The previous White House occupant played with trucks every now and then but ne ver moved the infrastructure plan he promised through the Congress he controlled for two years and rejected the infrastructure plan the Democratic House offered in 2020.
Joe Biden also promised an infrastructure plan on the campaign trail. Yesterday President Biden proposed his plan to spend $2 trillion fixing and improving roads, bridges, the power grid, the Internet, and more:
Biden is proposing a $620 billion investment to repair America’s aging transportation infrastructure that the White House says will fix 20,000 miles of roads and 10,000 bridges — but the scope is much larger.
The plan puts $174 million toward boosting the electric vehicle market, setting up incentives for state and local governments to build a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers over the next decade.
Biden is also proposing more than $100 billion in funding to ensure safe drinking water by eliminating all lead pipes and service lines. The plan aims to invest $100 billion in expanding broadband access to all Americans, particularly those in rural areas and other underserved communities.
One prong of the package is designed to enhance the “care economy,” with Biden calling for $400 billion to expand access to home and community-based services for elderly people and those with disabilities.
Biden’s plan is also formulated to address racial inequities, including by proposing a $10 billion investment in research and development at historically Black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions in the United States and $15 billion for establishing centers of excellence at these institutions to provide graduate fellowships and similar opportunities.
Biden also satisfied gun safety advocates by including in his plan a proposed $5 billion for community violence prevention programs [Morgan Chalfant, Brett Samuels, and Jonathan Easley, “Five Takeaways on Biden’s Big Infrastructure Package,” The Hill, 2021.03.31].
President Biden plans to shift our wealth infrastructure as well, making the rich pay for it to partially rebalance the skewing of wealth driven by trickle-down economics and the pandemic:
Biden said his proposal would be paid for in 15 years by raising taxes on corporations. He said he’s open to other ideas, but Biden vowed Wednesday that no one making less than $400,000 a year would see their taxes increased. “Period,” he said.
The president pointed out that millions have lost their jobs during the pandemic, while the top 1% gained in wealth. He said that “shows how distorted” the U.S. economy is.
“Well, it’s time to change that,” Biden said, adding, “It’s time to build our economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not the top down” [Domenico Montenaro, “Biden Unveils What He Calls a ‘Once-in-a-Generation’ Infrastructure Proposal,” NPR, 2021.03.31].
Governor Kristi Noem, who is not an economist or an expert on infrastructure, says Biden’s plan will stop America from “regaining her economic footing.” Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who is an economist and worries that President Biden’s coronavirus relief/economic stimulus package enacted last month will stoke inflation, says such huge long-term investments in public goods will grow the economy. Summers also says the taxes on corporations won’t stifle private investment:
Summers, now a professor at Harvard University, dismissed worries that Biden’s long-term economic plan announced Wednesday would damage private investment by raising the corporate tax rate. Biden’s proposal would be paid for, the administration said, by raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% and setting a 21% minimum tax on global corporate earnings.
“I don’t think its plausible to argue that this is going to damage investments,” he said [Christopher Condon, “Summers Lauds Biden Infrastructure Plan After Attacking Stimulus,” Bloomberg, 2021.03.31].
The radical right-wing is predictably complaining that Biden’s big plan is too red and too green, but Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) says Biden’s plan is small potatoes:
While she said she likes some of what’s in the measure, such as improving water supplies, she overall described the amount of money it would allocate as “papitas, little French fries. It’s nothing.”
Ocasio-Cortez said she believes, in fact, that as much as $10 trillion is not even that “progressive.” That’s a number several Democratic presidential primary candidates used for their infrastructure and climate change proposals. There is already a $10 trillion measure put forward by Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan.
“I think it’s just the floor,” Ocasio-Cortez said, noting that this is a “planetary crisis, and we’re the richest country in the world” [Montenaro, 2021.03.31].
The radical right doesn’t like it; Dems left of Biden want more; it sounds like President Joe Biden has already hit the sweet spot. Don’t expect this President to sit around bouncing in the cab of a truck he’ll never drive; expect him to spend the next several months working hard to pass this plan. Let’s build some roads and bridges, replace toxic lead pipes, electrify the federal vehicle fleet, plug old oil wells and uranium mines, and invest in a 21st-century economy!
Noem doesn’t know infrastructure includes houses and pipes, etc. Doesn’t surprise me.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-dakota-governor-kristi-noem-is-shocked-by-infrastructure-funding-going-to-housing-and-pipes
Do you really think that the rich corporations will not try
to pass the cost of their higher taxes on to their customers?
I’m not saying this shouldn’t be done but don’t kid yourself
about who will ultimately pay the bill.
Mr. Arndt said what grudznick was going to say. This is but another way to stick it to the little guy.
Edwin’s suggestion that corporations simply will pass the cost of higher taxes on to their customers has an intuitive attractness, and is typically one of the so-called “parade of horribles” used by corporate opponents to oppose tax increases.
