I'm Brian Lehrer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Monday, April 5th.

We begin with this. The really interesting Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampel on the Biden infrastructure bill,

why it seems to pay for itself eventually, but Catherine Rampel would rather a tax hike on a few

more people to pay for it more quickly, and also how much of the Biden infrastructure bill

is about infrastructure. You know, this is becoming a primary talking point for Republicans

who oppose the bill. For example, here's Missouri Senator Roy Blunt yesterday on ABC this week with

George Stephanopoulos. There's more in the package, George, for charging stations for electric

vehicles, $174 billion,

than there is for roads, bridges, and airports, and ports.

When people think about infrastructure,

they're thinking about roads, bridges, ports, and airports,

that's a very small part of what they're calling

an infrastructure package that does so much more than infrastructure.

Senator Roy Blunt on ABC this week.

Here's Biden's Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg responding to critiques like that on Fox.

We're talking about roads and bridges.

We're talking about rail and transit.

We're talking about airports and ports. As you mentioned, we're talking about roads and bridges, we're talking about rail and transit, we're talking about airports and ports.

As you mentioned, we're talking about things like the grid.

I don't know why anybody would say it's a mistake to invest in the grid after what we just witnessed in Texas.

We saw U.S. citizens living in Texas, melting snow in their bathtubs to be able to flush their

toilets in the United States of America.

...