Hurdles are facing American Jobs Plan

House likely to push for vote in coming months

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion American Jobs Plan aims to rebuild infrastructure, support electric vehicles and clean energy and boost access to caregivers and their pay. It faces a grueling process through both chambers of Congress.

“We’d like to see progress by Memorial Day,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday. “We’d like to see the package approved by the summer.”

Question: What’s the timeline in the House of Representatives?

Answer: House Democrats are likely to push for a vote on the massive plan in a couple of months. Though Democrats hold a majority in the House, it is slim. Democrats can afford to lose only three votes from their side of the aisle to pass the infrastructure plan if no Republicans support it.

Q: What about the Senate?

A: Usually, the Senate needs 60 votes to surpass a filibuster, meaning 10 Republicans need to join every Democrat and the independents who caucus with Democrats to pass legislation. Aides to Sen. Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., hinted he is considering a budget process to pass Biden’s infrastructure plan with a simple majority, or 51 votes.

The Senate is tied 50-50, and Vice President Kamala Harris would be able to break a tie.

Congress used budget reconciliation to pass Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March without any Republican votes.

Q: What’s in the plan?

A: The American Jobs Plan would allocate $621 billion to transportation infrastructure and resilience, including the repair and construction of roads, bridges, transit and rail service.

That includes $115 billion to modernize 20,000 miles of roads, fix the 10 most “economically significant” bridges in the USA and repair 10,000 smaller bridges in poor condition.

An additional $213 billion in the plan would go toward retrofitting and building more than 2 million affordable homes and commercial properties, and $111 billion would replace all the nation’s lead pipes and service lines and upgrade drinking water, wastewater and stormwater systems.

Aiming to make the country more competitive against China and other nations, the plan would pump $180 billion into research and development in technology and climate science.

Biden wants to raise taxes on corporations to pay for the eight-year spending package. He proposed increasing the corporate tax rate to 28% and overhauling how the United States taxes multinational corporations.

Q: Will it get bipartisan support? A: Republicans panned the plan, claiming it goes too far beyond traditional infrastructure spending, and they balked at raising taxes. Biden said he is “going to bring Republicans into the Oval Office; listen to them, what they have to say; and be open to other ideas. We’ll have a good-faith negotiation with any Republican who wants to help get this done.”

Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Ky., chairman of the House Committee on the Budget, called the plan visionary and praised it for creating “good-paying jobs” and taking on “climate change with the urgency this crisis demand.”

Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., said he knows “we need to update our infrastructure,” but this plan “must be targeted towards road and bridges and not used as a vehicle for irrelevant liberal policies that raise taxes on America’s job creators and their families.”

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney tweeted that the package should “be a nonstarter in Congress” and “would result in the largest tax increase in American history.”