Biden’s ambitious plan spends on necessities
Reading through President Joe Biden’s 21-page memo on building back better, it’s hard to discern which parts of the plan the United States can do without if our nation is to retain its economic and scientific preeminence.
Observing how the ultra-wealthy and corporations have used their windfalls to create financial bubbles, boost wealth inequality and spend money frivolously, it’s hard to argue they would spend the cash any wiser.
At a time when the top 1 percent holds 31 percent of the nation’s wealth, Biden offers a new New Deal to reorient the country’s development. His plan is not comparable to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s pseudo-socialist agenda, nor is it a rebranding of Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez’s New Green Deal.
Biden plans to invest in the things we’ve neglected for the last 40 years: roads and bridges, ports and airports, Internet connectivity and quality schools, workers and health care. Most importantly, he wants Americans to own the technology of the future.
Sure, $2.2 trillion is a lot of money to spend over eight years, and no one likes paying higher taxes. But to put that
number in perspective, consider that America’s 664 billionaires saw their net wealth grow by $1.3 trillion in 2020, according to Americans for Tax Fairness.
Most low- and middle-income Americans ended 2020 worse off than they began it, Federal Reserve data shows.
The president wants to spend $621 billion on transportation. That money could go to dredging the Houston Ship Channel, building the Ike Dike and updating San Antonio’s airport. Texas could even get an intercity passenger rail system.
The White House plan would also encourage Americans to switch to electric vehicles and add charging stations. Driving an EV remains a roll of the dice on too many stretches of highway, such as Interstate 37 between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
The Biden plan would spend $213 billion on affordable housing, the biggest challenge facing Americans today. A record low number of homes are available, and prices are rising at the fastest pace in 15 years.
The United States needs millions of new, affordable homes over the next decade. Too many people are living at campsites or in overcrowded, multigenerational homes.
Baby boomers should be thrilled to see $400 billion dedicated to helping in-home caregivers. As they enter their 70s, this bulge in our demographics will need enormous assistance to avoid getting warehoused in low-rent assisted-care facilities.
The pandemic, meanwhile, has reminded us that 19 million homes do not have access to high-speed Internet. In today’s economy, broadband is as essential as water or electricity. Spending $100 billion to expand connectivity is as crucial as the millions spent on rural electrification in the 1920s.
The most essential spending, though, will be on researching, developing and selling the technologies that will dominate the 21st century. China’s President Xi Jinping plans to make this the Chinese century. We will need to rally to ensure our best years are ahead of us.
Biden wants to spend $52 billion to boost domestic manufacturing and another $50 billion to shore up U.S. supply chains. The plan would invest $50 billion in scientific research and $48 billion in workforce development. An additional $40 billion would help workers retrain when their old jobs disappear.
Americans have not seen a plan like this since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, which explains why it is so desperately needed now. In the name of low taxes and small government, we have sat by and watched the infrastructure our grandparents built decay.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the U.S. road network a D grade. Many developing countries have better Internet connectivity. U.S. businesses complain they cannot find enough skilled American workers.
The U.S. is far behind other wealthy countries on renewable energy and electric vehicles. Americans die at a higher rate from preventable illnesses, and at a younger age, than people in Asia and Europe.
Conservatives have long argued the private sector spends money more wisely, but the last 20 years prove them wrong.
While Americans have rested on the work of past generations, China’s command economy has turned a nation of subsistence farmers into a leader in artificial intelligence, clean energy and manufacturing.
Corporations spent most of the money from the 2017 tax cuts on buying back shares without generating the earnings to justify it. The wealthy, meanwhile, used their savings to create bubbles in real estate, bitcoin and digital art.
If the United States wants to retain its edge, it’s time for a bit of wealth redistribution to put the nation back on track to remaining the greatest nation on earth.