President Donald Trump has reclaimed the White House, and this time he is doubling down on bold promises to transform America’s infrastructure. From his “drill, baby, drill” rhetoric about expedited oil production to announcing a $500 billion artificial intelligence deal, Trump is trying to make big moves early in his term to bring about the “Golden Age of America.” However, like many of Trump’s proclaimed accomplishments, he will surely rely on piggybacking off previous administrations’ work to realize his infrastructure ambitions and then signing his name on it at the end.
To explain why, we need to look back at the state of American infrastructure four years ago. The American Society of Civil Engineers produces a report card on infrastructure quality in the United States every four years. In 2021, at the beginning of former President Joseph Biden’s term, the United States received a C minus in energy infrastructure, a D in road quality, and an abysmal D minus in transit. For the country with the highest GDP in the world, assessments like these are wholly unacceptable.
Although Biden may be memorialized for his cognitive decline and dropping out of the presidential race, his domestic policy accomplishments in this area were substantial and deserve our recognition. In particular, his administration passed two landmark pieces of legislation that revolutionized American infrastructure policy: the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, commonly referred to as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Together, these two laws form a critical pillar of Biden’s public investment-centered economic policy, colloquially known as “Bidenomics”.
The Democrat-authored BIL and IRA invested a historic $1.2 trillion and $369 billion, respectively in revitalizing American infrastructure. The bills target nearly every facet of U.S. infrastructure, from transportation networks and clean energy systems to water resources and broadband access. These laws have helped set the United States on a new economic trajectory, one that creates good-paying, green manufacturing jobs at home while bolstering the infrastructure we depend on every day.
But, of the nauseating volume of Democratic campaign advertisements launched this political season, how many mentioned either of these laws? How many mentioned the multi-million dollar projects they have enabled across the country? The millions of Americans with better water, air, employment and transportation quality? A puzzling lack of ownership is apparent; a hint for why this is may be found in public polling. A 2022 poll by Third Way and Impact Research found that 80% of voters across the political spectrum supported a description of the BIL. Here’s the catch: less than a quarter of the individuals polled knew it had already passed Congress and was law. This demonstrates that people liked Biden’s key campaign policy — they were just unaware of it. No matter how good a policy is, if voters do not know about it, candidates simply cannot run on it.
The lack of publicity was evident in Democratic messaging across all races, but particularly for the Oval Office. The most lasting images of Harris’s campaign are of a “tough-on-crime” state prosecutor masquerading as a border patrol agent — and, of course, that she owns a Glock. She only campaigned on fleeting comments about building middle-class jobs, with little mention of the actual projects that supported them. Perhaps Brat Summer would’ve been better set on a work site with some hard hats.
That’s the irony of the Democratic position. The party delivered real wins at home through their historic infrastructure investment, but they did not capitalize on it, and the lingering impacts of the pandemic overshadowed them.. The party left Biden holding the bag for the rampant inflation following 2020, taking all the blame in the process. To make matters worse, the last of the pandemic-era welfare programs through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) expired, exacerbating the cost of living crisis the working class already experienced. It’s no wonder, under these conditions, that the economy was the top issue for voters. From the look of it all, it was an uphill battle for Democrats to shake their reputation of economic incompetence. However, that is no excuse to not take ownership of achievements well-earned — and that’s where Democrats failed. Now, the opposing party has the opportunity to counter.
A Republican trifecta headed by the vindictive Trump will surely hack the BIL and IRA to pieces.Despite lambasting about frivolous spending, Republicans benefit the most from the BIL and IRA. Roughly 60% of BIL funding will flow to Republican states, and of the $206 billion green technology funding slated for distribution, a whopping 79% will end up in red districts. In fact,Georgia is the top recipient for clean tech funding between these two laws.
Public investments like the BIL and IRA produce benefits across the political spectrum, despite a lukewarm Republican response to the BIL and not one Republican voting for the IRA. Republican Representative Nancy Mace from South Carolina understands this dynamic well. The BIL, a “socialist wish list” and “fiasco,” as she called it, had provisions worth celebrating in a press statement when her district received $26 million in federal grants. Rep. Mace voted against the BIL.
Party leadership at the top is feeling this pressure too. Per Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Republicans may opt for a “scalpel” rather than a “sledgehammer” in reforming the BIL and IRA. The truth is, they can’t afford to lose the benefits these laws provide, even if they run counter to the party platform.
This leaves Republicans in a predicament: Do they repeal swaths of the broadly popular BIL and IRA and suffer the electoral consequences, or do they allow malicious Democratic expenditures to pervade yet another term? With Trump, they won’t have to do either. If Trump’s past actions are any indication, he will simply take credit for the achievements of these laws.
In 2017, President Trump inherited a strong economy from former President Barack Obama, rebounding from the depths of the Great Recession. Although his tax cuts doubled his deficit spending relative to Biden’s, Trump still patted himself on the back for creating “the greatest economy that we’ve had in our history.” When the Biden administration achieved an insulin price cap of $35, Trump rushed to claim credit and said that he, “did the insulin [sic].” Trump even took complete credit for the Gaza ceasefire penned by the Biden administration before he was even in office. From securing Los Angeles to host the 2028 Olympics to bringing Lady Gaga to stardom, Trump habitually takes credit for things he’s had no involvement in. There is no reason to believe he will treat the monumental accomplishments of the BIL and IRA any differently.
Democrats must learn from the catastrophic blunder of poor promotion. In the 2024 election autopsy, a chorus of voices have been calling for a restructuring of the party platform around the everyday, kitchen table issues that Republicans won on. Senator Bernie Sanders (I) from Vermont put it best: “It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them.”
Infrastructure quality improvement stands as perhaps the quintessential example of government intervention impacting the lives of everyday Americans. At the end of the day, the public wants potholes filled and clean water for their families. In line with this, Democrats must acknowledge policy successes like the BIL and IRA as central to their party platform, and shout it from the rooftops every time they achieve a win. Otherwise, someone else will be happy to take the credit.