US infrastructure bill advancing

[seeyalater52]

Edit, replacing the link since the other one doesn't work: www.cbsnews.com/news/infrastructure-bipartisan-bill-senate-vote-move-forward/

Senate is moving to debate on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, on which negotiations ended successfully yesterday. Looks like we might actually get this thing done!

Selfishly I’m excited because I’m working on the reconciliation package and it is going nowhere with this other major priority hanging out there unfinished. Hoping we will see some progress on the reconciliation package if the Senate can get this infrastructure stuff done this week before recess.

[Bernadine]

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/5402193001

Sinema doesn’t support the $3.5 billion deal. God dammit.

[seeyalater52]

Jul 29, 2021 8:26:38 GMT -5 Bernadine said:

www.google.com/amp/s/amp.azcentral.com/amp/5402193001

Sinema doesn’t support the $3.5 billion deal. God dammit.

She is talking about the reconciliation package, which is separate from the infrastructure bill in the link I posted (confusing, I know.) She is actually leading negotiations on the infrastructure bill on behalf of the Dem caucus, and she is in support of that one. 

And I know, she is making my life miserable on reconciliation right now. 

Edit: sorry I see the link in my OP wasn't working... trying again. 

[litebright]

The broadband stuff is huge for my industry (telecom). But I have talked to a lot of people in the past few months who are happy about the funding but worried about all that money making supply chain issues worse -- because SO much money will be hitting so many different places at about the same time, and suddenly all these companies will be competing for a supply of fiber, network equipment and workers that hasn't really increased. Covid relief put a lot of money in play as well, but that has to be spent within a certain timeframe and people are kind of scrambling already. Depending on the timeline that the infrastructure bill puts on spending, things could get pretty crazy in terms of demand.

If you are a big telco who already has huge contracts in place with fiber and network equipment companies, you'll probably be fine. You'll be able to keep going with your 5G and fiber expansions. But the smaller providers who actually build out networks in rural areas? They could run into issues where they can't get the stuff they need to actually build.

There's also a global chip shortage that so far, hasn't had huge impacts on network infrastructure, but no one seems to know if it will at some point -- base stations, cable infrastructure, everything needs chips. And at least one of the companies that makes set-top boxes/customer premise equipment (the hardware you actually have to have in order to get internet service in people's homes) had an unbelievable backlog of orders even last quarter, they can't build them fast enough.

[notreal]

This is exciting to me because my job is to spend the infrastructure bill

[pixy0stix]

I was trying to read what was included last night, and couldn't really find anything. I'll be interested to see what is included.

This is something that people just don't think about on a day to day basis. I read a local article yesterday how a neighboring town has crappy water because they don't have a wastewater/drinking water treatment plant large enough to handle the growth they've been experiencing. I'm unsure how their funding works, but something about not having enough municipal funds to throw lots of money at something to get it built quickly.

[seeyalater52]

Jul 29, 2021 8:55:12 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I was trying to read what was included last night, and couldn't really find anything. I'll be interested to see what is included.

This is something that people just don't think about on a day to day basis. I read a local article yesterday how a neighboring town has crappy water because they don't have a wastewater/drinking water treatment plant large enough to handle the growth they've been experiencing. I'm unsure how their funding works, but something about not having enough municipal funds to throw lots of money at something to get it built quickly.

It’s a black hole right now. They advanced to cloture on a shell bill so I’m not sure they even have the final text public yet (unless it’s sitting in my inbox somewhere now.) They will substitute and then I’m sure there will be plenty of time for everyone to read it while they do debate and vote a rama for the next.. however long. Infrastructure is super boring to me admittedly (sorry friends) but it is clearly SORELY needed.

[notreal]

Jul 29, 2021 8:55:12 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I was trying to read what was included last night, and couldn't really find anything. I'll be interested to see what is included.

This is something that people just don't think about on a day to day basis. I read a local article yesterday how a neighboring town has crappy water because they don't have a wastewater/drinking water treatment plant large enough to handle the growth they've been experiencing. I'm unsure how their funding works, but something about not having enough municipal funds to throw lots of money at something to get it built quickly.

And quickly would still mean 2 years before it's online and people would see improvement.

[ellipses84]

Heather Cox Richardson had a good summary on her daily fb post. Of note, R’s insisted on taking out more funding for the IRS to investigate tax fraud (and the estimated amount of tax fraud they expected to catch was like 1 trillion which would pay for a huge amount of the bill). Some of her sources require subscriptions so I wasn’t able to verify where she read that.

