PUTTING NATION IN ‘INFRA’RED
Biden bares $2.3T ‘build’ plan
President Biden on Wednesday unveiled a plan to spend $2.3 trillion on rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and create millions of jobs funded by massive tax hikes on companies — and potentially the upper-middle class.
The proposed outlays would take place over eight years and include $621 billion for roads, bridges, public transit and electric-vehicle charging stations, as well as $300 billion-plus for new water pipes and sewers, broadband Internet wiring and powergrid upgrades.
“It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago,” Biden said in a speech at a carpenters-union training center in Pittsburgh.
He also billed it as a way to compete against China, saying, “I’m convinced that if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this is the moment when America won the future.”
The ambitious plan — which would undo sweeping tax cuts signed into law by former President Donald Trump in 2017 — is part of a two-pronged approach that also includes social spending and requires up to $3 trillion in additional taxes over 15 years.
Those tax increases face an uncertain fate in Congress, where Biden’s fellow Democrats hold razor-thin margins in both the House and the Senate, and a budget-reconciliation move would likely be needed to avoid the Senate’s usual 60-vote majority for passing a bill.
Even before Biden’s speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said he was “not likely” to support the president’s proposal, which came less than three weeks after he signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill that passed without a single Republican vote.
“It’s like a Trojan horse,” McConnell said. “It’s called infrastructure, but inside the Trojan horse it’s going to be more borrowed money, and massive tax increases on all the productive parts of our economy.”
McConnell also expressed concern over establishing a dangerous precedent for justifying massive government spending.
“I hope we’re not beginning to engage in the habit of any time we want to do something we call it a national emergency and run up the national debt,” he said.
McConnell later amplified his warnings in a tweet reading: “The Administration’s non-infrastructure ‘infrastructure bill’ looks like another Trojan horse for far-left demands. Rolling back Right to Work laws. Imposing the biggest new tax hikes in a generation — killing jobs and slowing wage growth when workers need a fast recovery.”
Trump also blasted the plan as a “globalist betrayal by Joe Biden and his friends,” adding, “It is the exact OPPOSITE of putting America First — it is putting America LAST!”
“This legislation would be among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history,” Trump said in a statement.
Biden said his plan would increase the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from the 21 percent to which Trump cut it, and noted that 91 of the Fortune 500 companies — including online retail giant Amazon — now use loopholes to keep from paying “a single solitary penny in income tax.”
He also said there would be unspecified new taxes on top earners, repeating a campaign pledge when he said, “No one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up, period.”
But that promise seemed to have been walked back earlier this month by White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who said the $400,000 threshold would apply to “families” and not individuals.