President Biden’s Build Back Better Infrastructure Plan is currently being defended by the Democrats in Congress and is the subject of intense political debate today.  The plan presents another opportunity to differentiate between visions for America proposed by Democrats and Republicans.

In the past, the Republicans took pride in presenting themselves as the party of family values, which implies that the Democrats were not.  As far as I can tell, the last time the Republicans held power in Congress, they focused on a tax cut that clearly benefited the rich and corporations, but did little to help the average American.  They dedicated much energy to trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act which was an attempt to help uninsured Americans.  They also maneuvered to secure power through appointments to the Supreme Court, paying no mind to rules of conduct they had previously defended.  Currently, in a complete surrender to their de facto leader, the former president, they seem to have given up on putting forth a credible agenda.  Instead, they relentlessly pursue their leader’s “big lie” on election fraud, putting democratic institutions at risk in the process.  Their disregard of facts gives the impression that they no longer believe truth matters.  Many of them seek to discredit scientists on health matters, claiming that the pandemic is made up, and opposing solutions to end it, such as vaccines and masks.  In their quest for power at any cost, they are involved in aggressive maneuvers to limit the voting rights of minorities.  Their initial condemnation of the January 6 events seems to be turning into an embrace of the insurrectionists as patriots.  I suppose they still see themselves as representatives of the Christian faith because of their more aggressive anti-abortion approach.

Christians who actually get their values from the New Testament are forced to face this new reality and put their support behind policies that best represent their faith.  Adam Russell Taylor, the president of Sojourners, published on October 14, 2021 an article titled Destroyed for Our Lack of Knowledge.  The title of the article is a reference to Hosea 4:6 where the prophet Hosea warns the northern kingdom of Israel that its lack of knowledge of God will lead to its destruction.

Taylor sees the Build Back Better Infrastructure plan as a priority Christians should endorse with extreme urgency if they truly care about families and communities, and his objective is to help the public, and Christians in particular, understand it better:

“Today, the public’s lack of knowledge around the infrastructure bills that target both traditional physical infrastructure, like roads and bridges, and human infrastructure, like child care and health care, has resulted from a combination of disinformation and weak messaging that is failing to break through. The truth is, these bills are about ensuring that families and communities of all kinds across the United States can make a sustainable living, provide quality education for children, afford medications when they get sick, have clean air to breathe and clean water to drink, equip the next generation with a livable planet, and so much more. Together the bipartisan infrastructure bill and budget reconciliation package represent the most pro-family and pro-common good agenda we have seen in over a generation. When so much is at stake, leaders must better communicate what’s in these bills — and make the case for why they will significantly improve our quality of life as a society.”

Those who have been following the debate know that the plan includes, as implied in the above statement, a bipartisan infrastructure bill ($1 trillion) and a reconciliation bill ($3.5 trillion).  Much of the debate, as seen on TV, has focused on the costs and how to pay for the bills. Taylor wants to focus on the content, which is at least as valuable (if not more valuable) than military content that routinely receives higher amounts of funding:

“One cause of confusion is the money: What is the price tag and who will pay for it? While we must consider the cost, it’s important to note that this new spending is over a 10-year period. Even if the budget reconciliation bill — the bill that targets crucial human needs like child care, paid family leave, and health care — were passed at its initially proposed price tag of $3.5 trillion, that comes out to $350 billion per year. That’s less than half of the military budget, which totaled more than $770 billion last year. It’s worth asking why the military budget is universally discussed in annual terms but programs that would fight the climate crisis and provide vital support to families are discussed in terms of their total cost over the course of a decade. As for how to fund the programs, the bill proposes a more equitable tax system in which the uber-wealthy and major corporations pay their fair share.”

Taylor provides details on the contents of the two bills to show how they benefit American families:

The bipartisan infrastructure bill is more likely that the Reconciliation Bill to be passed by Congress because it has some Republican support.  It addresses traditional infrastructure needs:

• More than $100 billion to fix crumbling roads and bridges across the country.
• More than $100 billion in public transit and rail, which will help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• A billion dollars to reconnect communities that have been divided by large highways, which are overwhelmingly communities of color.
• $65 billion to deliver high-speed internet to every community in the United States.
• $15 billion to make electric vehicles and buses more practical and widespread.
• $73 billion to modernize the national power grid and fund damage mitigation from extreme weather.
• $55 billion to invest in clean drinking water.

