Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act

...

Infrastructure Act and stuff, and he's just like, when he goes to South Carolina now, like, he's getting, like, welcomed by the mayor who's like, "This is the guy that built the bridge-

The bridge

... that, like, brought back the downtown," and he's just like...

EPA and USDA.

And so when the IIJA, the, when the big, uh, bipartisan infrastructure bill came out, they said, "Look, we're gonna be giving out all this other money for all these other projects."

Yeah.

Let's apply a similar set of rules to that money, and all the other federal money that goes out.

... that affect us primarily.

Yeah.

The infrastructure funding, w- which was the IIJA Act-

Yeah

Here's a video posted by Mays Moore on X, and then she says, Brandon's total Build Back Better plan didn't get passed as one bill, but they broke it up into chunks and passed much of what was in the original bill.

The Infrastructure Act, the Inflation Reduction Act, that spent $2 trillion.

It's widely regarded as fact now by economists that the Inflation Reduction Act did not reduce inflation.

The Nobel laureate geniuses were wrong.

We're at an interesting point in the rollout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure.

While early chargers were nearly all located in single-family homes, the billions of dollars allocated to them in the Infrastructure Act had a bold vision of EV chargers as ubiquitous and available as gas stations.

That vision, however, has yet to fully materialize.

As of 2026, there are roughly 800 operational Nevi charging stations across the country.

Explain that to me.

How did Joe Biden pass the Infrastructure Act? How did he pass the Chips and Science? I was sorry.

That was an effective political leader.

Sorry.

But now, you know, we know that systemic change is actually what will drive this making systems that actually allow people to drive less.

than they need then they might have otherwise done or you know giving people uh subsidies for solar panels or e-bikes or whatever it might be to get the adoption rates higher to get more people in the system doing these things together and so her idea here for her book is this thing about the carbon wave which basically is like let's make large systemic change like the carbon the climate bill the IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act, which he was apparently a part of, to make those big changes instead of just making individuals responsible for their carbon footprint while everybody is kind of forced into this car-oriented paradigm in cities.

So I think it's really fascinating to think about it in that perspective because we can do so much to reduce everybody's carbon footprint by making these carbon waves.

Feedback loops.

Number one, you have to dramatically cut government spending.

These spending programs that they have adopted over the last year $1.9 trillion for the American Rescue Plan, $1.2 trillion for the Infrastructure and Jobs Act, $800 billion to a trillion dollars for the waiver of student loans, another $800 billion for the Inflation Reduction Act.

These are all massive government spending programs.

We've got to cut them dramatically.

Now let's be clear, this was never a magic wand.

Even after the IIJA, FERC cannot just build transmission wherever it wants, states still have enormous power.

Permitting still takes years, environmental reviews still happen, local opposition still matters, and eminent domain remains politically radioactive no matter which party is in charge.

But what changed was the floor.

And so that was good, but that was like a B plus back then.

And then in IIJA, the infrastructure bill or the bipartisan infrastructure law that was signed, you know, bipartisan bill passed by Congress in 2021, signed by President Biden, the CRISI program really got supercharged.

And it went to a billion dollars a year minimum plus whatever we could get in discretionary annual appropriations.

But the billion a year minimum was the magic.

And so some of the people who wrote this bill say, Chuck, where's our congratulatory press release? We are authorizing this huge amount of money.

But the problem is it's not real money.

The IIJA, the last bill, provided real money, advanced appropriations.

This bill so far just contemplates providing an authorization.