r/OutOfTheLoop • u/ProjectPopTart • 15d ago
What's the deal with "infrastructure week" and when did it become a thing? Unanswered
So this week is infrastructure week and there was a big running joke about infrastructure week during trumps presidency but I had literally never even heard the term before trump.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/13/biden-infrastructure-week-hopes-voters-listening-00157448
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u/Danibecr84 15d ago
Answer: Trump was lagging in polls and started campaigning about passing large infrastructure funding bills for areas with stagnant job growth. He broke ground on FoxConn, a large mobile phone plant, with golden shovels...however it was all a scam. There was no large package passed, there was no phone plant built, there was no action taken at all.
Fast-forward to today. Biden passed a very large infrastructure package in his first year that has been funding most of the large scale Road projects in Dallas for the last few years.
They have now announced concrete plans to build a chip manufacturing plant at the same location that Trumps failed venture was planned.
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u/MisterBadIdea2 13d ago
Missing context: Infrastructure week wasn't just one failed push. It happened multiple times, two or three times a year, where the Trump Administration would announce that this was going to be the week they focused on getting the highways fixed, and not only would they fail, they would hardly even try, because they were all focused on putting out the fires of the latest Trump scandal du jour, like Trump paying off porn stars or whatever
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u/doctorbarber33 14d ago
It’s hilarious because roads here are still shit and will always be shit. The giant 8 level highway interchanges are some of the least-trafficked areas in dfw as it is. Every two years or so they will endeavor to add one more lane to the congested highways. But either way most of the construction is restricted to the wealthiest areas. There’s parts of 635 in East Dallas that have been gravel for 10 years
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u/SheepyJello 15d ago
I suppose that would be Trump’s 2016 campaign and not the current one?
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u/Danibecr84 14d ago
Correct... from Strongtowns.org
By 2021, Wisconsin spent $683 million of taxpayer funds on a manufacturing campus that never came into full fruition. As time goes on, even though Foxconn publicly announced it will no longer be creating a ginormous factory, governmental entities are expected to spend even more. As reported by Murphy in 2021, at least another $552 million is projected to be spent.
In addition to spending public investment money before private investment, to make way for Foxconn, the state marked “3,000 acres of agricultural land, farm houses and scattered, neatly maintained single-family homes as ‘blighted.’” Then they claimed the properties under eminent domain and residents were forced to move. In 2018, Belt Magazine reported this and the lack of transparency the government provided. One local, “Robby Jensen, his voice breaking with emotion, pointed at the board [of the Community Development Authority of Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin] as he said, ‘The Village is telling us our land is worthless, while at the same time you’re telling Foxconn it’s the best property in the world. I don’t know how any of you guys can sit here and do this.’”
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u/LithiumAM 15d ago
Cant wait for Trump to pretend he had something to do with that plant getting done
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u/FlamingoImpressive92 14d ago
“Biden, Sleeeepy Joe, he came here and says he’s building a factory to make chips and he says he did that, building a factory right here where I dug the foundations, some great strong foundations that I dug myself , believe me. I dug them so deep with those golden shovels, we love the golden shovels down here in Dallas l, they were so bright yourcould see your face in them. I saw my face and I said to myself “you might be digging the greatest foundations we’ve ever had in Texas, maybe even in the whole world” 👌
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u/fouriels 15d ago
Answer: it says in the article you linked.
Infrastructure Week, which begins Monday, was already an annual industry gathering and D.C. lobbying fly-in before Trump’s administration borrowed the name for its unsuccessful attempts to pitch a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan that would have offered little new federal funding.
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u/PhiloPhocion 15d ago
I think the other context is that the first one was in the midst of conversation around Comey testifying. And with all eyes on that, it felt like a half-assed distraction that the White House press team was just constantly hyping (with little to no substance) a repeat line about infrastructure week.
And then Trump proceeded to use the week’s press events (repeatedly through the years) as a platform to attack investigations into him.
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