Capitol Inside
November 9, 2021

President Joe Biden and the Democrats in Washington D.C. are attempting to take care of festering infrastructure problems that the GOP has ignored in Texas with a record infusion of more than $35 billion that all of the state's congressional Republicans voted to kill.

The Republicans in the Texas Legislature will have no qualms about spending the massive windfall and seeking to take the credit for it despite the fact that their GOP counterparts in Congress tried to block it. The funding could give conservatives a golden opportunity to ramp up calls for a fourth special session that they've been pressuring Governor Greg Abbott to call for the sake of meddling with the vaccine mandate that Biden has imposed on employers.

But the president won't expect any thank you notes from Abbott or any of GOP state lawmakers who eagerly doled out billions of dollars in federal COVID-19 stimulus funding in special session last month without a whisper of gratitude to the Democrats who scored the cash for Texas without a single Republican vote.

The White House on Monday unveiled a long list of benefits that Texas will receive from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that the U.S. House approved on Friday with a game-changing assist from 13 Republicans who are being berated now by Donald Trump and the conservative base with death threats from activists.

"For decades, infrastructure in Texas has suffered from a systemic lack of investment," the Biden administration said in a report on the long list of benefits that the state is slated to reap. The White House noted that Texas scored a grade of C- on infrastructure on a report card issued by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

"The historic Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will make life better for millions of Texas residents, create a generation of good-paying union jobs and economic growth, and position the United States to win the 21st century," according to the report.

The landmark legislation survived weeks of intense negotiations with differences among Democrats that threatened to sandbag the measure before it cleared the U.S. House late last week on a 228-206 vote late last week when six progressive Democrats voted against the plan in a move that made GOP support imperative.

The two highest ranking Texas lawmakers - U.S. Senators John Cornyn and Ted Cruz - voted against the $1.2 trillion package in August when 19 of their fellow Republicans including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell sided with the 50 Democrats to advance the Biden infrastructure plan. McConnell said the legislation would be a godsend for his home state of Kentucky.

Texas is desperate for help with infrastructure, which hasn't been a priority in recent years for Republicans at the statehouse where the majority party has devoted the bulk of its time to partisan issues that have been based on baseless claims and deceptive assertions designed to prey on fear in the GOP. Years of GOP neglect at the state Capitol manifest in February with the collapse of the independent Texas electric grid in an epic winter storm that Abbott and the Republicans here failed to anticipate amid their steadfast denial on climate change.

The Texas infrastructure allotment includes $26.9 billion for highways, $3.3 billion for public transportation, $2.9 billion for water resources and $1.2 billion for airports. The package also has $537 million for Texas bridges, $408 million for an expansion of electric vehicle charging stations, $53 million for wildfire protection, $42 million for cybersecurity and $100 million for broadband service for more than one million Texans.

more to come ...