President Biden on Wednesday will unveil a sprawling, ambitious infrastructure proposal that, if enacted, would overhaul how Americans get from point A to point B, how their electricity is generated, the speed of their Internet connections, the quality of their water and the physical makeup of the schools their children are educated in.
The measure, called the American Jobs Plan, includes big infrastructure fixes that both major parties — as well as a majority of Americans — consistently say they want to see, including upgrades to bridges, broadband and buildings.
The $2 trillion proposal includes:
- $115 billion to repair and rebuild bridges, highways and roads;
- $100 billion to expand high-speed broadband across the entire country;
- $100 billion to upgrade and build new schools;
- and $100 billion to expand and improve power lines, and spur a shift to clean energy.
And embedded within the plan are efforts to build out U.S. clean energy infrastructure that, by itself, would rank as one of the most ambitious initiatives ever by the federal government to lower the country's greenhouse gas emissions; along with efforts to address racial inequalities and advance the U.S. economy to compete with China.
The plan would be paid for by increasing taxes for corporations and people earning over $400,000 a year.
As we noted yesterday, the plan is expected to reap huge benefits to the economy over the next 4 years and beyond. (An additional $1 trillion will be proposed for universal prekindergarten and free community college tuition, expanding spending on child care, and extending for several years the expansion of the child tax credit recently signed into law for just one year as part of the stimulus plan.)
There are already some on the left saying the plan isn't big enough; on the right, the bad faith Republican Party squeals that it's too big. (To those on the left, we'll simply trot out the truism that perfect should not be the enemy of good. To those on the bad faith right, we'll simply say get out of the way.)
It's likelier than not that this "American Jobs Plan" will have to pass under budget reconciliation, as did the recent American Rescue Plan Act. If that's the route needed, it means passage would be delayed until fall, when a new fiscal year begins.
