‘Nature of the Beast’: Pete Buttigieg on Why Biden’s Landmark Bill Tanked
By Jake Beardslee ·
January 17, 2025
In a recent interview with Politico's Adam Wren, outgoing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg offered a candid assessment of why President Biden's landmark infrastructure legislation – despite its historic scope and impact – failed to translate into political capital or improved approval ratings for the administration. Nathanial Gary-USA TODAY
Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, officially known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), into law on November 15, 2021. The legislation allocates $1.2 trillion for transportation and infrastructure projects, including $550 billion dedicated to new investments and initiatives. The White House / Wikimedia
The bipartisan infrastructure bill, representing one of the most significant investments in American infrastructure since President Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System, has authorized funding for thousands of crucial upgrades to the nation's roads, bridges, and transit systems. Yet, this achievement, along with other ambitious legislative victories during Biden's tenure, has struggled to capture public imagination or appreciation. Office of the President of the United States / Wikimedia
Buttigieg, one of the administration’s most prominent voices and a frequent guest on conservative media outlets, offered his perspective on the challenges of bridging this disconnect. "The nature of good policy and being politically rewarded for good policy is it doesn't tend to happen — in the same way that an artist is not necessarily appreciated in their lifetime, a policy is rarely appreciated in the same political cycle where it happens, especially a good one," said Buttigieg. Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia
Drawing from historical precedent, he pointed to the evolution of public sentiment regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA). "Think about the political life of the ACA, to go from being an albatross to being our winning issue in eight years. And even then you have to do all the finessing for folks who don't think of the ACA and Obamacare as the same thing. There's a lot of that here with this stuff," Buttigieg explained. Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia
The Transportation Secretary identified several factors contributing to this phenomenon. He noted the crowded media landscape and the inherent challenge that "good news is no news," suggesting that uncontroversial positive developments often struggle to compete for attention with more contentious issues. Despite these challenges, Buttigieg maintained optimism about the long-term impact: "I think it will matter over time. I think it did matter." Ryan Garza / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Addressing President Biden's recent expression of frustration in a USA Today interview regarding the pace of infrastructure project implementation, Buttigieg offered context: "I think what the president was getting at is an impatience we all feel about the recognition and credit that this work deserves, when the nature of the beast is that these are very long-term projects." Josh Morgan / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
He emphasized the substantial progress already made, noting that "Precisely because they're unambiguously good news, they don't get as much attention as the controversy. To be clear, of the 66,000 projects that we've announced, about 16,000 of them are complete from a federal perspective." Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia
The interview reveals a broader challenge facing modern governance: the misalignment between policy implementation timelines and electoral cycles. While infrastructure improvements may take years to materialize fully, political success often demands more immediate results. This temporal disconnect, combined with media dynamics that favor controversy over progress, creates a complex environment for communicating policy achievements to the public. YOONHEECHO / Pixabay
