 The White House has unveiled Joe Biden's infrastructure plan, and this isn't yet in bill form. It's not a final draft, although there are some details that I think are important that is laid out by Jeff Stein of The Washington Post. This is what is promised. So electric vehicle stations nationwide replace every lead pipe and universal clean drinking water. This obviously sounds great. Two million homes retrofitted or built universal affordable high speed broadband by 2030. Now I don't necessarily know what this entails. If he means investing in municipal broadband, this could be a game changer in the fight to protect net neutrality. If this just means additional infrastructure to make high speed internet more accessible to people who live in rural areas, that's good too. But really we have to know the details in order to determine what the effect will be. Additionally, fixed 20,000 miles of roads and bridges and the pro act will also be included in this infrastructure bill. Now for a dollars breakdown, we go to Kyle Griffin of MSNBC who explains 650 billion will be allocated to rebuild us infrastructure 400 billion to care for the elderly and disabled 300 billion for housing infrastructure and 300 billion to revive us manufacturing. So that's the short and sweet summary based on a couple of tweets. But if you really want a full comprehensive breakdown, I will point you to the article written by Jeff Stein from the Washington Post. And I also want to share this graphic with you because this breaks it down even further. And as you can see clean drinking water and replacing lead pipes, this is a really, really positive thing to include. Will this amount of money be enough to actually achieve this? I'm not necessarily sure, but this is positive. I'm not sure. Again, with the high speed broadband element will entail. Nonetheless, there's a lot of good things in here. But before I tell you too much about my opinion on this, I do want to share what Biden believes this bill is going to be. Quote, this is not a plan that tinkers around the edges. It is a once in a generation investment in America unlike anything we've done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race in the 1950s and 1960s. Biden said, we have to move now. I'm convinced that if we act now in 50 years, people will look back and say, this was the moment America won the future. So to him, this is his response to calls for a jobs program, the Green New Deal. So using that metric to grade this, is this going to be sufficient? Well, let's put it this way in order to actually stop a climate catastrophe, it's going to require $50 trillion to be spent over the next two decades. Now, this isn't just for the United States to be clear. It's for the entire world. But if this actually is a once in a generation investment and possibly our last chance to stop catastrophic climate change and meet the IPCC's now 10 year timeline, is this actually enough? And I think that we all know the answer to that. No, it's not enough. It's a start. There's a lot of great things in here. And in the event this were to pass, there's a lot of positives. The pro act, you know, replacing lead pipes in America. There's a lot in here. That's great that I would like to see passed and become law. The issue, however, is that he is attempting to pass this and basically say, look, I answered your call. Climate activists, people who want a federal jobs guarantee. This is what you get. I did this. This is a once in a generation opportunity. Well, if that's truly the case, then you need to shoot a lot higher for this because assuming that this is all going to be in the bill that you propose, it is going to get watered down. So you ask for 2.2 trillion. You're probably going to only get 1.5 trillion if you're lucky. So you should be asking for much more anticipating this bill to get watered down. And even if we got everything in this bill, is this still enough? Well, I think that AOC does a good job at putting this into perspective. She tweeted out the important context here is that it's a 2.25 trillion dollar spread over 10 years for context. The covid package was 1.9 trillion for this year alone with some provisions lasting two years. It needs to be way bigger. And I totally agree with that sentiment. If this really is a once in a generation opportunity here to pass something like this and we're not going to get this opportunity again for a very long time, you shoot for the moon. You don't come up with a 2.2 trillion dollar plan over 10 years. Again, I don't want to discredit or be too down on the good stuff here because there are good elements in here. But if you're expecting us to accept that this is all we do with regard to climate change and the federal jobs guarantee and investing in clean green renewable technology, it's very clearly not going to suffice. And that's what he's trying to sell it to us as. And as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams points out, climate activists are not accepting this. President Joe Biden's rollout of a 2.26 trillion infrastructure and climate spending blueprint on Wednesday was met with an icy response from progressive advocacy groups and environmentalists who argued the proposal in its current form is inadequate to the task of combating the climate crisis by overhauling the nation's polluting energy and transportation systems. Biden's industry friendly infrastructure plan squanders one of our last best chances to stop the climate emergency, warned Brett Hartle, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. Instead of a Marshall plan approach that moves our economy to renewable energy, it includes gimmicky subsidies for carbon capture, fantastically wishes the free market will save us and fails to take crucial and ambitious steps towards phasing out fossil fuels. Winona Hodder, executive director of Food and Water Watch, said that while Biden's proposal is more ambitious than previous efforts, the American Jobs Plan still falls woefully short of truly addressing the multiple crises facing our country and our planet. In a blog post on Wednesday, Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute sketched out a rough estimate of the spending that would likely be necessary over the next decade to meet the nation's most pressing needs in the areas of infrastructure, green energy, investment, higher education and health care, considering the costs of proposals that are under discussion for the new package, as well as policy ideas not currently on the table, such as expanding Medicare to children. Bivens puts the ideal level of spending at just under 10.5 trillion over the next 10 years. So if this is truly it, the last chance we have in a really long time to see Democrats in full control of government, even if their majority in the Senate is super narrow, you've got to do way, way better than this, way better than this, because you're not going to say, hey, I passed the American Jobs Act, we're done. We can wash your hands when it comes to climate change and infrastructure and jobs program in America. This isn't going to suffice. And again, if the recommendation here is 10.5 trillion over the next 10 years, which I think sounds more reasonable, you need to ask for 15 trillion, because again, you have to anticipate this is going to be watered down. It's going to be watered down. And so if you don't shoot high, then you're not going to get what you want. You have to anticipate that some provisions are going to be taken out. Now, I haven't seen the final bill yet. We don't know what's going to be in this. And it's probably going to be really long and lengthy, and there's probably going to be some poison pills in here, to be honest, that we need to try to suss out. But it's clear that he's trying to sell this as something that it's not not a plan that tinkers around the edges. It is a once in a generation investment in America. Then you actually have to put those words into practice, because even if this is to be fair, more bold than anything we've seen from Democrats, even Obama would refuse to go above one trillion in any bill. It's still not good enough. And you ran for president. You told all of us that you could meet this moment. We knew it was a lie, but don't tell us that you're going to meet this moment if you won't actually meet this moment. Now, again, I want to be extra clear here. I'm giving him credit words to if this were to pass, it would be in that positive. It would be good, right? But it's not good enough. We can do more. We can always do more. And it's time that the Democratic Party stops just doing the bare minimum. They are tinkering around the edges most of the time. And we need a bold systemic changes if we actually want to save the planet. When you have a really limited window of opportunity, there is no time to just make small tweaks around the edges. Even Joe Biden is saying that he doesn't want to tinker around tinker around the edges. So if that's actually the case, then show us, don't tell us. Now, this is just the preliminary proposal. We'll have to wait and reserve judgment. But if this is all that we get and we're not going to get another chance to pass an infrastructure bill, I mean, don't you think we could do a little bit better than this, at least a tiny bit better?