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With a badly aging bridge as his backdrop, President Joe Biden stood in reliably Republican Louisiana on Thursday to pressure GOP lawmakers to support his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, calling it a "blue collar blueprint to rebuild America." (May 6) AP Domestic

WASHINGTONTim Phillips had some straight talk for fellow freedom fighters who gathered in an Iowa restaurant in April.

Their side lost the first few months of the big, big battle going on in Washington as Congress passed a $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package, said Phillips, head of the fiscally conservative group Americans for Prosperity. But its still possible to stop the more than $4 trillion in additional spending that President Joe Biden has proposed.

In the next few months, Washington, D.C., is going to be making some decisions that could literally dramatically transform our country, Phillips said as he urged the gathering of more than 160 peopleto do more than youve ever done before.

That meeting, held in the district of Rep. Cindy Axne, a moderate Democrat who is among the top targets for Republicans in the midterm elections, was the first of more than 100 events around the country that AFP has in the works for a major campaign that kicks into gear next week.

In details provided first to USA TODAY, the groups End Washington Waste: Stop the Spending Spree campaign also includes several milliondollars in advertising to pair with the planned rallies, town halls, phone banks and door-to-door canvassing.

"This spending spree we're seeing out of Washington, D.C., is both unprecedented and unsustainable," Phillips told USA TODAY.

Tea Party supporters in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.(Photo: Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Even with the influx of cash and mobilization of a nationwide network, itremains to be seen whether conservatives can generate the kind of grassroots activism that roiled lawmakers districts when Democrats debated how to overhaul the health care system in 2009. Democrats eventually passed the Affordable Care Act, with no support from Republicans, but lost the House in the 2010 midterm elections.

The lawmakers being pressuredinclude more moderate Democrats and those representing politically competitive seatsin Virginia, Wisconsin, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, Arizona,Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Minnesota, New Jersey and Oregon. The initial target list also includes a moderate Republican, Pennsylvanias Brian Fitzpatrick, who sometimes crosses party lines to vote with Democrats.

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Former President Barack Obama, in his memoir, described the Tea Party summer of 2009 when he was greeted by angry protesters as he traveled the country to discuss his health care plan. He wrote that the Tea Party represented a genuine populist surge, even if he thought some of theanger was misdirected and that it was carefully nurtured by groups like Americans for Prosperity.

Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who has studied the Tea Party, said Americans for Prosperity was one of the groups that, recognizing the opportunity presented by Tea Party enthusiasm, stepped in to organize that conservative energy.

President Barack Obama wipes his brow while holding a health care town hall meeting in the Central High School gym on August 15, 2009 in Grand Junction, Colorado.(Photo: John Moore, Getty Images)

And they benefited hugely from it, she said, and massively expanded their reach on the ground.

But, Williamson added, some of the tea partiers opposition to Obama was about him, personally, as the first Black president, who some conservatives falsely claimed was not born in the United States. Biden doesnt inspire the same motivation, she said.

In addition, former President Donald Trump moved the GOP to the left on spending, lessening the appeal of the traditional fiscal conservative view that equates small government with economic freedom, said Lara Putnam, a history professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies citizen activism.

Donald Trumps sweet spot as a persuasive politician was not about a small, noninterventionist government, she said.

Rather than going after major entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare that Republicans have argued for years are gobbling up the budget, Trump signed spending bills with significant increases even as he cut taxes.

Progressive groups are also mobilizing, both to support Bidens proposals generally and to specifically fight back against groups like Americans for Prosperity.

In Wisconsin, for example, a local pizza restaurant owner recently touted Biden's proposed subsidized child care assistance in a call with reporters organized by the Main Street Alliance, a progressive small-business group.

Building Back Together, a progressive organization run by Biden allies, began airing TV ads Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Nevada to promote Bidens blue-collar blueprint to build America.

President Joe Biden says he wants to pay for his infrastructure plan by raising corporate taxes.(Photo: Evan Vucci, AP)

Democrats argue that polls show the elements of the plans including improved infrastructure, free community college, more help for families and higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for it are popular.

But even if thats the case, politics are not an aggregation of survey results, Williamson said.

Our politics are the result of organized interests operating in the party system, she said.

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Democrats are betting that some of the anger about Washington that contributed to Trumps election grewout of frustration that long-standing problemsarent being addressed.

Trust in government has eroded because the government hasnt really delivered for the people, White House chief of staff Ron Klain said at an April event with Georgetown University. Klain argued that the Biden administrations COVID-19 vaccination program is a key to restoring that trust, which will be further enhanced when people see the difference Bidens plans can make in their lives.

Former Sen. Joe Donnelly is trying to make that case at events in Indiana where, as a House member in 2009, hundreds of people crowded the town hall meetings he held to talk about health care.

Former Indiana Sen. Joe Donnelly(Photo: Corey Ohlenkamp/Star Press)

At a recent gathering in a park in Logansport, Indiana, Donnelly touted the real meat and potatoes that are in Bidens plans.

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Pitching improved roads, bridges and a better internet is easier, he said, than it was fighting the scare tactics against the Affordable Care Act. Those arguments about death panels and losing ones doctor were so personal that they were especially hard to combat.

Now the discussion is about, how do we revive Americas economy? How do we bring jobs back? Donnellysaid. Its harder to scare people about broadband than it is about their health.

From left, Club for Growth President David McIntosh, Tea Party Patriots President Jenny Beth Martin, Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips and FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon give statements outside the West Wing on March 8, 2017, after meeting with President Trump.(Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)

The case Americans for Prosperity is making against Bidens plans centers on both size and scope.

Theres too much wasteful spending that will lead to higher taxes, fewer jobs and a rigged economy, the group argues.

Officials say theyre not trying to block all action, but want any bill to be more targeted and to not raise taxes.

Although Americans for Prosperity says theyre offering alternative solutions, Phillips said that given the massive amount of money the government has already spent through the coronavirus rescue package, its difficult to envision a package with even more money that the group could get behind.

As for the polls showing support for Bidens plans, Phillips said theres always a lag time, with a new administration and a new Congress, between extreme policies and public dissatisfaction and concern.

Its kind of the term `whistling past the graveyard,' he said with a chuckle. I would be wary of someone saying all this stuff is polling super greatwithin the first 120 days of a new administration.

U.S. Representative Cindy Axne (D-IA) talks with voters at Smokey Row Coffee in Des Moines, Iowa, Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020.(Photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes/The Register)

On the day the group was mobilizing in Axnes district, a local paper published her case for Bidens infrastructure bill.

Im focused on securing the investments that will ensure Iowa gets what it needs to be competitive, she wrote.

She's also, however, joined with a group of other farm-state and centrist Democrats to try to exemptfamily farmsfrom a proposed tax increase on inherited assets that would help pay for part of theBidenplanfocused on child care and education.

Chris Larimer, political science professor at the University of Northern Iowa, said the broad benefits of Bidens plans may make it harder for opponents to attack than the Affordable Care Act.

But Axne, he said, is in an incredibly tough district. Her re-election margin was less than 2 percentage points. And the 2022 midterms are likely to turn on voter mobilization.

The arguments being made now by both sides could affect that turnout.

And so it's going to be: How is it framed? Is the Biden administration able to talk about it in ways that Democrats in vulnerable districts can really point to specific job gains or tangible benefits for those constituents? Larimer said. Thats the challenge for vulnerable Democrats.

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