More details and a more complete list can be found here.

The reconciliation bill, which the Democrats are attempting to pass without Republican support, is still under negotiation.  Currently, the state of the negotiations indicates that the total cost will be below $2 trillion, well under the initial target of $3.5 trillion.  Taylor summarizes the important details of the original package as follows:

“So what’s in the budget reconciliation bill? As Sojourners political director Lauren W. Reliford laid out a few weeks ago, the bill would dramatically cut child poverty, which today affects nearly one in five children in the United States. And while the bill’s final details are being negotiated as we speak, the House version includes 12 weeks of universal paid family and medical leave. It would also make child care more affordable by capping the amount of income parents spend on it and provide funding to states that implement universal pre-K for 3- and 4-year-olds, with the goal of making pre-K available nationwide. The reconciliation bill’s climate provisions reward electric companies that use more clean, renewable energy and fine those that don’t and provide tax breaks to renewable energy industries like wind and solar. These provisions would help transition our economy off of fossil fuels, enabling us to cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 50 percent by the end of the decade, while creating clean energy jobs in the process.

Between this bill’s family-focused programs and climate-focused provisions, it’s not a stretch to say that this legislation could save countless lives both now and long term.”

Recognizing that the so-called Religious Right has, in the past, aligned itself with the Republican party, the “party of family values,” Taylor says:

“Far too often the political Right narrowly defines a pro-family agenda as restricting abortion and standing in the way of LGBTQ rights and is then largely silent on policies that would clearly benefit families. In the debate over these bills, many Republican politicians have used scare tactics, mischaracterizing the bills as socialism or arguing that they will destroy the economy. Just as Jesus expressed his moral indignation against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, we too should call out this hypocrisy. Saying ‘free market’ doesn’t make child care more affordable or offer those providing it a living wage. These bills would provide lifelines of support where market forces have clearly failed.”

Indeed, American conservatives usually assume that the mere mention of words such as socialism or free market determines the outcome of a conversation because they have been programmed to believe that socialism is evil and free market (i.e. capitalism) is good.  In reality we see, in Acts 4:32-37, a way of life adopted by the early Christians which seems closer to socialism (without the authoritarian aspect of it) than it is to capitalism.

Here, given the facts associated with the programs offered by the two parties, Taylor sees no difficulty in associating the Democrats with Jesus and the Republicans with the Pharisees.  Isn’t this remarkable?  Taylor wants to reframe the bills “through the lens of our faith, particularly the biblical call to advance the common good and serve as ‘repairers of the breach’ (Isaiah 58:12).”  For that, he quotes Isaiah 58:6-7, which says:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

Taylor then further explains his position.  I am reproducing his entire statement here because, frankly, I have nothing to add beyond what he says:

“These verses make it crystal clear that what pleases the Lord is when we engage in acts of compassion and justice, which in turn advance the common good. And these requirements are not confined to individual acts but also apply to our communal acts — in other words who and what we prioritize in our politics and budgetary priorities. As the Second Vatican Council put it, the common good is ‘the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily.’ Pope Francis, in the encyclical Fratelli tutti also emphasizes that we must recognize the equal dignity of all people and to work together to build a world where people love and care for one another as brothers and sisters. Isaiah forewarns us not to let our worship devolve into a purely private or personal enterprise and makes it clear that our spiritual and material prosperity is tied to the liberation and welfare of the people who are most downtrodden and shut out in our communities.

Isaiah goes on to say that after we prioritize compassion and justice, ‘Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly … then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday … Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in’ (Isaiah 58:8, 10, 12). Not only will a commitment to prioritize compassion and justice bless others, particularly the most vulnerable and marginalized, it will ultimately bless and uplift all of us. In other words, a politics and economy that prioritize the common good will produce more abundant life and wholeness for all.”