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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. In case you missed it over the weekend, we saw another example of how President Joe Biden is different from his predecessor, Donald Trump. Biden humbly reversed himself when something he said on Thursday backfired and caused confusion. We played the original statements on this show. Let's go back and see how the president cleared them up and why it matters. He said this when he embraced the bipartisan infrastructure deal, agreed to by five Democratic and five Republican senators.

Joe Biden: Let me be clear, neither side got everything they wanted in this deal. That's what it means to compromise. It reflects something important, reflects consensus.

Brian Lehrer: So far, so good, consensus, but then the president said he would not sign the compromise that he just agreed to, unless another bill called the American Families Plan which would provide free universal 3-K and pre-K and two years of free community college, among other things, that Republicans are not agreeing to, he wouldn't sign the compromise unless this one also gets to his desk.

Joe Biden: I'm not just signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest that I proposed. I proposed a significant piece of legislation in three parts. All three parts are equally important.

Brian Lehrer: After that, Republicans called the compromise announcement, a charade if the other parts of this package that they didn't agree to would be pushed forward into law anyway, by the Democratic majority alone. An article that we quoted from in the conservative National Review magazine last week, said, "Imagine if, in 2017, Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell announced a bipartisan deal with Democrats on some tax reform provisions they agreed with, then pass the rest of the Republican tax bill anyway, and called it bipartisan tax reform. It would be viewed as absurd and rightly so," said National Review. They had a point.

On Saturday, the president released a new statement, saying Republicans were "understandably upset". Can you imagine Donald Trump ever saying someone who disagreed with him was understandably upset rather than just trying to trash or destroy that person? President Biden said, "To be clear, our bipartisan agreement does not preclude Republicans from attempting to defeat my American Families Plan." In other words, he will sign the compromised bipartisan infrastructure bill whether or not the American Families Plan also makes it to his desk.

Biden caused confusion, apologized for it, and reversed himself. The infrastructure plan seems to be intact. In fact, we're going to play one more clip because it seems to be intact, even as the American Families Plan advances on its own in the House of Representatives. Here's New York City Congresswoman and a progressive leader, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: In the House, House Democrats are very committed to making sure that in Senator Cassidy's words that infrastructure is very centered on women. In addition to a bridge, you need a babysitter. It's very important that we pass a reconciliation bill and a families plan that expands childcare that lowers the cost of Medicare, that supports families in the economy.

Brian Lehrer: There's the OC and Meet the Press yesterday. With me now, another leading New York City progressive, Congressman Adriano Espaillat, who represents Upper Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx, he's on the house Progressive Caucus, and very relevant to who gets included and who gets left behind on infrastructure. He is chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus task force for transportation, infrastructure, and housing.

Congressman Espaillat is about to go on tour of some New York City infrastructure sites with Biden's transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. Congressman, I know you only have a few minutes before you head out with the transportation secretary, but always a pleasure. Welcome back to WNYC.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Thank you, Brian. Right now I'm in Newark, and heading over to Penn Station, hopefully, with the secretary. This is an important tour. Thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: A lot of listeners probably never knew there was such a thing as a Hispanic Caucus task force on infrastructure. What kinds of infrastructure do you think are most relevant to Hispanic New Yorkers? I realize, if we talk about Hispanic Americans as a whole, it's probably a lot different in Washington Heights than it is in Phoenix. What do you think is important in this area on the caucus task force?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Each member of the Hispanic task force, the caucus has three top infrastructure transportation projects. For example, for me is the second phase of the Second Avenue subway, but for other folks could be waterfront resiliency projects so that their neighborhoods could be prepared for another Superstorm Sandy type of calamity. They got to be green, and they got to produce jobs.

It's different. It's a different mind frame than the traditional infrastructure agenda. For example, for me, the Second Avenue subway, which is three subway stops at a $7 billion trip will not be successful unless it produces hundreds of jobs for local people in East Harlem in Harlem. It ends up with a major transportation hub right there on 125th Street which is regional because it connects to Metro-North. It will connect to LaGuardia via bus and to future water transportation on the west side corridor of 125th Street.

Brian Lehrer: Is that what you want to show Secretary Buttigieg this morning?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I would like to take him down to the tunnel of the Second Avenue subway so he can see that his 75% bill was done in the '70s before the city hit a dire fiscal situation. It's really what they call shovel-ready. Unfortunately, we won't go there today, but I'll invite him to come back and see it. We're here to see the tunnel and the conditions of the gateway tunnel.

