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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowFresh off passage of the COVID-19 relief bill, President Joe Biden is assembling the next big White House priority, a sweeping $3 trillion package of investments on infrastructure and domestic needs.
Biden huddled privately late Monday with Senate Democrats as Congress has already begun laying the groundwork with legislation for developing roads, hospitals and green energy systems as part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” campaign promise. Much like the $1.9 trillion virus rescue plan signed into law earlier this month, the new package would also include family-friendly policies, this time focusing on education and paid family leave.
The White House plans are still preliminary, with a combined $3 trillion in spending proposed to boost the economy and improve quality of life, according to a person familiar with the options who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
While the goal is a bipartisan package, Democrats in Congress have signaled a willingness to go it alone if they are blocked by Republicans.
“We need to get it done,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., ahead of the virtual meeting with Biden at the senators’ annual retreat Monday evening.
Biden’s outreach to Senate Democrats comes as the White House is under fire for its handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. Migrant crossings are skyrocketing, with images of cramped holding facilities posing a humanitarian and political dilemma for the administration and its allies in Congress. The focus on infrastructure shifts attention back toward priorities that are potentially more popular with Americans and potentially bipartisan.
The infrastructure portion of the package would include roughly $1 trillion for roads, bridges, rail lines, electrical vehicle charging stations and the cellular network, among other items. The goal would be to facilitate the shift to cleaner energy while improving economic competitiveness.
A second component would include investments in workers with free community college, universal pre-kindergarten and paid family leave.
No part of the proposal has been finalized and the eventual details of any spending could change.
The overall price tag first reported Monday by The New York Times has been circulating on Capitol Hill for weeks, since the start of the Biden presidency. With the House and Senate under Democratic control, the proposals are expected to draw support from all corners of Congress.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asked Democratic committee chairmen earlier this month to start working with their Republican counterparts to begin “to craft a big, bold and transformational infrastructure package.”
Pelosi said the goal is to build swiftly on the coronavirus rescue plan by developing an economic relief plan to help “people in every zip code by creating good-paying jobs for the future.”
The administration is positioning its priorities at a politically and fiscally sensitive time, after funding its $1.9 trillion relief package entirely with debt. The Federal Reserve estimates that spending could push growth this year to 6.5%, and additional spending would only add pressure to an economy already expected to run hot.
Biden’s campaign proposed higher corporate taxes and increases on people making more than $400,000 annually, effectively undoing much of the 2017 tax cuts by his predecessor, Donald Trump.
A White House official said the president has been very clear about his agenda, even though the details are only just starting to surface. The official insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
On Monday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee debated a $300 billion-plus measure to invest in drinking water, broadband and other priorities. On Thursday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is set to appear before the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Next week, the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled to release a white paper revisiting the overseas tax code as a way to pay for some of the spending.
Republican leader Mitch McConnell used his opening remarks Monday in the Senate to trash the infrastructure proposal, warning it would only lead to tax hikes and what he called “left-wing policies.”
“We’re hearing the next few months might bring a so-called infrastructure proposal that may actually be a Trojan horse for massive tax hikes and other job-killing, left-wing policies,” he said.
He derided the Democratic proposals as similar to the Green New Deal, a sweeping plan to address climate change that he said would cost “unbelievable sums.”
Biden is expected to roll out his budget in the weeks ahead as Congress presses forward on the infrastructure package, which lawmakers have said could be ready by summer.
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It beats the Republican plan you put forward, Mitch, over 4 years of “Infrastructure Week”…
Anyone else concerned about our national debt? Biden certainly isn’t. $28 trillion and rising…
Neither party is, and you’ve been fooled if you think Republicans actually care about the deficit. Trump continues the trend of Republican presidents making the deficit worse… yet people still believe their nonsense of being fiscally conservative. Republicans only care about deficits when there is a Democratic president. When it’s a Republican president, they continue with their trickle down economics nonsense even though decades of research show it doesn’t work and just leaves us with higher deficits.
So if the choice is crumbling infrastructure fixed and paid for by tax increases, or crumbling infrastructure that isn’t fixed so rich people can keep an ever higher percentage of their money, the choice is easy.
Republicans had four years to put together an infrastructure plan. This was one of the few topics I agreed with Trump on – we had to do something. Unfortunately, it was too tall a task to even get some thing proposed in Congress.
Politicians have been spending our tax money on “infrastructure” for the last 50 years.
This is a joke. Europe, Asia, etc all have high speed rail, and upgraded infrastructure.
Nothing more than another “transformational” pork bill and constituents who ACTUALLY pay taxes are on the hook. 47% of American subsidizing the transformational socialism.
Blumenthal, Pelosi, McConnell, Schumer, and all CON ARTIST CAREER POLITICIANS need to go. And now!
The last investment in infrastructure that the US made was the interstate highway system by Eisenhower.
Maybe the real issue is we don’t spend enough, and when we do, we don’t insist on building roads to last. Sure feels like we build on the cheap and we get what we pay for… other countries have weather just like America, but they somehow build roads that last more than a couple seasons. How about we go learn from them how they do it?
And meanwhile, the Indiana Legislature totally ignores the issue of road wear in debating whether to raise truck weight limits. It isn’t about safety, it’s about beating the daylights out of the pavement. (Road wear is a GEOMETRIC function of weight per axle.)
“Trojan horse for massive tax hikes.”
It’s not a Trojan horse when it’s blatantly in Americans face.
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. Newton was on it.
Employers will freeze/cut headcounts to offset tax hikes corporately and personally.
Get ready for the unemployment to go the wrong direction.
All for BS like “$400 billion in spending to combat climate change, including $60 billion for infrastructure related to green transit and $46 billion for climate-related research and development, free community college, etc etc.
Math doesn’t work which is why careee politicians never held a real job or ran a business outside of extortion.
Taxes are way, way down over what they were 40 years ago. Go look at what tax rates were back when America was “great” and get back to me. Yet they’re never low enough. Doesn’t matter if there is no middle class to buy your products, or if workers aren’t educated enough to fill jobs, or if roads are falling apart. It’s cut, cut, cut for the benefit of the wealthy few and the hedge funds. Maybe the Baby Boomers will earn their moniker as being the generation that took what their parents gave them and blew it up.
You do realize that you need to come up with a way for the middle class to grow, not for America to be a third world country with a few rich people and masses of angry poor. You want to nip socialism in the bud? Do something real to help the middle class. Trump had four years and did nothing, he made things worse. Made it harder for farmers. Started tariff wars with other countries that raised the prices on the products paid for by the middle class. Sure, he was angry at the right people, but he didn’t do squat. To actually do something for the middle class would require businesses to make less money for the greater good, and that’s something the Republican Party simply can’t tolerate. So it’s smoke and mirrors to make sure you’re so angry at “the other guy” that you keep voting for them.
If the Republicans have a real alternative to what Biden is proposing, with the support of even the majority of their caucus, I look forward to seeing it. America as a country would benefit from two parties with competing ideas as opposed to what we’ve got now.
Ah heck, why stop at 3T? Why not 4T, 10T, or shoot 20T? I mean we can get some good roads for 20T, right? Permitting the ‘Greece-ifcation’ to continue until one day….the tab will come due. Any politician that votes to add a penny to the deficit should be able to spell austerity and define ‘austerity measures’. Those measures don’t appear to be very fun…
One reason Greece went broke? They didn’t bother to collect taxes from the wealthy and corruption runs rampant. Sounds like they had a multiple decade Trump administration…
https://greekreporter.com/2015/07/02/reasons-why-greece-went-broke-default-bankrupt-and-isnt-country-anymore/