WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden will on Wednesday propose a $2 trillioninfrastructure plan aimed at modernizing the United States’ crumblingtransport network, creating millions of jobs and enabling the country to”out-compete” China.
The first phase of Biden’s “Build Back Better” program, which he willunveil in a speech in Pittsburgh, will detail massive investment spreadover eight years.
It plans to inject $620 billion into transport, including upgrading 20,000miles (32,000 kilometers) of roads and highways, repairing thousands ofbridges and doubling federal funding for public transit.
The president, whom Donald Trump tried to caricature as “Sleepy Joe” and aman without strong ideas or motivation, intends to make the boldinfrastructure plan one of his flagship policies.
“He views his role as laying out… a broad vision, a bold vision for howwe can invest in America, American workers, our communities,” White Housespokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
The investment would be partly paid for by raising corporate tax from 21percent to 28 percent.
“The President is proposing to fundamentally reform the corporate tax codeso that it incentivizes job creation and investment… and ensures thatlarge corporations are paying their fair share,” a senior administrationofficial said ahead of the speech.
The new legislative offensive comes soon after Congress passed a nearly $2trillion Covid-19 economic stimulus plan.
And Biden’s speech is set to open a bitter battle in Congress, where theDemocrats hold only a narrow majority and will face strong opposition fromthe Republicans.
The coming months will test the negotiating skills of the Democraticpresident, a veteran of Washington politics and deal-making, to the limit,and the chances of his infrastructure plan passing into law remainuncertain.
‘Urgency of the moment’
“It’s an important initiative to start the process with the president beingvery clear that he’s got a plan, and that he’s open to hearing what othersthink,” the administration official said.
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“But what he is uncompromising about is the urgency of the moment and theneed to really deliver for the American people and make good on buildingback better in this moment.”
The plan also vows to “spark the electric vehicle revolution” by building anetwork of 500,000 EV chargers, replacing 50,000 diesel transit vehiclesand electrifying 20 percent of the famous yellow school buses.
And it aims to make infrastructure more resilient to climate change.
With much of the country’s creaking infrastructure dating back to the1950s, the dream of new roads, bridges, railways and airports is shared bymany Americans.
But building a political consensus to transform Biden’s plan into realityis no easy task.
Both his predecessors Barack Obama and Trump had great ambitions and madeheady promises over infrastructure investment, but struggled to make anyprogress.
The issue keeps coming back to the same question: how to pay for it?
Biden’s new transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, who ran against him inthe Democratic primaries, will be on the front lines of the battle, tryingto ensure that this time, the stars are all aligned.
“I think that there’s a tremendous opportunity now to have bipartisansupport for a big, bold vision on infrastructure,” the youthful politiciansaid.
“Americans don’t need a lot of selling to know that we’ve got to do bigthings when it comes to our infrastructure.” -APP/AFP
