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Last week, the Census Bureau said that the last decade’s population growth was the slowest in generations. Also last week, President Joe Biden addressed Congress and laid out a wide-ranging, multi-trillion dollar economic agenda.
The two developments are tightly related.
For much of the United States, a demographic crisis and an economic crisis are two sides of the same coin. In many cities and regions, a shrinking population reduces the tax base, leading to underinvestment and deterioration of the physical environment and public services, causing even more jobs and people to go elsewhere.
Part of the aspiration of Bidenism a through-line in the pandemic rescue plan already enacted, and in major proposals for spending on infrastructure and family support is to break that cycle. Mayors and others focused on the development of places that have experienced economic and demographic languishing see a distinct opportunity to use federal money to fix problems long in the makin
As covid relief money floods in, pandemic-battered cities see a chance to transform washingtonpost.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from washingtonpost.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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President Joe Biden can’t expect a lot of cooperation from Texas. That much has been made clear by state Republicans’ behavior in just the past three months. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a far-fetched federal lawsuit to overturn Biden’s victory. After that failed, he brought a suit against the new administration’s plan to pause immigration deportations only two days into Biden’s presidency. Just days after that, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order pledging to fight Biden’s climate-change agenda and when a bitter winter storm knocked out the state’s power, Abbott erroneously blamed Democrats and renewable energy for the crisis. For the Republicans who dominate Texas politics, Biden’s honeymoon ended before he had unpacked all his boxes in the White House.