Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled what he called a “once-in-a-generation” investment in American infrastructure, promising a nation still struggling to overcome the coronavirus pandemic that his $2tn plan would create the “strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world”.
Speaking at a carpenters’ training center outside of Pittsburgh, where he launched his campaign two years ago, Biden returned as president to elaborate on his campaign pledge to “rebuild the backbone of America”.
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The expansive proposal, called the American Jobs Plan, would rebuild 20,000 miles of roads and highways and repair the 10 most economically significant bridges in the country among a sprawling list of other projects that Biden said would confront the climate crisis, curb wealth inequality and strengthen US competitiveness.
“This is not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said. “It is a once in a generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago.”
The measure includes hundreds of billions of dollars to expand access to high-speed broadband; replace lead water pipes, ensuring access to clean drinking water; and upgrade the electric grid, making it more reliable while shifting to new, cleaner energy sources.
It also seeks to improve community care facilities for seniors and people with disabilities, modernize schools and retrofit homes and office buildings while dedicating funding to training millions of workers and supporting initiatives that strengthen labor unions.
The spending over eight years would generate millions of new jobs, Biden said. To pay for the package, he proposed a substantial increase on corporate taxes that would offset the spending over the course of 15 years. Among the changes, Biden called for a rise in the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% and measures to force multinational corporations to pay more taxes in the US on profits earned abroad.
The funding plan would unwind major pieces of Donald Trump’s tax-cut law, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and was his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement.
The backdrop of Biden’s speech was politically and symbolically resonant. Pittsburgh – a city he won, in a swing state that helped deliver him the presidency – was once a symbol of American industrial decline but has steadily rebuilt its economy with green medical facilities, research universities and tech companies.
The package is only the first half of the president’s sprawling infrastructure agenda that, if enacted, would dramatically reshape the American economy. Biden said he would present a second legislative package, called the American Families plan, in the coming weeks that will focus on investments in healthcare, childcare and education. That measure is expected to be paid for, at least in part, by raising taxes on the nation’s highest earners.
The proposals, together expected to cost as much as $4tn, are as ambitious in scale as Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. A memo outlining its ambition states: “Like great projects of the past, the president’s plan will unify and mobilize the country to meet the great challenges of our time: the climate crisis and the ambitions of an autocratic China.”
“It’s big, yes. It’s bold, yes. But we can get it done,” Biden said optimistically, as the road ahead for his infrastructure plans grew more perilous amid criticism from Republicans that the plan is too expansive and demands from liberals that he go even bigger.
Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill are gearing up for a fight over the infrastructure legislation that will likely prove to be significantly more contentious than the swift passage of Biden’s $1.9tn economic aid bill, which was enacted earlier this month with only Democratic votes and relied entirely on deficit spending.
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