Biden to Propose $2T Infrastructure and Jobs Package with Billions for Electrification
Mar. 31—WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden this afternoon will announce a $2 trillion economic package that includes transportation infrastructure, and manufacturing and supply chains, according to administration officials.
The proposal, which the administration is calling a "once-in-a-century" investment, will include much of what automakers and their allies have been clamoring for: $174 billion to "win" the electric vehicle market back from China, which is outpacing the U.S. in adopting and accommodating zero-emission cars.
Biden's plan also include funds for broadband expansion, drinking water systems, housing, and care for seniors and people with disabilities, officials said.
Bringing battery manufacturing to the U.S., strengthening domestic supply chains, retooling factories to build electric vehicles, and consumer rebates and tax incentives for EVs made in the U.S. would be part of the deal. Included is installing half a million electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 to alleviate "range anxiety" concerns that electric vehicles can't last on a road trip.
Those investments would be a part of $621 billion in transportation infrastructure, including $115 billion to improve roads, bridges and highways, particularly targeting the "most economically significant" bridges in the nation. About $85 billion would go to modernizing and expanding public transit systems and $80 billion to Amtrak, the president's famously beloved train system.
"This is a place where the urgency and need for action has been clearly identified again and again in Washington and we now have an opportunity to really do something about it," an administration official told reporters Tuesday evening.
Billions more would go to ports and airports, to make communities more resilient to climate change and for projects that would seek to redress communities that have been shut out of or negatively affected by transportation investment in the past.
Biden also will call for $180 billion for research and development — including for semiconductors, clean energy and emission reduction — and $300 billion for strengthening supply chains and domestic manufacturing, and making the nation better able to handle pandemics.
The administration estimates it would create "millions and millions" of jobs.
In addition to the surface transportation policies, the proposal would:
— Replace all lead pipes and service lines nationwide
— Extend broadband internet coverage to all households
— Provide block grants for clean energy projects and tax credits to expand the electric grid
— Preserve or improve affordable housing, including building more than 500,000 homes for low- and middle-income people
— Fund improvements to public school infrastructure, technology, classrooms, kitchens and green spaces
— Fund upgrades to child-care facilities and incentives for businesses to build child-care centers at workplaces
— Expand access to care for elderly people and people with disabilities under Medicaid
— Fund workforce development programs
It will be introduced alongside a tax plan that would raise the corporate tax rate to 28%, eliminate some tax rules that allow companies to benefit from investing in foreign countries and institute a 15% minimum tax on the income corporations use to report profits to investors.
The administration says if passed together, the tax plan will pay for the infrastructure project within the next 15 years and reduce deficits in the years after, investing around 1% of GDP every year over the next eight years.
However, it's likely to face a tough road through a narrowly divided Congress. To pass with bipartisan support, at least 10 Republican votes and all 50 Democratic votes would be needed in the Senate. Even passing the package without it, through the controversial reconciliation process that was used to pass Biden's COVID-relief bill, would require unanimity in the Democratic caucus.
It's "just the beginning of the process," the official told reporters Tuesday, but "the elements of this investment package are places where we have seen a lot of enthusiasm in the past."
Republicans have raised concerns that a big funding package on the heels of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill could hurt the economy and that an increased corporate income tax would push businesses to move overseas.
The official said the plan is intended to "invest in critical areas where we know that our productive capacity as a country is being set back," which will expand and improve jobs, and that the proposal would eliminate tax incentives for companies to move overseas.
"If people have other ideas of how to pay for it, that's what this process is going to be about," the official said.
Twitter: @rbeggin
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