I feel kind of sorry for President Joe Biden, and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and all the Congressional leaders who needed $1.2 trillion dollars in transportation pork in order to feel righteous.
That’s how I view the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. ‘Transportation pork’.
Some people can’t feel righteous unless they’re putting the taxpayers deeply in debt.
Last week, I bought a secondhand ten-speed bicycle at the Humane Society Thrift Store… since my car is in the shop, for who-knows-how-many-more weeks, waiting on the resolution of the global supply chain crisis.
So I’m feeling pretty damn righteous, myself. The bicycle is my own low-budget transportation pork.
Not that I’m opposed to streets and roads and bridges. Even a bicycle works better on paved roads. (Mine is not a mountain bike.) But I’m not sure I want to see my taxes spent on more 12-lane freeways, no matter how many bankers will benefit from financing the $1.2 trillion in government borrowing. (Because, it’s all going to be borrowed money, folks. The government borrows the money to do most anything nowadays. And the bankers appreciate that.)
I didn’t have to borrow money to purchase my bicycle. In fact, I cut up all my credit cards a couple of years ago — that’s a long story, which we won’t get into today — and I actually had $100 left on my debit card. The bicycle was only $50.
I hear the Democrats had some trouble getting the infrastructure bill passed in the House of Representatives. Some of the radical left didn’t want to support the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act — maybe they saw it for what it was? — but they were talked into voting ‘Yes’ by the moderate left, with promises of future support for the $1.75 trillion ‘Build Back Better’ social spending bill, currently headed for the U.S. Senate.
$1.75 trillion, in social spending? What? Are we made of money?
In what way, exactly, will anything be ‘Better’?
As I said, my own personal ‘Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’ kicked off with me buying a used ten-speed. To help keep the economy moving. Turns out, my bicycle uses no gasoline, and produces very little carbon dioxide — only what is produced by my heavy breathing when pedaling uphill.
So now that the Infrastructure Investment is completed, I am developing my own customized ‘Build Back Better’ program as well, to guide my personal ‘social spending’.
I’m not accustomed to ‘social spending’, other than when I pay for a friend’s coffee at the Baking Company.
Should I be using the federal ‘Build Back Better’ legislation as a template? Definitely not.
As I understand it, the federal ‘Build Back Better’ bill squeaked through the House on a 220-213 party-line vote. The Democrat supporters praised the provisions for child care, education, health care, taxes and the environment, as “monumental policy advances”. But the bill will never get through the Senate without being emasculated, and everyone knows it.
(I like that word: ’emasculated’. There are many other words we could use to describe how the ‘Build Back Better’ bill will be treated by the Senate, but none seems as colorful as ’emasculated’.)
Personally, I don’t have any use for child care, or education. (I might change my mind, if I end up having kids someday, but that’s pretty unlikely, considering the opinion most women have of me.)
The environment is definitely a concern, but like I said, I’ve already purchased a bicycle — a monumental policy advance.
Which leaves me with health care and taxes, the only things — according to a famous person — of which we can be certain. (Yes, the famous person actually referenced “death and taxes”. But health care is very closely related to death, at least during a global pandemic.)
In other words, unlike the Democrats ‘Build Back Better’ plan, my own plan completely ignores child care, education, health care, taxes, and the environment.
Truth be told, mine is not a ‘Build Back Better’ plan at all. For one thing, I’m tired of looking ‘Back’ at the past, as something worth embracing. I see no value in Making America Great ‘Again’, or at Building ‘Back’ Better. The past is in the past. Onward and upward! I’ve set my sights on the future… a place where artificially-intelligent robots will attend to my every need.
Back to the Past, Again? Don’t make me laugh. The past was a time when I struggled to live with someone in a totally incompatible relationship, and when I was paying off half a dozen credit cards at various interest rates, and before I adopted my cat, Roscoe.
A time when I had no bicycle.
I can certainly understand why the politicians want us to go ‘Back, Again’. But the future is where we’re headed, whether we like it or not. So why not welcome it with open arms? And an open mind?
When I open my mind to the future, I envision weekends that are five days long.
Every week.
If we’re going to Build Back Better, folks, let’s give some righteous meaning to the word ‘Better’.