How "Build Back Better" Could Have Been Sold ... Better
We either give in to the demands of white nationalists to Build Back Whiter, or we come together to actually Build Back Better
Publisher’s Riff
It came as no surprise that, in a recent CBS News poll, most Americans had no idea what's in the plan the Biden administration gleefully calls "Build Back Better." Just 10 percent know "a lot of the specifics" and nearly 60 percent don't know anything at all or don't have any specifics. So, as we're in the final weeks of a last chance effort to get this big, bold package of a combined $4.7 trillion total in physical and human infrastructure sold, the vast majority of Americans just don't know what this is: they have absolutely no idea what all the fuss on Capitol Hill is about and what, exactly, President Biden keeps pitching.
That's not surprising. Democrats, from the White House to the House and Senate, spent an enormous amount of time engaged in failed messaging about "infrastructure." They assumed the American public understood what they meant. But, that's because the messaging, as usual, was primarily designed for White voter tastes: "infrastructure" is a term which, for White voters, means more money for White-owned businesses benefiting from a wave of federal, state and local contracts for expanded roads, bridge repairs, building fixes and, maybe, some broadband networks in between. The other part of the conversation was spent with an obsession on numbers: mainly the $3.5 trillion "social safety net" bill. And, so, Democrats allowed media to keep running relentlessly with the headline about "that $3.5 trillion spending bill" or "that reconciliation bill," because it's so "expensive" that the only way it can pass is through filibuster-proof reconciliation. Notice, we never heard this year how expensive (or, even, pointless) the $1.2 trillion plus regular infrastructure bill might be; we didn't even hear - until this past week - that this is actually $3.5 trillion over 10 years ... which means it's just $350 billion of federal spending a year. And, we sure didn't hear about bleeding red deficits or federal overspending cracking the bank when Trump and Republicans passed that fiscally irresponsible corporate-designed tax cut of $1.7 trillion back in 2017.
Now, as of this writing, it probably won’t be $3.5 trillion anymore (which was already cheap): it’s looking more like less than $2 trillion. Reports Punchbowl News …
Biden reiterated that he is seeking a bill between $1.9 trillion and $2.2 trillion. Biden repeatedly used $2 trillion “as shorthand” for the topline number. Sources involved in the meeting said the "realistic target" is somewhere in the $1.75 trillion to $1.95 trillion range
Biden presided over the meeting, and said he wanted a vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and a “public agreement” from Democrats on the contours of the reconciliation package before he travels abroad to Italy and Scotland on Oct. 30. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill by Oct. 31.
Free community college is now off the table and the child tax credit won’t go on as long as hoped, reports CNN …
President Joe Biden informed House progressives Tuesday afternoon that the final bill to expand the social safety net is expected to drop tuition-free community college, a major White House priority, according to multiple sources familiar with the mater.
Moreover, he indicated that the child tax credit -- a key Democratic priority -- would likely be extended for one additional year, much shorter than what many in their party wanted, one of the sources said. The child tax credit will also likely be means tested, keeping with what West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin had wanted.
As soon as policymakers propose anything remotely hinting at a big spend on "entitlements" or basic social safety nets for struggling, low-income and primarily Black and Brown people, we're having problems. But, this is exactly the kind of spending that made "Build Back Better" a potentially powerful message that never caught on. It should have been originally sold as the Grand, Transformational Revision of the American Economy that we've never had. A moment where we finally got needed items such free community college, a possible doubled Pell Grant, a 7% cap on family spending for child care and the first step to creating the job-creating clean energy economy that helps us avoid the climate apocalypse. Better yet, it should have been sold as "Build Back Better" from the very beginning, but it wasn't. We were, instead, served with three separate tracks of conversation: one on "infrastructure," one of "the $3.5 trillion entitlement bill" and, oh yeah, some distant one over there about something called "Build Back Better" that seemed more and more like, simply, Biden lazily recycling his 2020 campaign talking point.
But, until recently, not at one point did the president, his staff or Congressional Democrats make clear that "Build Back Better" was the $3.5 trillion bill. Meanwhile, messaging became a moving shell game: one day it's "infrastructure," another day it's "American Jobs Plan," the next day it's "American Families Plan," and finally we've arrived at "Build Back Better." And we're not certain if this was rapid focus grouping on the fly.
What we are certain of is that it was messy and unclear. Biden ran the messaging like he was running a back room Senate negotiation. Everything, from the start, should have been consistently under one umbrella message. If that was "Build Back Better," then call it just that and own it all the way through and stand with just one number versus several different numbers and packages floating in the public discourse. We would've preferred messaging more along the lines of "The American Transformation Act" or "The American Future Act" or "Built a New America Act."
More importantly: "Build Back Better" should have been sold in a way that prioritized messaging to Black, Brown, Indigenous and low-income voters in the first place. Remember them? The voters who helped Biden win in 2020 in the first place? See, the real problem with Build Back Better messaging is that White Democrats, including the Biden White House and Congressional Democratic leadership, had spent so much energy and time trying to craft the narrative in such a way that hid the benefits for Black, Brown, Indigenous and low-income voters from the feverish eyes of whitelashing White voters that they didn't do the job of rallying up the political bases that would have given it the clear mobilization energy it needed to offset biased media reporting. This is where Democrats should have 1) sharpened the Build Back Better message and 2) had crystal clear answers for the most basic question: How does Build Back Better make life better for Black, Brown, Indigenous and low-income voters? That question and the answers should have been directly delivered to Black media and other diverse, community-based media that are trusted in these communities. Of course, that never happened. Democrats didn't even purchase non-stop ads on Black radio to sell Build Back Better or create a massive media echo-chamber around the policy proposal. For the most part, they left that job to a network of think tanks who merely talked to one another and focused pushing the message to, primarily, White corporate media.
Clearly, everything proposed in Build Back Better really helps to make life better for those constituencies. Who wouldn't want free community college? Who wouldn't want, potentially, up to more than $12,000 in Pell Grants going towards college tuition? Even bigger: when families are spending up to 50 percent of their income on child care, who wouldn't want the cost of child care officially capped at 7 percent? Who wouldn't want, suddenly, covered dental, vision and hearing care added to their Medicare package? Who wouldn't want an extra $300 a month in their bank account per child? The list goes on and on, and yet Democrats stumbled all throughout the summer and now part of fall to deliver these lines and motivate target constituencies.