But some economic analysis might indicate there will be a problem raising prices for those corporations that are already charging customers the very highest prices that consumers will pay for a product or service. Raising the price further will necessarily result in reducing existing consumer demand, thereby causing corporations to lose profits due to reduced gross receipts. It is hard to imagine that any “for profit corporation” doesn’t already charge the highest price that its own analysis has determined that the market can bear.
Since fundamental economic theory teaches that as prices rise consumer demand necessarily must fall, any corporation that raises prices for any reason, including to cover tax increases, will lose a portion of its existing market share. So the question becomes which tactic will disrupt corporate profits the least, simply paying the tax out of exisiting profits and maintaining market share, or raising prices, reducing demand, losing a portion of the market, and thereby causing a drop in existing profits.
But Mr. bat, there are billions of made up dollars being handed out all over the economy, and people will be more than willing to pay even more for those products and services. The economist in grudznick knows the demand will surge and the people with money in their pockets will demand and pay whatever the corporate Man wants, and the corporate Man will keep his profits steady if not use this as an excuse to increase his profits. Trust me, the little people will burden the brunt of this.
Edwin and grudznick, it is also clear from your comments that the corporate Man surely didn’t do any favors to the little guy when the corporate man got all those tax roll backs from President Trump and company. Profits, since the cuts — BECAUSE of those cuts, have boomed. There has been no “steadying” of profits to lower prices.
There is a point where the corporate Man cannot pass along enough of the new taxes to the little guy where mom-and-pop owners get to claw their way back into competitiveness.
Like grudz really cares about the little people. Tell me grudz, how much of the tax cut that corporations received was passed down to the little people.
I am just like you, Mr. cibvet, and like you as a consumer I was passed down only a few crumbs of the tax cut given to the corporations. And I ate my crumbs gladly while I watched corporate profits rise, and my gut hurt but my investments did OK.
It’s so simple, you actually think Republicans want Biden to succeed? Of course not, they will do whatever they can to prevent this. They are 100 percent to do with power and will do whatever it takes to dismantle this administration. They can’t have government succeed because their core mantra is that government is the problem. That’s why they government so poorly and don’t care about their citizens.
I do want Mr. Biden to succeed, Mr. Anderson. That doesn’t change that government is the problem.
Come on grudz your old sawhorse doesn’t work anymore. The decades of telling people that the only power they really have, to vote for the government of their choice, and that government, which they vote in, is the problem rather than things over which they have no control, isn’t cutting it anymore. Time to come up with something that sells your platform better, whatever that platform is in the trumpie age. As I’ve said before Buckley is spinning in his grave.
Remember, the Republican party HAS no platform, because the CON works better for them it seems. But, I think their ‘con’ days are due for a reckoning.
You fellows don’t understand. grudznick is a big fan of Mr. Uncle Joe now.
As a progressive fiscal conservative, I have to stress that the details are important. We need infrastructure improvements in a lot of areas. We don’t need to waste money on nuclear power subsidies. If that is in the bill, as I read from one source, that alone is reason for me to oppose it. I don’t like Christmas tree bills, so count me skeptical at this point.
Edwin, (1), as O notes, I didn’t see the prices I pay for goods and services drop after the 20217 tax cuts. The wealthy beneficiaries of the 2017 tax cuts seem to have squirreled their windfall away for themselves and their rich stockholders, with no apparent benefit for consumers or workers, no noticeable boost in economic growth, and, contrary to the promises that the tax cuts would pay for themselves, a worsening of the federal deficit.
(2) Biden’s Infrastructure plan raises tax rates to lower than they were under Obama, Bush, Clinton, and Reagan. The economy grew under most of those administrations.
(3) Even if corporations pass on tax hikes to workers and consumers, I’ll pay the price so we can have better roads, bridges, Internet, schools, water pipes, trains, housing, an electrified federal fleet, and everything else this bill would achieve. We need to invest in our country, not your fantasy that we can let public goods and services decay and let the rich hoard all the wealth they want without any bad consequences.
(4) Spending $2 trillion on Infrastructure will produce immediate economic growth from all the jobs and purchases of construction materials (for evidence, see how the boom in wind farm construction and federal aid swelled South Dakota’s coffers in 2020 and how the 3M expansion and other building projects in Aberdeen swelled our local tax collections).
(5) President Biden’s Infrastructure investments will then have a lasting long-term effect of promoting economic growth. These investments will erase the drag on economic growth that would come from driving trucks over crappier roads, wasting more energy in aging vehicles and housing, remaining addicted to a dwindling and thus increasingly expensive supply of fossil fuels. They will also lay lasting foundations for more economic opportunities for all Americans.
Edwin, I’m not kidding myself or you. I’m looking at the evidence and saying that investment in infrastructure paid for by restoring corporate taxes to a fraction of pre-Trump rates will pay off big time for the United States.
Kristi opines: Bemoans lack of new Amtrak stops in SD, Alaska, and Hawaii.