PITTSBURGH: President Joe Biden outlined a huge $2.3 trillion plan on Wednesday to re-engineer the United States infrastructure in what he billed as a once-in-a-generation investment that would undo his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement — giant tax cuts for corporations — in the process.

Speaking at a carpenters union training centre in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Biden drew comparisons between his proposed transformation of the US economy and the space race and promised results as grand in scale as the New Deal or Great Society programmes that shaped the 20th century.

“It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said. “It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the inter-state highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II. It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.

White House officials say the spending would generate those jobs as the country shifts away from fossil fuels and combats the perils of climate change. It is also an effort to compete with the technology and public investments made by China, which has the world’s second-largest economy and is fast gaining on the United States dominant position.

“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,” Biden said.

The Democratic president’s infrastructure projects would be financed by higher corporate taxes — a trade-off that could lead to fierce resistance from the business community and thwart attempts to work with Republican lawmakers.

Biden hopes to pass an infrastructure plan by summer, which could mean relying solely on the slim Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate.

Undoing Trump’s overhaul

The higher corporate taxes would aim to raise the necessary piles of money over 15 years and then reduce the deficit going forward. In doing so, Biden would undo the 2017 tax overhaul by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans and lift the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from the 21 percent rate.

Ninety-one Fortune 500 Companies, including Amazon, pay not a single solitary penny in income tax, Biden said.

Wednesday’s announcement will be followed in coming weeks by Biden pushing a companion bill of roughly equal size for investments in child care, family tax credits and other domestic programmes. That nearly $2tr package would be paid for by tax hikes on wealthy individuals and families.

“Wall Street didn’t build this country,” Biden said. “You, the great middle class, built this country. And unions built the middle class.”

President Biden’s choice of Pittsburgh for unveiling the plan carried important economic and political resonance. He not only won Pittsburgh and its surrounding county to help secure the presidency, but he launched his campaign there in 2019. The city, famed for steel mills that powered America’s industrial rise, has steadily pivoted toward technology and health care, drawing in college graduates in a sign of how economies can change.

The White House says the largest chunk of the proposal includes $621 billion for roads, bridges, public transit, electric vehicle charging stations and other transportation infrastructure. The spending would push the country away from internal combustion engines that the auto industry views as increasingly antiquated technology.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2021