Question: Why was "infrastructure week" a joke under Trump, who could have gotten the votes at any time, only to become reality now despite razor-thin Dem majority? It wasn't just incompetence, although that too 1/

I think two factors. 1st, the McConnell wing of the GOP doesn't want a successful spending program, even under an R president, because that might help legitimize an increased govt role in general. That is, they opposed infra not bc it might fail but bc it might succeed 2/

2nd, Trump team was addicted to crony capitalism. They couldn't do a clean bill; it had to offer privatized stuff that would mean big bucks for their friends 3/

Not ready to celebrate until or unless we also get BBB. The case for investment in people — and climate! — is even stronger than the case for steel and concrete. But amazing how much can happen once you can push the ideologies and crony capitalists to one side 4/

People keep calling Trump a "populist", but the GOP remains committed to the policy of starve the beast: cut taxes for the wealthy, then use deficits as an excuse to cut programs that serve the middle class and poor 1/

The Trump tax cut -- mainly for corporations and the wealthy -- has cut revenues by >1% of GDP. That's significantly more than the cost of the Affordable Care Act, which has insured 20 million people 2/

But who is the beast that's supposed to be starved? Mainly it's older Americans, because that's where the money is. When people like Ryan say "entitlement reform", that basically means cuts to Social Security and Medicare. 3/

Which makes it remarkable that polling shows older people much more favorable to the GOP than younger people; it's often said that Trump's base is working-class whites, but you could also say that it's old whites 4/

One way to read this is that it's about racism/culture: older whites much less socially liberal than younger. But it's also a measure of gullibility: I suspect a lot of Fox-watchers really believe Rs are defending Medicare against D attacks 5/

I write about debt; couldn't resist the Strangelove reference 1/

Now, many people will surely start waving around frightening-looking projections, like those of the CBO 2/

But while I respect CBO's integrity, those long-run debt projections are much more questionable than people probably realize. Realistic projections, I (and many sensible economists) argue, are much less alarming 3/

CBO projects a big rise in spending as % of GDP, and if you don't look under the hood you might well assume that this is driven by fundamentals, especially the aging population 4/

Actually, though, the biggest component is a huge assumed rise in interest costs 5/

Joe Biden having some fun ridiculing McConnell for boasting about aid he tried to block; but it's worse than that 1/

On average, residents of KY receive $14K more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes — making the state the nation's #1 welfare recipient 2/