President Joe Biden may not advertise it, but his $2.3 trillion spending plan contains his most radical idea yet. It is one that traces its origins to Marxist, feminist thought, and it is set out in a proposal that seeks to inject $400 billion into caregiving, providing seniors with more medical care at home under the umbrella of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.
Care as infrastructure.
The move is the latest example of the Biden administration’s efforts to reshape the language of political discourse, replacing “equality” with “equity” or redefining terms such as “bipartisan,” opening a new front in the culture wars and triggering pushback from opponents who see an effort to smuggle a liberal wish list into mainstream thought.
When it comes to infrastructure, the administration is intent on adopting the broadest possible definition.
WHITE HOUSE STANDS BY EXPANSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE DEFINITION
As Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters recently: “You might say to yourself, ‘Why is the commerce secretary talking about investments in the care economy?’
“Because it matters. It is core to our competitiveness. In order for you to go to work, you need to know that your loved one is being taken care of.”
The idea has its roots in radical ’70s thinking that grappled with the idea that the role of caregiving, frequently left to women, was just as essential to the smooth running of society as roads and bridges.
But does that make it infrastructure?
David Ditch, budget and transportation associate at the Heritage Foundation, said it was a long way from highways and airports that have historically been the most heavily funded federal infrastructure projects.
“Bills focusing on those things sail through Congress by some of the biggest margins of any legislation in a given year,” he said.
“What the Biden administration is doing is taking all the long-term goodwill that has built up on that issue and using it as a shield, behind which they are able to cram lots of spending that is either not infrastructure, under even the broadest, reasonable definition of the term, or infrastructure that is far outside that bipartisan consensus.”
So, although you might be able to make a case that electric car charging facilities constitute a modern form of infrastructure, that is not how most voters see it, let alone caregiving.
Defenders of the radical definition have triggered debate, pushback, and ridicule in equal measure.
Paid leave is infrastructure.
Child care is infrastructure.
Caregiving is infrastructure.— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) April 7, 2021
When Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand posted on Twitter, “Paid leave is infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Caregiving is infrastructure,” she was immediately accused of trying to define everything as infrastructure.
“Unicorns are infrastructure. Love is infrastructure. Herpes is infrastructure. Everything is infrastructure,” fired back Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro.
But it is just one example of how the big debates are now questions of definition.
Everywhere, the new administration is at work with a radical new lexicon. “Equality” is so last year, replaced by “equity” in a slew of executive orders.
If equality means everyone gets the same resources from the government, no matter their place in society, equity is designed to tackle historical, systemic imbalances. As now-Vice President Kamala Harris put it just before the election: “Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that [is that] not everybody’s starting out from the same place.”
And it has its own definition of “bipartisan.” It no longer means proposals that win passage into law with the support of Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Instead, the White House uses it to claim its ideas have the backing of Republican voters at large, even when they are opposed by the GOP itself.
Biden himself laid out the change as he unveiled his infrastructure plan in Pittsburgh.
“When I wrote it, everybody said I had no bipartisan support,” he said. “We’re overwhelming bipartisan support with registered Republican voters.”
But critics point out that the support may be less impressive if voters drill down into his definition of infrastructure. The result is a political debate bogged down in definitions.
“The shifting sands of definitions and modifying commonly held bits of language on the fly is one of the main debating tactics of the Left,” said Ditch, adding that until recently, talk of white supremacy brought to mind white hoods and burning crosses.
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“Now, white supremacy is everything that exists in America, based on the definition of the Left, and they are banking on the power of a phrase like ‘racism’ or ‘white supremacy’ or, in a more boring context, the popularity of a phrase like ‘infrastructure’ and taking advantage of what comes to people’s mind and bundling it with other things.”
