President Joe Biden will officially ring in infrastructure week, for real, when he signs the infrastructure bill Monday afternoon. The $1.2 trillion package contains $550 billion in new spending on road, bridges, ports, rail, and water systems.

The new law is officially titled the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. (Or IIJA, which is much better than its former acronym, “BIF.”) If you are so inclined, you can read the whole thing—all 2,740 pages (but with huge margins and spacing). It is heavy on current fossil fuel-dependent infrastructure, with $110 billion for roads and bridges. In addition to broadband, it includes $55 billion for water; $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations; $39 billion for transit; $1 billion for Biden’s original $20 billion plan to “reconnect” communities of color; $66 billion for freight and passenger rail; $25 billion for airports; $73 billion to modernize the energy grid; and $21 billion toward environmental remediation.

In addition, it includes $65 billion for broadband infrastructure, which has the potential to be a “game changer” with the $2 billion for rural communities split equally between a rural broadband construction program called ReConnect, which Rural Utilities Service at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will operate, and the Tribal Broadband Connectivity Program run by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

Monday, Nov 15, 2021 · 5:21:49 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

The White House just released this executive order from Biden detailing the priorities for the implementation of IIJA and establishing an Infrastructure Implementation Task Force to coordinate it.

The White House announced on Sunday that President Biden has tapped former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who led the city through rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, to be the coordinator and senior adviser on the implementation of the IIJA. “Landrieu will be a critical team member when it comes to delivering on the biggest investments in roads, bridges, and rail in generations; investments in ports and airports, the biggest investment in mass transit in American history, investments that stop our children from drinking poisoned water, unprecedented clean energy and climate resilience investments, and investments that connect every American to high speed internet,” the White House said.

The IIJA will, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), add $256 billion to the deficit over the next decade. This is a key number to keep in mind as the Senate deficit peacocks who wrote this bill and the House Sabotage Squad screech about the deficit when it comes to passing the other part of Biden’s agenda, the Build Back Better (BBB) plan. The Joint Committee on Taxation determined BBB, as currently written, will raise about $1.5 trillion in revenue and not add to the deficit long term.

That’s what the House will be focusing on this week: BBB, but as of now there is no vote scheduled. In order to pass the IIJA, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the conservative Democrats who have been holding up the BBB agreed that they would have a vote on BBB this week. That was contingent on having information from the CBO on the budgetary impacts of the bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi updated her colleagues in a letter Friday, telling them that “6 committees who finished with their work early have already received numbers from the CBO consistent with the White House Preliminary Budget Estimate, which includes Transportation and Infrastructure; Oversight and Reform; Homeland Security; Small Business; Science, Space and Technology; and Veterans’ Affairs.” That means thus far they are on track, with another three CBO section reports expected on Monday.

While the House might get to it this week, the Senate will probably push the bill into December. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer informed his colleagues in a letter Sunday that there’s a great deal of work to be done: defense appropriations; another continuing resolution to keep government funded after Dec. 3 when the current funding expires; the debt ceiling, which also has to be extended around the same time; judicial and executive nominations; and “final resolution on the Senate’s other major legislative priorities, like the bipartisan U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA)—which, among many things, addresses immediate supply chain issues—and the Freedom to Vote Act to safeguard our democracy and protect the right to vote.”

Schumer told colleagues that he is “aiming to finish” work with the House committees and the Senate Parliamentarian on BBB to make sure the House bill “is in compliance with Senate reconciliation rules and the instructions in the budget resolution, and thereby maintains its status as ‘privileged’ legislation in the Senate.” Since the House would like to pass the bill this week, that element of uncertainty—the “aiming” to finish—hints that working things out with the Senate is not necessarily going smoothly. “Timing of consideration of the BBBA in the Senate will largely depend on when the House sends us the bill and when CBO finalizes their scores for all of the committees,” Schumer said. “As you can see, we still have much work to do to close out what will be a very successful year of legislative accomplishments,” he concluded. “I am confident we can get each of these important items done this year, but it will likely take some long nights and weekends.”

Much of how long that will take depends on what can be worked out in the next few days with the House on BBB. It could also depend on whether Sen. Joe Manchin, the thorn in everyone’s side, decides to move the goal posts once again. If the two chambers can work everything out between them with the parliamentarian, it’s just possible that the bill will pass the House and Senate as-is. That’s highly unlikely, however, as it will be subject to change in the Senate, and because it needs every single Democrats in the Senate to pass, which means Manchin, who has outright said he wants to delay the bill, can scupper the whole thing.