Traveling to McHenry Community College in Illinois, President Joe Biden promoted the benefits of the bipartisan trillion-dollar infrastructure deal he developed with members of the Senate two weeks ago, and he used his predecessor’s failures to get a major initiative through in the process, the Washington Post reports.
“Under a bipartisan infrastructure agreement, we’re going to make the biggest investment in roads and bridges and the construction of the interstate highway system, literally creating millions of good paying jobs,” Biden told the crowd. “And God willing, we’re not going to have 40 weeks of ‘this is infrastructure'”–a reference to the Trump Administration’s habit of declaring a new “Infrastructure Week” as a distraction to whatever new scandal was impacting them.
Biden noted that while just getting the two parties to agree to the bipartisan infrastructure deal was an important accomplishment, the legislation could still be blocked from passage by Senate Republicans who are dead set on being an obstructionist party that have announced they’ll block another part of Biden’s infrastructure agenda.
“In addition to the bipartisan infrastructure agreement that I believe we’re going to get done, I’m here to make a case for the second critical part of my domestic agenda,” he said. “It’s a combination of parts of my American jobs plan that were essential and not included in the bipartisan infrastructure plan, as well as my American families plan. In Washington, they call it a reconciliation bill.”
Biden and key administration officials have been on a barnstorming-style tour of the US to garner support for the infrastructure deal and the American Families Act ahead of planned objections from Congressional Republicans.