Alright, I tried to take an objective look at the $3.5T spending package (we can drop the infrastructure ruse and call it what it is), and consider it objectively.
There's some things in it I could get behind IN PRINCIPLE:
- Universal pre-school -- early education is very strongly corrolated with future success. If one program in this is actually an investment in the future, it's this.
- Free or subsidized community college (for citizens and permanent residents ONLY) -- community college is practical, much less cost inflated than university, and geared towards immediately employable professions like radiology, auto and aircraft maintenance, electronics technicians, etc.
- Paid family leave -- nearly every developed nation has a version of this, and if it is limited to a reasonable time it makes sense
- Medicare Dental/Vision - believe it or not, Medicare is more efficient compared to private insurance. Think economy of scale. This may actually be a macro-level savings.
There's also a lot of issues with it:
- 10 tons of pork to pay off all the DNC indebted favors (duh)
- Monthly child care credit payments with no work requirement -- just call it what it is: increased financial enslavement to gibs
- Expanded child care -- this is a really gray area. Is this just going to be another gib that screws the middle class and hands out money to the carefully cultivated DNC dependent class? Given who's writing it, probably.
- Most importantly, contextualizing it with the current situation. We just BRRRRRRR'd a shitload of cash to deal with COVID, and the response is to fire up the printer again immediately before we can even recover from the previous round? I'm not an Econ PhD, but I'm pretty damn sure that's a bad idea. And fuck every shill saying "ZERO DOLLARS!" We aren't retarded, fuck you for thinking we are.
- Making benefits purposefully include illegal residents -- fuck off, DNC.
Some of these ideas should be revisited later, but this bill is not what America needs right now. Get bent, corpse president.
ETA - There's more on the problem side after reading more:
- Citizenship for "Dreamers" (DACA) -- DNC wet dream item
- A bunch of bullshit climate pork, which will do nothing since China outpollutes everyone else combined and gives no fucks
- Something about TPS (Temporary Protected Status), which is really just more third-world migrant importing. Which they apparently plan to do constantly with or without this bill.