THE AGGRANDIZEMENT OF THE RENT SEEKERS.

Tass News Agency, er, Associated Press propagandist Lisa Mascaro puts the regime's spin on the latest round of money printing.  "'Bidenomics' delivered a once-in-generation investment. It shows the pros and cons of policymaking."  That's the headline, here come the details.

There are so many dots on the maps they blur into blobs — each one reflecting trillions of public and private dollars flowing in the U.S. this past year to build thousands of roads, bridges and manufacturing projects in communities large and small, in states red and blue.

They include an electric vehicle “battery belt” of manufacturing stretching from Michigan to Georgia, semiconductor fabrication plants in Arizona, Texas, Ohio and New York and broadband coming to Appalachia.

Taken together, they represent President Joe Biden's ambitious attempt to use the levers of government to chart a new era of domestic manufacturing, modernizing the U.S. to compete in the 21st century.

Packaged as “Bidenomics” by the White House, the effort is the product of three major bills approved in the last Congress that are also the president's hoped-for roadmap for reelection. Republicans have balked at what they said was unwarranted federal spending. The debate between those two views could go a long way toward determining who wins the White House and control of Congress in 2024.

Pay close attention to those roads and bridges. Dementia Joe will be showing up at the ribbon cuttings, if he remembers and he can stay awake, but he will be out of office in another ten years, when the projects start to wear out and either the municipalities are on the hook for repairs or there will be another bipartisan porkulus.  In place of a Solyndra or Foxconn to be a big, visible industrial policy failure, do we have lots of little, moldering manufacturers once the public money runs out?

The grand fiction dies hard, though.

“It’s this whole new world of opportunity,” said Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, who said firms are investing millions of dollars to upgrade facilities and transform the ethanol industry.

Much like the development of the federal highway system in the 1950s or the space race to the moon in the 1960s, the undertaking is once in a generation. More recently, presidents have tapped Congress to deliver on their vision for social or fiscal policy, with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, a decade ago and Trump's GOP tax cuts in 2017.

The best reason to put the Iowa Caucuses later in the presidential nominating cycle might be to be done with the ethanol subsidies. There's nothing like a bipartisan opportunity to wet your beak, is there?  Let alone for Tass to repeat The Narrative.

Now rounding year one, it remains a work in progress. The Inflation Reduction Act, the Chips and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act are coming into fruition at a time of economic churn and stubborn inflation in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We spent decades underinvesting,” said Wendy Edelberg, a former chief economist at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and now a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution think tank. “And so we have a lot of catching up to do."

Democrats see the trio of bills — two of which also drew bipartisan support from Republicans — as their calling card to voters ahead of the 2024 election, the tangible results of Biden’s vision and tenure in the White House. For Republicans, many of whom voted against all three bills, Bidenomics is a powerful punchline about big government overreach.

Brookings are the home office of old style Keynesian thinking, although it's not clear by what standard there have been decades of "underinvesting."  Dementia Joe himself has suggested some other title than "Inflation Reduction Act" might be more accurate; picking winners in the manufacture of semiconductors is going to bring unpleasant surprises, and those infrastructure projects are future liabilities, plus motorists will never get back the time they lose in the construction delays.  The malaise is yet to come.

Looking over the tiny dots on the maps being produced by the government and outside groups, the display of public and private investment is steadily coming into focus.

Propelled by a mix of direct funds and lucrative federal tax breaks, the legislation is also luring outside dollars to the table.

The White House said the federal policy has generated more than $500 billion in private investment announcements flowing to the states – much of it in Republican-held congressional districts as companies invest where land is cheap and labor unions lag. Even Republicans who voted against the bills are now vying for credit.

The CHIPs bill alone has sparked some $200 billion in domestic semiconductor manufacturing, according to the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, and industry estimates.

IRA's centerpiece, a $400 billion federal investment to curb climate change, is standing up solar, electric vehicle and battery manufacturing, particularly in the Southeast region where Republicans dominate.

At the same time, provisions in the IRA will allow counties and local governments to tap into federal green energy production tax credits typically used by private entities, enabling them to develop projects on their own.

Big campaign donors get the grants to build the factories, perhaps the jobs will trickle down to voters and last an election cycle or two.  Rent seeking, however, is bipartisan and eternal.  "Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa and other Midwestern Republican lawmakers fought to preserve the tax break that home-state ethanol producers are already banking on to upgrade their facilities."