?????? Good News (finally!) for Joe Biden

Last Friday,?Joe Biden scored a major political coup, his second major legislative accomplishment after the passing of the coronavirus stimulus bill last March. Just before midnight,?the House finally passed House Bill 228-206?with the?backing of more than 10 Republicans.?We are talking about the bipartisan infrastructure plan?already approved by the Senate last August.?A plan endowed with US$1.2 trillion?of?which $550 billion represent new increases in the level of investment and infrastructure spending.

"I don't think it's an exaggeration to suggest that we took a monumental step forward as a nation... We did something that’s long overdue, that long has been talked about in Washington, but never actually done.”?– Joe Biden

Biden called the project a milestone in a generation and argued that it will create millions of jobs while carrying out the largest investment in roads and bridges in the last 70 years.

Why is it important?

The approved bill represents a much smaller investment than the US$2.3 trillion initially sought by Joe Biden, but it is an?important political achievement in that it has been achieved through a bipartisan agreement, something that is not particularly common lately.

The plan directly addresses?one of the major problems of the US economy: the growing deterioration of the nation's infrastructure.

But it also leaves two important questions on the table: Firstly,?the plan is manifestly insufficient?to repair America's often outdated economic arteries. And secondly,?the plan fuels a policy of increasing government spending whose effects on inflation may be considerable.?Investing in infrastructure may be necessary, but perhaps incompatible with many other initiatives to expand public spending being led by the current White House team.