The bill is better viewed as step one of President Biden’s Green New Deal, giving his appointees and federal bureaucrats tens of billions with which to remake the economy. The Energy Department gets more than $20 billion to reprise its failed role as a green-energy venture capitalist. The Federal Emergency Management Agency gets $3.5 billion to deal with flooding. There’s new money for the National Park Service, the Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service, the Environmental Protection Agency, you name it.

The bill similarly gives the feds unprecedented and centralized control over chunks of the economy. Washington will now dictate rules in areas that have traditionally been managed by local authorities (such as drinking water) even as it muscles in on private-sector enterprises like broadband. The bill turns Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg into an electric-vehicle czar, with authority to pinpoint new charging stations down to the mile marker.