During live remarks in Pittsburgh on Wednesday, Joe Biden highlighted his next bout of heavy-handed federal spending. Biden’s spending plan is said to be aimed at rebuilding infrastructure and transport, financed through corporate tax hikes.
Biden touted the first phase of his “Build Back Better” program, referring to his proposal as a “once in a generation investment in America”:
“It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges . . . unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago.”
According to the White House fact sheet, the American Jobs plan designates $213 billion to low-income housing, $35 billion to “address the climate crisis,” and calls for increased workplace unionization. Biden also proposed a $10 billion investment into a “Civilian Climate Corps” dedicated to combatting global warming. In an attempt to offset the cost, the plan does away with Trump-era tax cuts, increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent. The President also seeks to impose a global minimum corporate tax of 21 percent, causing companies to pay taxes in both the country where income is earned, and then again when the money is returned to the U.S.
According to Strategas Research Partners, Trump’s 2017 tax reform allowed companies to infuse $1.6 trillion back into the U.S. economy. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board analyzed the impact of Biden’s sweeping tax hikes on the middle class:
“Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increase alone is more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with another $1.5 trillion coming soon on individual income and investment. That’s about $300 billion a year, or 1.36% of GDP each year, assuming U.S. GDP of $22 trillion . . . making the Biden increase the largest since 1968.”
President Biden also advocated for the further expansion of socialized medicine, asking for $400 billion to be dumped into long-term care services under Medicaid. Affirmative action initiatives were prominent throughout the president’s remarks. Biden called on Congress to invest $25 billion to “eliminate racial and gender inequities in research and development and science, technology, engineering, and math.”
This massive spending blowout comes just weeks after Biden signed the “American Rescue Act,” a $1.9 trillion untargeted relief bill funneling billions towards non-COVID-related special interests.
In a recently published opinion piece, the New York Post Editorial Board broke down the proposed spending, concluding that as little as 5 percent of the money would be directed towards roads, bridges, and other infrastructure projects. Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” is only the first of Biden’s two-step plan to blow out the federal budget deficit. Expected to garner fierce opposition from congressional Republicans, Biden will announce his “American Families Plan” in the coming weeks.
