The Big Picture – 
By Glynn Wilson – 

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Peak Autumn color arrived in the metro area this week, after cooler temperatures blew in from Canada and the first frost covered the ground in the campground here just 10 miles north of the Capitol and 11 miles from the White House.

The color and frost came just in time for Congress to come together finally to pass a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill to fund rebuilding the nation’s aging, cracking public works system and provide good paying jobs across the country, to expand access to high-speed internet access and fund new systems to prepare for dealing with climate change.

According to the political coverage in The New York Times, however, an even larger social safety net and climate change bill was back on hold in the House, with a half-dozen moderate-to-conservative Democrats withholding their votes until a nonpartisan analysis could tally its price tag. A procedural vote was taken, however, showing it too could pass soon.

“For Mr. Biden, passage of the infrastructure bill fulfilled a marquee legislative goal that he had promised to deliver since the early days of his presidency: the largest single investment of federal resources into infrastructure projects in more than a decade, including a substantial effort to fortify the nation’s response to the warming of the planet,” The Times says in its analysis.

“Tonight, we took a monumental step forward as a nation,” Biden said in a statement after the vote, lauding both the infrastructure and the social policy bills. “Generations from now, people will look back and know this is when America won the economic competition for the 21st century.”

The drubbing Democrats took in off-year elections on Tuesday had given new urgency to the president’s demand for legislative action, especially the loss in the governor’s race in Virginia.

As of last week, research was showing that Americans were still stuck in a pandemic hangover of pessimism, despite many signals that things are improving. The stock market is hitting record highs, hiring is accelerating sharply with 531,000 jobs added in October, workers are earning more, and Covid hospitalizations and deaths are dropping from their autumn peaks. Yet more than 60 percent of voters in opinion surveys said that the country was heading in the wrong direction, and President Biden’s approval rating had dropped below 50 percent.

“A national funk … has pummeled Mr. Biden’s approval ratings and fueled a backlash against Democrats that could cost them control of Congress in next year’s midterm elections,” The Times reported. “For so many voters in this November of discontent, the state of the union is just … blech.”

But that was before Friday night, when the Democrats came together with 13 Republicans and passed the infrastructure bill, which had already passed in the Senate nearly three months back. The final vote count was 228 to 206, so if no Republicans had voted for the bill, it wouldn’t have passed, The Washington Post pointed out.

According the final tally reported by The Times, the Republicans who voted for the bill included Don Bacon of Nebraska, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Andrew Garbarino, John Katkoof, Tom Reed and Nicole Malliotakis of New York, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, David B. McKinley of West Virginia, Christopher H. Smith and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Fred Upton of Michigan and Don Young from Arkansas.

Meanwhile back to the local weather forecast, the Capital Weather Gang is calling for nice, sunny, warmer weather over the next few days here, so we will be out on the trails documenting more fall color.

I’ve got errands to run on Sunday, including working on some plans to get the camper van ready for the onset of winter, so enjoy these fall photos for now. It was a pretty busy week as this campground reopened for the first time in 2 years and 3 months, so I didn’t have as much time to write as I would like. I’m helping out altruistically as a volunteer. But hopefully the schedule will stabilize going forward and I can write more.

See you out in the campground, on Facebook, or somewhere out on the trail.

More Fall Photos

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