of the top 1% wealthiest Americans would pay less in taxes. (page 1729)

41. Tax credit for wealthy donors who give to woke universities: The bill creates a new tax credit program that gives tax credits worth 40% of cash contribution that are made to university research programs (page 1717).

42. Expands worst parts of Obamacare: Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandate will become more severe by adjusting the definition of “affordable coverage” to mean coverage that costs no more than 8.5 percent of income rather than current law’s 9.5 percent of income (page 1656).

43. Increases taxes on Americans at every income level: The bill’s trillions of dollars in tax hikes will be felt by those making under $400,000 per year, contrary to what the White House says.

44. Lowers wages for working families and moves jobs overseas: The 15% minimum tax on book income is a double tax on investment. This would raise taxes on American companies by hundreds of billions of dollars, kill 25,000 jobs, and reduce wages by 0.1%, all in the name of complying with Biden’s desire to appease global elites through a global minimum tax. (page 1731)

45. Penalizes marriage: The bill would double the EITC’s marriage penalty on childless worker benefits (page 1651).

46. Imposes crushing taxes on small business: Hammer small businesses that file as individual tax earners with Obamacare’s 3.8% tax on net investment income(page 1883).

47. Violates Americans’ financial privacy: $80 billion slush fund to hire an 87,000-IRS-agent army that would be used to carry out the Biden administration’s plan to review every account with more than $10,000 worth of transactions in a year. The plan includes hiring 5,000 new armed criminal agents. (page 1923).

48. Increases out of pocket costs for those who rely on prescription drugs: The bill will repeal the Trump- era Rebate Rule which passes through rebates directly to consumers at the point of sale (page 2114).

The legislation will go to the Senate, where it remains uncertain if moderate Democrats such Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema will support the bill. Manchin has expressed concerns about the paid leave program and remains concerned about how the bill might impact inflation. Democrats cannot afford to lose one vote to pass the bill.

Weblink for full article:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/11/19/house-passes-behemoth...

Comment by Thinklike A. Mountain on November 19, 2021 at 11:42am

Jared Golden was the only Dem who did not support it. Throw him out any way. The Commies play scorched earth. It's time Republicans did the same. This is not a game. We must also extract all the RINO's out during the primaries. They are giant traitors, basically frauds simply there to create the illusion of a two party system.

 

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Maine Center For Public Interest Reporting – Three Part Series: A CRITICAL LOOK AT MAINE’S WIND ACT

******** IF LINKS BELOW DON'T WORK, GOOGLE THEM*********

(excerpts) From Part 1 – On Maine’s Wind Law “Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine if the law’s goals were met." . – Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting, August 2010 https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/From Part 2 – On Wind and Oil Yet using wind energy doesn’t lower dependence on imported foreign oil. That’s because the majority of imported oil in Maine is used for heating and transportation. And switching our dependence from foreign oil to Maine-produced electricity isn’t likely to happen very soon, says Bartlett. “Right now, people can’t switch to electric cars and heating – if they did, we’d be in trouble.” So was one of the fundamental premises of the task force false, or at least misleading?" https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/wind-swept-task-force-set-the-rules/From Part 3 – On Wind-Required New Transmission Lines Finally, the building of enormous, high-voltage transmission lines that the regional electricity system operator says are required to move substantial amounts of wind power to markets south of Maine was never even discussed by the task force – an omission that Mills said will come to haunt the state.“If you try to put 2,500 or 3,000 megawatts in northern or eastern Maine – oh, my god, try to build the transmission!” said Mills. “It’s not just the towers, it’s the lines – that’s when I begin to think that the goal is a little farfetched.” https://www.pinetreewatchdog.org/flaws-in-bill-like-skating-with-dull-skates/

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Hannah Pingree on the Maine expedited wind law

Hannah Pingree - Director of Maine's Office of Innovation and the Future

"Once the committee passed the wind energy bill on to the full House and Senate, lawmakers there didn’t even debate it. They passed it unanimously and with no discussion. House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree, a Democrat from North Haven, says legislators probably didn’t know how many turbines would be constructed in Maine."

https://pinetreewatch.org/wind-power-bandwagon-hits-bumps-in-the-road-3/

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