cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/20665840
President Biden on Tuesday announced $2.6 billion in funding to replace all lead pipes in the United States as part of a new EPA rule that will require lead pipes to be identified and replaced within 10 years using the new funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act.
How is it going to cover the whole country when 1/4 of the total is needed for just one city?
The math ain’t mathing…
Maybe if we took the 17+ billion dollars Biden sent to Israel so they can genocide all their neighbors it would be enough, but 2.6 billion is nowhere near enough to actually fix this problem, but is it enough for people to give Biden credit before it’s done. No idea why people keep wanting to do that. The vast majority of the time nothing ever gets done.
The program has been going on for decades. The Feds put money in a big account the EPA manages that gives grants and loans to areas that need it to get the process completed faster.
As loans get repaid over the years, the money is leant out again. Most areas have enough income to afford the project, but not enough cash on hand to afford to pay all at once.
This is the first batch of additional money being added to the fund along with a mandate that the problem be resolved in a fixed timeframe.
Currently the fund has used about $20billion to provide $40billion in upgrades over nearly 30 years.
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-issues-final-rule-requiring-replacement-lead-pipes-within
It’s not supposed to cover the entire thing. Actual estimates for the whole thing are at $20 to $30 billion. This is just the latest round of funding for the pipe replacement, not the entire thing. The Biden administration has secured $15 billion in funding for lead pipe replacement to date.
The article posted above reads: “The $2.6 billion is the latest disbursement by the Biden administration for lead pipes in the $50 billion from the 2021 infrastructure law for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.” But you decided to read one paragraph in (which could I guess be further than average) and write a long-winded outraged comment that it isn’t enough.
Oh wow…
So it is almost as much as we’ve given this year to a foreign country with free higher education and universal healthcare so they can maintain their standard of living while genociding their neighbors…
Yeah. This is waaaaay better and there’s no issue with this at all. We just have to wait a decade, this isn’t something Biden can speed up by just going around congress, he only does that for important things like supporting genocide.
I don’t support Israel’s genocide in Gaza either or the Biden administration’s ongoing support of it (I think all of that military aid should be going to Ukraine instead, for starters), but you really just shitted up the thread by deciding that reading past the first paragraph was too hard, went off on an unrelated whataboutism tangent, and then when it was pointed out you were wrong, you decided to be a snarky, immature jackass about it instead of just saying “oh, okay”.
It’s not unrelated.
2.6 billion. Even 15 billion sounds like an unimaginably big number.
But for something of this scale, it’s not enough.
I was hoping you could do the math, but here it is:
15 billion divided by 700 million is enough for 24 and almost half a city.
Do you think that’s enough to fulfil this pledge Biden just made?
Because if not. If you do realize there is literally zero way this is accomplished…
How is it uplifting news?
What if I said Santa was going to get you a pony in a decade? Would you get excited?
Really fucking projecting here when you can’t even read, aren’t we? 💀 I swear Redditor-types have some kind of allergy to just admitting when they’re wrong about something and moving along with their day.
So …
You understand there’s no way this will actually be accomplished?
But you think it’s uplifting the American public is being lied to a month before the election with a promise that has 0% chance of coming true?
You do you homie.
But at 700 million a city… Even 70 billion isn’t enough.
I’m sorry I couldn’t help you understand this but it’s obviously not going to work
Fiscal Year 2025 started October 1st, Congress approved a stop gap so they can continue appropriations. You think a president shouldn’t announce anything or do anything in the months leading up to an election?
Also, it’s lead pipes. We don’t use them anymore. Every pipe replaced is a step forward. Biden just announced a deadline.
They’ve been consistently disbursing funds for this and this time is no different. Here’s last May’s news : https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-announces-3-billion-lead-pipe-replacement-advance-safe
One that we have zero chance of meeting…
Oh, I think I understand now: you think that $15 billion is all there is and ever can be because you don’t understand that “a decade” is 10 years and consequently that the EPA has time to get more funding for this over a period of – again – 10 years.
Since I know reading is hard for you, here’s something to enhance your comprehension of that $15 billion figure: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/so_far
Edit: and you never answered: where on god’s green Earth is 700 million coming from? Milwaukee? Because that’s one city, and cities have different amounts of lead pipes.
…
From the article you didn’t read before you posted…
I even quoted it in my first comment:
But with all the insults and just the sheer difficulty of having to explain things to you in a way you can understand, I’m gonna have to tap out
I’m truly sorry I can’t help anymore, and I hope you find someone with more patience willing to assist you.
Quick edit:
Shit. You’re a mod from that animal abuse troll sub…
I thought I’d blocked all of you already, now it makes sense why this was so difficult
Cities should take on most of the cost themselves. Some cities have already done this from their own revenue - pipes wear out over time and so on - why should those cities pay for cities that couldn’t be bothered?
I didn’t downvote you, by the way; I at least understand the rationale on a surface level.
Citizens should be voting for politicians who do things. They for politicians who cleaned things up. Will you fire all those corrupt politicians in your town that didn’t clean things up? Remember those cities that did clean things up paid for the price on their own. I do not want to reward cities who vote to continue corruption.
You understand that lead poisoning most predominantly affects children, right? So even if your argument is that the minority of voting-age individuals who vote against these politicians should suffer the consequences of the majority who do (let alone that those majority deserve to have lead poisoning for voting in incompetent or corrupt politicians/living in a jurisdiction that can’t afford to rapidly replace these lines), you’re failing to acknowledge that the children who are most deeply affected here have no say whatsoever.
Because we live in a society.
I don’t know how to convey that you should do things that keep people, particularly children, healthy even if they don’t live in the same municipal tax jurisdiction.
If your thought was shared by society, we wouldn’t have lead pipes to begin with and you wouldn’t have cause to reply so smugly to someone merely suggesting people should get what they vote for.