President Joe Biden will unveil his vision for a mass ramp-up in U.S. infrastructure spending Wednesday in Pittsburgh, a city the White House views as a prime example of an old manufacturing hub revitalized by new industries from health care to technology.
The administration wants the same type of reorientation that Pittsburgh saw to provide fresh opportunities to working-class cities and towns across the country. While the president’s plan does feature traditional road, bridge and airport projects, the package also includes items like high-speed broadband, along with long-neglected priorities to update the electrical grid, replace lead pipes in homes and schools and retrofit and weatherize commercial buildings.
Brian Deese, one of Biden’s top economic aides, told senior congressional Democrats on Tuesday that the infrastructure package would amount to about $2 trillion over eight years, according to a person familiar with the discussion. The proposal is vastly bigger in size and breadth than the nation’s last long-term infrastructure bill — a $305 billion, five-year surface-transportation initiative in 2015.
It envisions an expensive political gambit carried out over the next decade to try to create well-paying jobs by both updating the country’s infrastructure and preparing for the coming weather patterns wrought by climate change — financed by tax hikes on the wealthy and corporations, anathema to Republicans and business groups.
The White House is expected to propose enough tax increases on Wednesday to cover the cost of the package, according to two people familiar with the plan. Biden is not expected to go into great detail on the specific tax increases, apart from reiterating plans to roll back a portion of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts.
White House aides spent the weekend debating the make-up and size of the tax-increase package. Deese spent part of Tuesday briefing congressional leaders and committee chairs on some of the proposal’s details.
Recovery bound
Though Biden will ultimately propose two sweeping legislative proposals, totaling anywhere from $3 trillion to $4 trillion, he is expected on Wednesday to focus on a narrower discussion of rebuilding roads and bridges and transitioning to clean energy.
The Wednesday speech will introduce the proposal that the White House is calling the American Jobs Plan, which follows on the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act that Biden signed earlier in March.
For progressives, success in passing the bulk of the packages could put Biden in the pantheon with Lyndon Johnson or Franklin Delano Roosevelt, presidents who instituted sweeping changes through legislation on civil rights and the social safety net.
“This really is transformational in a way we have not seen since the Great Society,” said Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank. “Like a lot of people, I underestimated Joe Biden. He was always in the background — as vice presidents are supposed to be — always in the center of the party politically. And he was clumsy. That is what we saw, and that is why I underestimated him. But I can’t quarrel with what he done since he took office.”
Later this spring, the administration plans to unveil the second part of the long-term economic program, focused on child care and home care aid, along with an expansion in early education, health care funding and money for community college students.
Going alone
Biden allies do not expect either package to receive bipartisan support in Congress — even if the White House publicly has said it would try to work with Republicans.
Politically, the administration will have to work hard to keep Democrats unified on the infrastructure package as Republicans and business groups decry tax cuts and progressives try to push toward an even larger spending package.
One Biden ally said the White House should spend as much as $7 trillion on both infrastructure and the second “caring economy” proposal, a signal that progressives will push for as much spending as possible on top of the already-passed $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill.
Biden’s speech and the infrastructure plan is also expected to delve into ensuring that communities of color benefit, said two people familiar with the plan. The speech will make the point that such neighborhoods often have borne the brunt of pollution, so they should be a key part of the transition to a new economy and clean energy.
