President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure plan has come under a good deal of criticism for focusing more on unrelated leftist policies than the actual public works that need fixing. So, Democrats have come up with a new line of defense: They’ve decided to change the definition of “infrastructure” altogether.
The best example of this is a tweet by New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who decided that anything she and the other Democrats might want to spend money on is infrastructure:
Paid leave is infrastructure.
Child care is infrastructure.
Caregiving is infrastructure.— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) April 7, 2021
She wasn’t the only one. Here’s Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, one of the House’s liberal “Squad” members:
Health care is infrastructure.
Housing is infrastructure.
Child care is infrastructure.
Elder care is infrastructure.— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) April 9, 2021
Even more ridiculous than Gillibrand’s tweet is the fact that it became a White House strategy. After realizing Biden wouldn’t be able to get his $2 trillion package past centrists in the Senate, the Biden administration rolled out a new pitch: It would split the bill into two packages, one focused on actual infrastructure assets — bridges, highways, canals, roads, etc. — while the other would focus on the “human” infrastructure costs, such as child care and education.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already indicated her support for this approach, as has Sen. Bernie Sanders, who leads the Senate Budget Committee.
“We’ve got to take a broad look at what infrastructure means, human infrastructure for ordinary people,” he said this weekend. “Human infrastructure means housing … When I talk about infrastructure, it means if a worker, a mom and a dad, are going to work, they have the right to know that their kids are in decent child care. That’s infrastructure.”
“Infrastructure is having the best-educated workforce in the world,” Sanders continued. “That means all of our kids should have the ability to get a higher education, not leave school deeply in debt.”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm agreed: “What is infrastructure?” she said this weekend. “Historically, it’s been what makes the economy move, what is it that we all need to ensure that we as citizens are productive.”
Granholm’s definition is intentionally vague and deceptive. Infrastructure has always been known as the physical public assets that our society couldn’t function without: telephone lines, energy grids, power supplies, roads. The Biden administration wants to expand that definition to include electric vehicles, programs to reduce “racial and gender inequities” in science, technology, engineering, and math research, Medicaid expansion, and everything else on his policy wish list.
We see this all the time from Democrats. Last year, they tried to redefine “court-packing,” a radical policy that even the most revered liberal legal thinkers have rejected, as an effort to “balance” the judiciary. And now, they’re trying to redefine “infrastructure” to justify a $2 trillion liberal slush fund that wouldn’t get the necessary Senate votes otherwise.
It’s the same old tired and cynical ploy to earn public support and then abuse it. I’m just surprised the dictionaries haven’t agreed to Biden’s new terms yet.
