Midweek Takes #8

8/4's small thoughts and links.

“Bipartisanism?”

Should we be optimistic about the future?

I had a long conversation with my friend Alex over the weekend. Sure, we were a few beers deep (from Beer Street South, an excellent, if not a little too clean shop on Vanderbilt Ave.) but the topic, naturally when you’re with me, turned to infrastructure, spending, and federal priorities. Alex reminded me that the Democrats “bipartisan” bill was likely a trojan horse for a much larger budget omnibus—“reconciliation”—to be passed in the coming months.

He’s probably right, so we can likely look at the “bipartisan” “infrastructure” bill with a slightly lighter hand. I’m still unhappy with the Democratic roll-over on important issues, like environmental justice surrounding highway removal, the 3:1 ratio of roads to rail spending, and no spending on crucial non bricks-and-sticks infrastructure at all. There’s no guarantee that any of these provisions will be in the reconciliation bill before or after the Byrd Bath.

Alex is more conf…