Taking Credit Where Credit Isn’t Due

Days after last fall's election, MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell had Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg as a guest. The conversation was about Joe Biden's and the Democrats' Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act which provided $1.2 trillion in grants for some 72,000 projects
encompassing roadway, ports and waterways, bridges, rail, broadband access, clean water and electric grid renewal. Buttigieg said that one of his rules of political mathematics of working in concert with governors and mayors on such projects is that…

"If two willing parties share credit for something like this, each party walks away with two-thirds of the credit."

Wry, but fitting. Buttigieg continued…

"I try not to be cynical about this, but again and again we've seen, often it's been Republican members of the House, telling their constituents 'I delivered this project'"

O'Donnell had started out as a Senate aide and Senate committee director, so he knows how it works:

"I know when you pass one of these bills the transportation secretary gets calls, gets letters from members of Congress saying can you please make sure this project in my district, in my town, gets funded? Have you been getting those calls as secretary from Republicans who voted against it?”

”All the time” Buttigieg answered.

The two commiserated that because infrastructure projects take years, the projects made possible by Biden would happen throughout the Trump years "creating jobs and improving lives… And you know Donald Trump is going to take credit for that."

We kept that exchange between Buttigieg and O'Donnell waiting for this moment, because, sure enough, articles have been reporting, “Signs bearing President Trump’s name have gone up at major construction projects financed by the 2021 law". The New York Times cites a sign by a bridge being built in Connecticut that reads, “PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP REBUILDING AMERICA’S INFRASTRUCTURE”. Trump signs have been appearing at several major infrastructure projects funded by Biden’s bill in Seattle, Boston, and Philadelphia; at another bridge in Maryland; at an Amtrak tunnel replacement project between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The signs acknowledge (in a smaller font) that the projects are “funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” but there’s no mention of Biden. Nor do they say “The Donald J. Trump Administration” to acknowledge that it is the people across the government who are overseeing the projects to the extent that they are overseen at all once the grant money is disbursed. Just Donald, taking all the credit. No surprise there.

Trump traded on his building credentials in his campaign for the presidency in 2016 promising an infrastructure program to rival Roosevelt’s New Deal, but nothing came of it. Several stabs at launching “Infrastructure Week” fizzled and gave rise to a standing joke.

So he railed against Biden’s bill, calling it “a loser for the U.S.A.”. “Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill is a disgrace,” he said in August 2021 before a Senate vote on the bill. He warned that Republican lawmakers who voted for it could be thrown out of office by angry primary voters. After it passed Congress, he referred to it as a “terrible Democrat Socialist Infrastructure Plan.”

Probably seething over Biden’s success at pulling off the massive bill, on his first day back in office Trump signed an executive order pausing disbursements for what Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy described as Biden’s “radical social and environmental agenda”. But a day later they backtracked and now Duffy is touting rail improvements funded by the Biden legislation as Trump’s effort to “Make Travel Great Again.” Imagine , though, the disruption – work sites slowed to a halt, costly heavy equipment stranded, workers idled, their income frozen – that so precipitous an action, thoughtless as to consequences, would have caused.

Mr. Trump is not the only Republican claiming credit. Representative Nancy Mace, running for governor in her state, South Carolina, had voted “no” and called the bill a “socialist wish list”, but does not object to the millions of dollars at work in the Charleston area.“What do you want me to do, turn my back on the Lowcountry when we get funding for public transit?” She even said she “helped secure the largest infrastructure grant in state history, in South Carolina history.”

Virginia Representative Rob Wittman called Biden’s bill the “Green New Deal in disguise” but later praised the $70 million expansion of the Port of Virginia in Norfolk. “While Congressman Wittman voted against the infrastructure bill, he’s ecstatic that the Port of Virginia received the funding that he worked so hard over the years to secure,” his spokesperson told ABC News.

“And so it goes” was Kurt Vonnegut’s resignation to human failings.