She also included stats on the reduction of child poverty that you can find here.

www.urban.org/research/publication/2021-poverty-projections-assessing-impact-benefits-and-stimulus-measures?fbclid=IwAR2IE5sRuZKsLh2r2vuYzT8n9FrSzxYFy7clvxXvLm2D28AsFqb0lXL57kY

Eta: she also worries R’s may try to run out the clock on the session, but hopefully R’s will realize a lot of their voters support this.

[seeyalater52]

Jul 29, 2021 10:13:46 GMT -5 ellipses84 said:

Heather Cox Richardson had a good summary on her daily fb post. Of note, R’s insisted on taking out more funding for the IRS to investigate tax fraud (and the estimated amount of tax fraud they expected to catch was like 1 trillion which would pay for a huge amount of the bill). Some of her sources require subscriptions so I wasn’t able to verify where she read that.

She also included stats on the reduction of child poverty that you can find here.

www.urban.org/research/publication/2021-poverty-projections-assessing-impact-benefits-and-stimulus-measures?fbclid=IwAR2IE5sRuZKsLh2r2vuYzT8n9FrSzxYFy7clvxXvLm2D28AsFqb0lXL57kY

Eta: she also worries R’s may try to run out the clock on the session, but hopefully R’s will realize a lot of their voters support this.

Someone said in a meeting I was in yesterday that this is the opposite of the ACA fight: time is not on our side. The longer it drags the more chance there is that it will fall apart (this is true for both the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package) 

[Jalapeñomel]

Tangentially related but the NY MTA employs
72,000 people. That seems insane to me.

Ok back to the grown ups talking.

[bronxgirl]

It's good to have some potentially good news. I've been feeling so despondent that anything would ever get done.

[pixy0stix]

Jul 29, 2021 12:52:51 GMT -5 Jalapeñomel said:

Tangentially related but the NY MTA employs
72,000 people. That seems insane to me.

Ok back to the grown ups talking.

And it probably isn't enough people.

[aurora]

Jul 29, 2021 8:59:04 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

Jul 29, 2021 8:55:12 GMT -5 pixy0stix said:

I was trying to read what was included last night, and couldn't really find anything. I'll be interested to see what is included.

This is something that people just don't think about on a day to day basis. I read a local article yesterday how a neighboring town has crappy water because they don't have a wastewater/drinking water treatment plant large enough to handle the growth they've been experiencing. I'm unsure how their funding works, but something about not having enough municipal funds to throw lots of money at something to get it built quickly.

It’s a black hole right now. They advanced to cloture on a shell bill so I’m not sure they even have the final text public yet (unless it’s sitting in my inbox somewhere now.) They will substitute and then I’m sure there will be plenty of time for everyone to read it while they do debate and vote a rama for the next.. however long. Infrastructure is super boring to me admittedly (sorry friends) but it is clearly SORELY needed.

Wait, they can vote on a "shell bill" that doesn't actually say what the bill will be about? An I understanding that correctly? Is this only at the cloture vote level?

I guess I don't understand government yet, despite how many years I have hung around here.

[seeyalater52]

Jul 29, 2021 15:10:06 GMT -5 aurora said:

Jul 29, 2021 8:59:04 GMT -5 seeyalater52 said:

It’s a black hole right now. They advanced to cloture on a shell bill so I’m not sure they even have the final text public yet (unless it’s sitting in my inbox somewhere now.) They will substitute and then I’m sure there will be plenty of time for everyone to read it while they do debate and vote a rama for the next.. however long. Infrastructure is super boring to me admittedly (sorry friends) but it is clearly SORELY needed.

Wait, they can vote on a "shell bill" that doesn't actually say what the bill will be about? An I understanding that correctly? Is this only at the cloture vote level?

I guess I don't understand government yet, despite how many years I have hung around here.

The procedural rules are so annoying. They can do cloture on an existing bill (the "shell bill") and then substitute that with an entire new bill as an amendment during the amendment process and then vote on the new bill (which is just the amendment) when they actually move to pass. In this context it sort of makes sense because with a cloture vote all they're really saying is that they want to move to debate. They can begin to debate infrastructure without having all the details because everyone already knows what they're going to say lol. I'm sure they've all seen the actual bill by now, though. 

Usually procedural stuff like this only works if you expect to have enough votes to pass, otherwise it usually gets hung up or interrupted at some point in the process (usually when you go to substitute the amendment.)