on afghanistan! and here we re trying to spend 1.7, $300 billion less on america s own infrastructure over several years and that s being called radical? there s a lot of spending that s radical in washington, d.c. this infrastructure, rebuilding, reinvesting in america, that s not radical. i think you re right. and i think the thing in the democratic party, if you want when you re talking radical, right? there are members of the left who want to spend a lot more money. they re saying, even the original plan that president biden put forth was nowhere near the amount of money. you re exactly right. this isn t as much that people who really concentrate on infrastructure, how much they say is needed. and something interesting that the democrats have done and the who is have done in trying to get republicans come to see how important the infrastructure and this deal is, they ve been
so this idea and it s become urban legend that democrats just got completely romped, because the polling was so bad. and the expectations were so high. but this was not an historic anomaly. if republicans were going, hey, we did a great job! we only lost by ten seats, it s kind of the way losers think. you either win or you lose. and they lost. right. joe, this is a moment where two things could be true at once. the republicans did outperform expectations in terms of the house. they had a relatively strong cycle, but not nearly as strong as the democrats did. it didn t change the fact that under donald trump s leadership in the party, as he was in office, republicans lost control of the house. lost control of the senate and eventually, of course, lost control of the white house. now, the margins are small. we re at 50/50 in the senate. the democrats margin in the house is certainly not large.
republicans wanted to spend. republicans say, they won, they are very uninterested in the pay-for, which joe biden does not want to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000, and republicans don t want them to touch the tax cuts that were ready for businesses in 2017. there s some friction. and there s friction on them having this fight about what s infrastructure and there s the price tag. republicans have found their religion again. memorial day was the deadline they gave themselves to have a deal and it s starting to look a little bleak. and people are starting to feel a little bit more pessimistic. so has this been enough for the joe manchins of the world, when they said they wanted these negotiations to be bipartisan?
recognize is that these projections and numbers are all dependent on people s actions. there was a period of time where no one ever imagined that population growth would come to an end. so what we re seeing now is the result of different policies and different reactions. so a lot of demographers i talked to said, listen, the destiny, it s not a given. how this plays out is up to us. the countries that are likely to succeed are the ones that are frankly friendlier to immigrants, because at some appoint, there will be competition to immigrants. and friendlier to young families. to some degree, the 21st century will probably be defined by the countries that do best with those two issues. the new york times damien cave. thank you very much for being on this morning. and still ahead on morning joe, after weeks of back and forth about infrastructure, the white house drops the price tag for president biden s plan, but republicans still not budging. plus, world leaders are reacting
it s that at some point, republican elites, republican leaders decided to sublimate their opinions, their anger, and their pride and basically bow to donald trump. and i think there have been multiple times where there have been off-ramps. where republican leaders could have stood up and fought him. and every time they have shown to really be wimps. and so i think, the interesting thing to me, joe, is, you know, i m from a rural area. and the kind of country cowboy conservatism i grew up with. people if you insulted someone s family. if you insulted their family. if you insulted their dignity and their honor, man, they d come out fighting. but these republicans today, they don t have that same