Economy, infrastructure thrive when Dems have the reins

Friday, June 16, 2023 | 2 a.m.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again, the economy always performs better when Democrats are in power.

Unlike their Republican counterparts whose endless campaign for welfare for the wealthy requires low- and middle-income families to pick up the tax tab for billionaires on private jets, Democratic lawmakers are proposing policies that benefit middle-class Americans and bring good-paying manufacturing and construction jobs back to the United States.

The latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that President Joe Biden’s landmark infrastructure bills, the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and CHIPS and Science Act, are driving an unprecedented surge in manufacturing construction.

Under Biden’s leadership, annual investment in manufacturing construction has more than doubled its pre-pandemic levels. That growth comes despite a global pandemic that crippled manufacturing and supply chains worldwide and had lasting impacts on the global workforce that are still being felt today. The manufacturing capacity being built now will help insulate us from future supply chain shocks and is in our national security interests as much as economic interests.

The report showed the “Mountain West” region of the U.S., which the census bureau defines as Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Colorado, New Mexico, Wyoming and Montana, are among the biggest beneficiaries of Biden’s manufacturing and infrastructure incentive programs.

Despite ex-President Donald Trump’s promises to bring prosperity and good-paying jobs to the region, private manufacturing construction in the Mountain West decreased during Trump’s Presidency, both in terms of real dollars and market share.

When Trump took office in January 2017, private manufacturing construction in the Mountain-West was valued at approximately $407 million. By February 2020, the month before the COVID pandemic brought the U.S. economy to a crawl, it had already declined to only $382 million, a mere 6.2% of U.S. manufacturing construction value. By December 2020, the month before Trump left office, it was down to $357 million, 5.7% of the U.S. total.

When President Biden and Democrats gained unified control of Congress and the White House in January 2021, the reversal was immediate. Nationwide, Biden and Democrats nearly tripled the amount of money being invested in manufacturing infrastructure.

In the Mountain West, it increased almost 10-fold in just two years. In real dollar terms, the Mountain West is now home to $3.2 billion in private manufacturing construction projects and lays claim to almost 20% of all private manufacturing infrastructure investment in the United States.

As a result, the Silver State and our neighbors have experienced some of the fastest recoveries from the COVID pandemic of any region in the country. According to the Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, nearly 50,000 new jobs were created in the Las Vegas region in the past year alone.

Thank the Democrats for this important surge in American manufacturing. Republicans consistently voted against the initiatives that brought on this boon.

Unlike Trump tax cuts for the rich, which might be reinvested into the American economy or might be spent on a junket in a foreign country, investments in modern infrastructure and modern manufacturing facilities — physical infrastructure here in the United States — are long-term investments in America’s future.

Democrats also did not limit the incentives to new construction. Biden’s legislation also provides incentives to retrofit old facilities, making them more efficient, more reliable and ultimately better for the environment. Even residential buildings and commercial offices are eligible for upgrades to heating, cooling, electrical and water management systems. In a region where much of the electrical grid relies on increasingly scarce water flowing through hydro-electric dams, any upgrades to efficiency or reliability are a welcome investment.

Moreover, despite those investments, the latest report from the U.S. Department of Labor showed that in May, the inflation rate cooled to its lowest annual rate in more than two years. The annual rate currently sits at 4%, a five-point decline since inflation peaked last summer and just 1.2% higher than it was five years ago, in the middle of the Trump Presidency and well before the COVID pandemic struck. In fact, despite significant government spending in response to the COVID pandemic, inflation is lower right now than it was when the George W. Bush administration drove the economy over the cliff of the Great Recession, another example of Republican economic mismanagement. Still, more work needs to be done to get inflation down to the levels achieved by the Obama administration, which rescued the economy from the Bush flame out and gifted Donald Trump with a roaring economy.

There is also more to do in the national effort to reinvigorate U.S. manufacturing capacity. For example, as investments in infrastructure and manufacturing construction lead more facilities to come online, Biden must find a way to address the shortage of skilled workers by increasing the number of skilled migrants allowed to enter the country. Given what the Democrats have gotten done for America so far, we’re confident solutions will be found if obstinate GOP resistance to economic growth doesn’t intervene again.

President Biden and his Democratic colleagues should be applauded for remaining committed to fighting for a strong social and financial safety net while becoming champions for manufacturing, industry and infrastructure. While more must be done to address inflation and worker-shortages, bringing good-paying jobs back to the United States and rebuilding the robust infrastructure of American manufacturing and technology is a long-overdue investment in America’s future that Democrats should be proud to tout in 2024.