Brian Lehrer: I played that AOC clip from Meet the Press, and she sounded like she would go along with this compromise probably. She also tweeted this last week, "The diversity of this 'bipartisan coalition' pretty perfectly conveys which communities get centered and which get left behind when leaders prioritize bipartisan deal-making over inclusive lawmaking."

In other words, the Democrats in the group tended to be all the more centrist ones. Schumer and Gillibrand from New York were not in the group. Bernie Sanders and and Elizabeth Warren from New England were not in the group. The senators from California and Oregon and Washington State were not in the group.

For you as chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus infrastructure task force, does this compromise do enough to center the people you represent?

Adriano: Look, I think that in addition to bipartisan, you got to be bicameral. You got to include the House, and the House is very clear on the Families plan, the House is very clear on reconciliation. These appeases initiatives that we want to include.

In terms of the actual transportation infrastructure initiative, we want it to be bold, we want it to be transformative, we want it to create jobs for our communities, which traditionally have been left behind. That's what I'm going to be fighting for. I hope that in this visit by the secretary, I could impress upon him that these transportation infrastructure projects are important. For example, I'm working with Charlie Rangel on the Charles B. Rangel Transportation Infrastructure Institute at City College to train young people from Black and brown communities to have these prevailing wage jobs.

That's why we're talking about, just don't build me a subway, give me a thousand families lifted to the middle class with training that will allow them to have future jobs, that keep their families fed, with a good health plan, with a good pension, and the ability to move forward. That's what's successful for me and many other people that I represent. I'm going to impress that upon the secretary today.

Brian Lehrer: That all sounds great, but it's all about transportation. The Reuters news service describe some of what was compromised out of the bill, which now more focuses on transportation infrastructure, which is traditional infrastructure that Republicans could go along with. Reuters says, "Missing completely from the proposal is $400 billion in funding for Medicaid to find home care for the elderly and disabled. Also, Biden's initial proposal included $213 billion to produce, preserve and retrofit more than 2 million affordable places to live. That was part of infrastructure housing." The article also mentioned major drinking water infrastructure improvements that were now left out of the deal, hello, Flint, Michigan, and a lot of other places.

That makes it seem like lower-income Americans, who would be disproportionately Black and brown and Native get marginalized here with drinking water, Medicaid, home care for low-income elderly, more affordable housing components, all getting dropped. Do you read it the same way?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I'll tell you, I spoke to Senator Schumer just the other day, and him and I have been pushing for billions of dollars for nature. In fact, we visited several of the complexes and the developments in our district, my district, and we're pushing for $80 billion-plus for NYCHA. That's going to be a priority for the New York delegation and for our two senators. I think this is not all said and done, Senator Schumer, who's the leader of the Senate, will have something to say about this.

I'm just a little guy, but I got a chip on my shoulder, and I'm going to throw a punch in there too, for my district. Look, we may not be able to get all we want, but certainly, we should be able to get some of the very important things that are critical to Black and brown communities across the country.

Brian Lehrer: I know you got to go in a minute to meet with the secretary but Republicans in Congress may oppose the Childcare and Eldercare Act, the American Families Act, but I wonder about Republican voters around the country as opposed to their representatives, for example, universal 3-K and pre-K are in the Families plan that they won't agree to. You know as a New Yorker that universal 3-k and pre-k are, hands down, the most popular things that Bill de Blasio has done as mayor. As a matter of political analysis and where you're going to fight, wouldn't that be likely as popular nationwide and seen as serving a real need for Republican, white working-class voters as well as other people?

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I think those working-class white voters are very much concerned about that. If you mess with that, I think they're going to respond in the next general election. I think that our senators that represent blue state and red states must be really concerned about the working-class value, an agenda that's important to all families, not just New Yorkers, but families in impoverished districts that are reeling from the pandemic and are looking to get back to work, but they need daycare services. You just cannot go to work.

That's why this pandemic has disproportionately hurt women, particularly women of color because they got to have the daycare services. If you don't have that, then you're in trouble. You're not going to be able to go back to work. I think that white working-class America understands that. They better get their act together, those senators, because we'll see what happens in the next election cycle, but if I was them, I will be voting for those members of my constituencies.

Brian Lehrer: Congressman Adriano Espaillat of Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx. Thanks for a few minutes this morning. Good luck with your tour.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Now, listen, tell Secretary Buttigieg that I said hello and that we really appreciated him coming on multiple times during the campaign, and he should come on now that he's Transportation Secretary if you get a chance.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: I would love for him to come in the Heights and see the bridge up there, Brian. Let's see what happens.

Brian Lehrer: We'd love to have the two of you on together even. Thank you. Good luck.

Congressman Adriano Espaillat: Thank you.

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