President Biden on Wednesday rolled out the broad outline of a $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that he hopes to finance through tax hikes on …
President Biden on Wednesday rolled out the broad outline of a $2 trillion infrastructure and jobs package that he hopes to finance through tax hikes on corporations and individuals. In his remarks unveiling the proposal, Biden said it would mark “the moment that America won the future.” The package includes massive spending on roads, railways and environmentally friendly technology, along with new funds for childcare and adult-care for the elderly and disabled. The blueprint will face protracted debate in Congress, where Democrats hold razor-thin margins in both the House and Senate. The bulk of spending and tax hikes are most likely to pass the Senate via a budget reconciliation process that circumvents the usual 60 votes needed for bills. Biden said during a speech in Pittsburg, however, that “I’m going to bring Republicans into the Oval Office, listen to them, what they had to say and be open to their ideas. We’ll have a good faith negotiation if any Republican wants to help get this done.” In February, Biden hosted 10 GOP senators to discuss possible changes to his $2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus plan. That plan was then rammed through Congress with no Republican votes and no serious attempt to court them. The president said that the infrastructure funding is needed to help the US compete against “autocracies” such as China. “You know, China and other countries eating our lunch,” Biden said. He infamously scoffed in 2019, “China is going to eat our lunch? Come on, man.” Biden framed the tax hikes as reasonable, saying that jacking the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent would still be lower than any point between World War II and 2017. He also repeated his claim that “no one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up, period” — despite uncertainty on that point. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently clarified the hike would apply to families earning $400,000 per year — meaning two adults who make $200,000, a seeming contradiction of Biden’s claim. Biden also reportedly is planning to push for a higher rate for capital gains taxes on investments like stocks and real estate, to treat them like ordinary income rather than the current highest 20 percent tax rate. Those taxes could impact some people who inherit money or property. Biden’s preliminary proposal includes, according to a White House fact sheet released Wednesday: The single largest item is a proposal to “put $400 billion toward expanding access to quality, affordable home- or community-based care for aging relatives and people with disabilities,” according to the fact sheet. The plan calls for expanding long-term care covered by Medicaid to low-income people through well-paid home and community-based services. “Caregivers – who are disproportionally women of color – have been underpaid and undervalued for far too long. Wages for essential home care workers are approximately $12 per hour, putting them among the lowest paid workers in our economy,” the White House said. “These investments will help hundreds of thousands of Americans finally obtain the long-term services and support they need, while creating new jobs and offering caregiving workers a long-overdue raise, stronger benefits, and an opportunity to organize or join a union and collectively bargain.” The second-largest pot of funding would go toward electric vehicles, including rebates and tax incentives for people who buy the cars and funds for the feds to swap out their own petroleum-fueled vehicles. Biden’s plan “will enable automakers to spur domestic supply chains from raw materials to parts, retool factories to compete globally, and support American workers to make batteries and EVs,” the White House said. The proposal also calls for federal grants to state and local governments and corporations to build 500,000 charging ports for electric vehicles by 2030. Biden will “utilize the vast tools of federal procurement to electrify the federal fleet, including the United States Postal Service,” the fact sheet says. Biden is proposing a significant amount of funding for traditional infrastructure projects, setting off what’s likely to be intense jockeying among lawmakers to bring home the bacon for home-state priorities. “The President is proposing a total increase of $115 billion to modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair. This includes funding to improve air quality, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce congestion,” the White House said. “His plan will modernize 20,000 miles of highways, roads, and main streets, not only ‘fixing them first’ but ‘fixing them right,’ with safety, resilience, and all users in mind. It will fix the most economically significant large bridges in the country in need of reconstruction, and it will repair the worst 10,000 smaller bridges, including bridges that provide critical connections to rural and tribal communities.
