President Biden and his designated message-deliverers just got some crucial, last-minute insights — from a most unlikely source — Wednesday night. It made clear how they should be talking about the only issue that almost half of Americans say they really care about in this all-over-the-lot midterm campaign.
President Biden speaks about his infrastructure agenda at Fern Hollow Bridge in Pittsburgh on Thursday. The span, which had collapsed in January, was rebuilt with federal funds. The Biden rescue plan’s most sizable funding is “all designed infrastructure, all designed to be spent into ’24, ’25 and ’26,” New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday night. Patrick Semansky/Associated Press
You probably assumed that even today’s change-resistant pols in high places would shift into rethink after a recent New York Times poll showed us that old campaign cockroach is still bugging us, big time. Economy/inflation was cited as the prime concern of a whopping 44% of respondents. (Every other issue that has been massively covered by our news media was mentioned as the major concern by a mere 5% or fewer respondents.)
The welcome insight on how to handle that economy/inflation issue was served up on CNN by a sharp and assertive conservative Republican, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who of course never intended to help the Democrats. But it quickly got lost in the nightly gush that pours out of our Great News Funnels.
(Sununu deserves respect for having courageously refused to flock with the Trump sheep who publicly suck up to the former president by endorsing his disproven claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. But today we’re not talking about that Trump stuff.)
CNN’s Jake Tapper teed up Sununu’s appearance for viewers, noting that Republicans are claiming that Biden’s $5 trillion post-pandemic economic recovery plan had caused today’s inflation woes. Then he interviewed Sununu, who began by championing the standard Republican attacks about Biden’s massive recovery plan fueling today’s inflation: “So look, everyone talks about the $5 trillion into the economy that has driven inflation, that’s absolutely true. There’s no doubt.”
But in the very next sentence, Sununu shifted into some essential context that is precisely the sort of thing his fellow Republicans hope you won’t think about at all.
“What a lot of people don’t realize,” Sununu continued, is that “only a fraction has actually been spent. … The actual number of checks that have been cut is very minimal.” He added that the Biden rescue plan’s most sizable funding is “all designed infrastructure, all designed to be spent into ’24, ’25 and ’26. And so inflation is going to be very exacerbated for the next few years.”
Sununu is absolutely right. While just about all of the $350 billion in available rescue funds has been distributed to states for spending, it hasn’t been spent yet. And so the next time you hear Republicans claiming that today’s inflation crisis was fueled by a $5 trillion Biden program — and maybe tossing in words like “socialism” — remember Sununu’s words. They disprove the exaggerated Republican campaign claims.
What is the most powerful force that is fueling our present inflation crisis? Sununu got into that, too. “Europe is in worse shape than America is, for goodness’ sake.”
That brings up the essential truth: that what we are confronting today is primarily global inflation that was not just fueled but also fired up by the global supply chain shutdown during the worst of the pandemic.
Unfortunately missing in all this has been the visible showcasing of Biden working as a leader to reopen the global economy — and hopefully addressing those supply chain problems. The White House has done a better job of visually showcasing the president’s efforts on the very infrastructure projects Republicans criticize as “inflationary” — except, of course, when a project is in their state.
On Thursday, Biden went to Pittsburgh to celebrate the rebuilding with federal funds of the Fern Hollow Bridge, which had collapsed in January. “It’s being done in record time,” Biden said, adding that he expects the new bridge will be finished “by Christmas, God willing. I’m coming back to walk across this sucker.”
Perhaps the president will choose to make a symbolic event of that crossing. He could invite some of his Republican opponents to walk alongside him that day. And maybe he’ll even try for one more infrastructure project — a win-win plan for both sides to deep-six their political games and try, just once, to build a bipartisan bridge to prosperity.
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