Spending push by Biden starts with infrastructure

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden this week is set to begin sketching out his plan to commit trillions of dollars toward upgrading the country’s ailing infrastructure, fighting climate change and bolstering federal safety net programs, as Democrats try to usher in a new era of bigger government — and spending — in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.

The forthcoming proposals reflect a broader political shift underway in Washington, where Democratic leaders have sought to capitalize on their 2020 election victories to advance once-dormant policy priorities and unwind years of budget cuts under administrations past.

But Biden’s aggressive agenda also may test his stated support for bipartisanship — after passing his $1.9 trillion stimulus plan without any Republican support — as well as the public’s willingness to embrace the sizable tax increases on wealthy families and profitable companies that may be necessary to help finance the burst in federal spending.

Biden’s push begins Wednesday, when he is scheduled to head to Pittsburgh to pitch the first part of a $3 trillion or more effort to improve the country’s roads, bridges and water systems. On Sunday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on “Fox News Sunday” that Biden would follow that announcement in April with a second package to include spending on social welfare programs, addressing health care, child care and other issues.

The White House this week also intends to release the early contours of its 2022 budget request to Congress. The blueprint is expected to call for a major increase in domestic spending starting next fiscal year, according to the party’s top congressional aides.

For Biden, the forthcoming infrastructure and budget proposals showcase Democrats’ broader desire to rethink the role of the federal government over the course of his presidency. But Biden’s ambitions largely rest in the hands of Congress, where Democrats maintain only a faint, sometimes politically fractious majority — and Republicans have sounded early notes of opposition to his approach.

“I’m very disappointed with what I’m reading,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, W.Va., the top Republican on the chamber’s Environment and Public Works Committee, told reporters last week.

While she said infrastructure overhaul is bipartisan, she expressed early fears that the debate may ultimately end up like the stimulus, attracting no GOP support because of the White House’s thinking on issues including social welfare.

“I think we need to talk to the American people and say, ‘Is this what you envision with infrastructure?’” Capito said. “‘Are these job creators? Are we re-engineering our own social fabric here with a 50-vote majority?’”

Some of Biden’s agenda threatens to upend the potential for bipartisan compromise before the debate begins in earnest. That includes the president’s plans to pay for the changes, which could include raising taxes on companies, targeting corporate profits abroad and imposing higher rates on wealthy families and investors. Biden has said his tax increases will not affect people earning less than $400,000 per year.

Infrastructure spending is separate from the president’s forthcoming 2022 budget, which the Biden administration is also set to release this week. The proposal is meant to be be a pared-back version of the more substantive funding document the White House releases annually, according to officials at the Office of Management and Budget, who say a fuller spending plan including revenue-raising measures is due later in the spring.

Democratic lawmakers say they anticipate the first Biden budget to include new increases in domestic spending, as Democrats seek to rejuvenate federal agencies that have lost staff and capacity while tackling new challenges.

For the first time in a decade, though, Congress and the White House are not constrained by across-the-board spending caps, which lawmakers imposed starting in 2011 in an attempt to reduce the deficit. Over that period, federal spending on nondefense agencies and issues including education and government services plummeted. A new report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last week found that funding for these domestic programs is 10% lower than it was 11 years ago, adjusted for inflation and population and excluding veterans’ medical care.

On Capitol Hill, Democrats said they expect the Biden administration will seek to reverse those declines starting with his budget for 2022.