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Saving President Joe Biden's infrastructure agenda from itself
By Lindsay Mark Lewis
PPI's Executive Director
for the Chicago Tribune
When an Interstate 95 overpass collapsed in Philadelphia in June, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, responded with a master class in executive leadership. Slashing through thousands of pages of red tape with a stroke of his pen, Shapiro focused solely on rebuilding as fast as possible and refused to let interest group politics or bureaucratic inertia slow things down. Shapiro stunned the world by cutting the ribbon on a fully rebuilt span just 12 days later.
This “Philadelphia Miracle” should have been top of mind when President Joe Biden travelled to Baltimore recently with a promise to “move heaven and earth” to rebuild the destroyed Francis Scott Key Bridge. but then the coda: “And we’re going to do so with union labor and American steel.”
One might dismiss this sop to organized labor as a typical election-year throwaway line. But it actually holds a clue to the riddle of why Biden’s infrastructure agenda is drifting and why skeptical voters aren’t yet giving the president full credit for his legislative wins.
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New from the Experts
Tim Ryan, PPI Special Advisor: To Avoid Danger, U.S. Must Lead on Crypto and Blockchain
⮕ Newsweek
Jeremiah Johnson, Co-Founder of the Center for New Liberalism: Caring Isn't Enough
⮕ American Purpose
Ben Ritz, VP of Policy Development and Director of PPI's Center for Funding America's Future: PPI Comment on NPRM for Additional Student Debt Relief
⮕ PPI Comment
Ex-Biden adviser: Labour in pole position for US green trade deal, ft. Claire Ainsley, Director of PPI's Project on Center-Left Renewal
⮕ The Times
Trade Fact of the Week: A new container ship launches every day
⮕ PPI's Trade Fact of the Week
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What Two Civil Rights Heroes Can Teach Today’s Left
By Richard D. Kahlenberg
Director of Housing Policy and PPI's American Identity Project
for The Liberal Patriot
If you’re worried about threats to liberal democracy in America, emanating primarily from Donald Trump but also from parts of the progressive left, a new memoir published by two veteran civil rights activists provides a refreshing reminder that a better path remains open.
Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain: The Extraordinary Story of Love, Civil Rights, and Labor Activism, by Norman and Velma Hill, two black civil rights leaders, provides a fascinating account of their years working closely with Martin Luther King Jr., A. Philip Randolph, and Bayard Rustin to make their country live up to its ideals. Norman and Velma (whom I came to know while writing a biography of labor leader Albert Shanker), were in the thick of many of the central battles for racial and economic justice in the mid-twentieth century.
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Mosaic Moment
What It’s Really Like to Testify Before Congress
On this episode of the Mosaic Moment, former Director of Mosaic, Jasmine Stoughton, sits down with Sara Nichols, Environment and Economic Development Director at the Land-of-Sky Regional Council, to share her experience testifying before Congress. Get a behind the scenes look at what goes into a Congressional hearing from the perspective of an expert witness.
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Don't Miss These PPI Reports
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Staff Spotlight: Ben Ritz
 Ben Ritz
VP of Policy Development and Director of PPI's Center for Funding America's Future
Ben Ritz is the Vice President of Policy Development for the Progressive Policy Institute. In this capacity, he helps PPI's policy experts develop analysis and "radically pragmatic" ideas consistent with the mission of supporting innovation, economic opportunity, and the enduring values of liberal democracy.
Ben also directs PPI’s Center for Funding America’s Future, which develops fiscally responsible policy proposals to strengthen public investments in the foundation of our economy, modernize health and retirement programs to reflect an aging society, transform our tax code to reward work over wealth, and put the national debt on a downward trajectory.
Prior to joining PPI, Ben staffed the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings, where he helped develop its proposed reforms to make Social Security sustainably solvent and promote retirement savings through the tax code. Ben also worked on other federal budget issues at BPC including sequestration, budget process reform, and the federal debt limit. Before joining BPC, Ben worked to educate members of Congress and their constituents about fiscal policy as Legislative Outreach Director for The Concord Coalition.
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