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**SEPTEMBER 3, 2021**

Kuttner on TAP

Nature Versus Manchin

****

One thing you have to give Joe Manchin. His sense of timing is
exquisite.

For his op-ed in

**The Wall Street Journal** warning that the $3.5 trillion physical and
human infrastructure package is too costly
,
he picked a day when nature provided the best, irrefutable rejoinder.

With fires, droughts, water shortages, and heat waves devastating much
of the American West, and hurricanes and floods wrecking the cities of
the South and the Northeast, we are going to need public investments
that make $3.5 trillion look like chump change if America is to be
habitable at all.

That means everything from a very different water strategy for the West,
to hardened electric grids everywhere, to flood barriers and water
diversion systems for thousands of cities and towns. It means a
redoubling of investments in a post-carbon economy so that climate
change doesn't worsen beyond what's already inevitable.

As AOC astutely pointed out
yesterday, "One
piece of data I'm seeing: the subway stations + other infrastructure
rebuilt post-Hurricane Sandy for climate resilience *worked.* It was
areas that *didn't* get investment that suffered. We shouldn't wait
for climate disaster to rebuild & prepare-that's what GND is about."

Manchin also expressed alarm about inflation. Wait until droughts,
floods, heat waves, and parched crops start raising food prices.
That's all the more reason for serious investment in sustainable
agriculture.

It happens that a lot of the social investments in the reconciliation
package, such as enhanced child care and health care outlays, and free
community college, save working families a lot of money. If Manchin is
worried about price pressures, he should support those investments.

These worsening catastrophic events hit red states and blue states
alike. I suspect that Republican governors, senators, and
representatives will soon be begging for more federal investment in
public infrastructure.

Manchin wrote, "Ignoring the fiscal consequences of our policy choices
will create a disastrous future for the next generation of Americans."
He got one word wrong. Ignoring the

**climate** consequences of our policy choices will destroy life for
future Americans.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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