The Weekly Planet: The 1 Thing to Understand About Biden’s Infrastructure Plan
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There are some real numerical humdingers in President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan. It pledges to fix 10,000 bridges and repair 20,000 miles of road. It would buy 96,000 electric school buses and 230,000 electric U.S. Postal Service vans. Even the numbers about the numbers are big: The word billion appears in the plan 69 times.
Yet in the two weeks since the plan debuted, one number in particular has stood out to me. It underlines the plan’s importance, its ambition, and its scope. It also helps explain the almost low-key political approach taken by the Biden team.
That number: one. There is only serious vehicle to pass climate policy through Congress during the Biden administration—If recent history is any guide, the bill is the country’s one shot to pass meaningful climate legislation in the
