By taking seriously long-deferred national challenges, the Biden administration has shone a light on just how far we have to go. The experience is like political whiplash. Administrations for 50 years have let vital physical infrastructure rot. Biden’s plan seems massive. But once we take a close look, it is just a down payment. Same with human infrastructure. Biden’s people initially proposed spending $400 billion over ten years. But that was only for long-term home and residential care for the elderly and the disabled. The latest version would spend around a trillion dollars. This would include a reported $225 billion for child care, $225 billion for paid family and medical leave, $200 billion for universal prekindergarten instruction, and tuition-free community
colleges. This is welcome, but there is even harder stuff. Biden proposes to spend $213 billion on affordable housing. That’s serious money, but 50 years of bad policy have let this one get away from us. We
simply do not build enough social housing—rental units that are fully and permanently protected from market pressures. Our support for owner-occupied housing subsidizes the wrong end of the income scale with tax breaks. That money should go for starter homes. We have only begun to tackle the long-deferred racial-justice agenda, including the chronic racism in too many police departments. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to revive the Justice Department’s receivership program is a start, but there is a bottomless pit of bad practices that have to be rooted out. But for a
video taken by a 17-year-old, Derek Chauvin might have joined the hundreds of other killer cops who were never even prosecuted. And I haven’t even mentioned grotesque corporate concentration, or the reforms of a corrupt financial industry that the Obama administration gave a pass, or global climate change. Still, six months ago none of these advances was even thinkable. And Obama, Clinton, and Carter, with much larger majorities in their first two years, settled for a lot less even aspirationally. This is one of those historical inflection points, where national consciousness has shifted and the politics of the possible have broadened. It’s the politics of the not-yet-possible that keep me up nights.
