Donald Trump and the Republican Party had four years to pass an infrastructure bill revamping and upgrading the nation’s transportation systems, broadband access, roadways, and everything else included in the current so-called “bipartisan” infrastructure package that has already passed the Senate. They didn’t come anywhere close to accomplishing that. In fact, they made no real effort to do so for the simple reason that the Republican Party has no interest in governing for the purpose of helping the American people.

The only legislative accomplishment of Trump’s entire wretched tenure was a mammoth tax cut for the very wealthiest Americans and the corporations that many of them own and operate. Those tax cuts resulted primarily in stock buybacks, which simply further enriched those corporations and those at the top of them. They did not “trickle down” in any substantive way to ordinary Americans. Nor did the extraordinary largesse pocketed by these individuals and corporations create any lasting job growth, or even investment in research and development from those same companies. Ultimately, it really wasn’t a tax “cut” as much as it was a massive giveaway of money to the country’s richest, which they used primarily to shore up their own wealth and the generational wealth of their families. 

Suddenly, with a Democratic president and a Democratic-controlled Congress in place—however tenuous and fragile that “control” has turned out to be—a comprehensive “hard” infrastructure bill passed. Many Republicans who never put forth a similar proposal under Trump felt it was in their own self-interest to sign on to it so they could claim credit for it when they faced their constituents. Although the bill was passed with input from the GOP, it’s not completely accurate to characterize that as a “bipartisan” achievement. After all, it would never have come to be without Democrats initiating it, and Democrats could have passed it through the reconciliation process had they chosen to, rendering additional Republican votes unnecessary.

Assuming the Build Back Better “human infrastructure” bill passes in something close to its current form, it’s going to severely disappoint many Democrats with its abandonment of several key provisions due to the antics of Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Americans who would have received the benefit of those discarded programs will also be bitterly disappointed, and they should be. There is no legitimate excuse (pure self-serving submission to corporate interests is a reason, not an excuse) for Manchin and Sinema’s cynical, targeted elimination of those programs. Many vulnerable Democrats who fought for the programs Manchin and Sinema so blithely dispensed with will need to show their constituents (the majority of the American people) that they took their concerns seriously. But even with the glaring omissions, the bill’s provisions for universal child care, health care premium reductions, elder care, housing, tax credits for parents, and incentives for clean energy are hardly insignificant.

Most importantly, the cumulative impact of both bills—with the $2 trillion in COVID-19 relief from the American Rescue Act, which incorporated substantial allocations to lower- and middle-income Americans and billions towards schools and rural hospitals, food assistance, and health care while providing stimulus payments, additional unemployment compensation, and tax credits for families with children—adds up to nearly $4.7 trillion allotted towards the immediate benefit of the American public. None of that pandemic relief would have been provided by Republicans who unanimously opposed the Rescue Act in March. And while the benefits of the infrastructure legislation are still to come, the COVID-19 relief legislation successfully staved off many of the worst economic hardships caused by the pandemic.

Again, none of this would have been accomplished had Democrats not captured the presidency and the Senate in 2020. It’s not too difficult to imagine what would have happened had the Republicans been in charge: effectively, nothing. Though voting rights and Medicare expansion, paid family leave, reduced drug prices, and all the other benefits afforded to nearly every other developed country in the world are now being held hostage to two corporate sellouts named Manchin and Sinema, the American people have a way to remedy that situation in 2022: by electing more Democrats to office. And $4.7 trillion—almost all of it for the benefit of ordinary Americans—and everything good and beneficial that has or will come of that is a hell of a lot better than nothing, which is all we would have received from the Republican Party.

Weigh that $4.7 trillion against the right’s howling about critical race theory, demonizing of transgender people, and the specter of violent terrorists attacking the Capitol along with the devotion to Donald Trump, which is really the entirety of the Republican platform for 2022. In the face of a crisis unlike any in living memory, Republicans collectively and voluntarily choose to do nothing but block, obstruct, and race-bait. Their aim is not to govern this country for its citizens, but simply to attain and hold power for the benefit of their well-heeled, insulated donors, whose interests and concerns begin and end with evading taxes, no matter what the consequences to the nation.  

Democrats should hammer this contrast. It’s one that Americans should appreciate.