Infrastructure and the Art of Politics

How Biden succeeded and Trump failed

In 1987, during my first week as a staff assistant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the Senate overrode Presidents Reagan’s veto of the Highway Reauthorization bill.

The House vote was overwhelming (401-26) and the Senate vote just made the two-thirds constitutional requirement (67-33).

Infrastructure spending has always been bipartisan…until now.

Donald Trump, taking another bizarre stab at his “shadow presidency”, vilified Republican House members who supported President Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (which is now law). The only way it would have been weirder would have been if Trump tried to veto it.

The reasons for his opposition could be partisan positioning, ideological opposition (purely on the price tag), or political jealousy.

It is most likely political jealously. Infrastructure bills are widely supported by businesses, from Mom and Pop shops to corporate behemoths. Capital improvements on the government dime are, as they say in economics textbooks, “positive externalities”.

Complaints about the cost or its party authorship are easily countered by the realism of the phrase “all politics are local”. Representative Matthew Cawthorn (R-NC), who fought the bill and threatened to primary the 13 GOP House Members who supported it, took the time to issue press releases taking credit for the highway and bridge spending that would help the Tarheel State and his congressional district.

Donald Trump, who touted his deal making, negotiation skills, and ability to get things done on the campaign trail, failed miserably at the one good idea he clamped on during his presidency - infrastructure investment. He rolled out multiple “Infrastructure” weeks and at one point even had Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP majority behind putting together a bill.

The failure of President Trump to get infrastructure done was more about his inability to figure out what he wanted than on finding a legislative majority to support it. Infrastructure spending has been broadly supported historically and opposition to it is usually comprise of factions at opposite ends of the political spectrum complaining that it “cost too much” or that “it is not enough”. Idealists on the Left or Right, by and large, are never happy.

The art of politics is finding what is both possible and probable and then finding 51% to support the compromise between the two.

One of Senator Moynihan staffers who helped Moynihan gets the highway Reauthorization bill passed (Moynihan was one of the bill’s co-sponsors) explained it in pragmatic terms “Make a wish list for your state. We’ll add up the other 49, put a price tag on it, and ask you to support it. If you balk, we ask you what you are willing to give up to get some of your wish list.”

The realist reply is terser: “The price tag for what you want is the cost of what everyone else is going to get.”

If one needs an explanation for why business owners make such terrible politicians, one only look at the scenario Trump found himself as President and wanting something, here an infrastructure bill, done.

Compromise, trade-offs, lobbying, cajoling, and dickering are the tools of legislators, unions, publicly-traded company executives, and town hall meetings not of narcissists and “my way or the highway” private business owners. Donald Trump, who was already ill-equipped to accede to what others wanted, found himself in an actual negotiation where the “art of the deal” was one not written by him and his lawyers.

Meanwhile Joe Biden, who as a Senator got legislation far more controversial than a popular Keynesian expenditure passed on the Senate floor, was more frustrated by the time it took to get the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed than in the politics required. No wonder. The 1987 Highway Reauthorization bill was passed by the House and Senate, vetoed by President Reagan, and then overridden (and became law) in less than 4 months. The 2001 Infrastructure law took twice that time.

Biden, the legislative craftsman, wanted the Sistine Chapel and settled for a couple of frescoes. Trump, in the same situation, complained about the view from his pulpit.