© (Evan Vucci/AP)Vice President Kamala Harris listens as President Joe Biden speaks during an event on the American Jobs Plan in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus, Wednesday, April 7, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Joe Biden wants to make American infrastructure great again. And in unusually fiery tones, the president made it clear Wednesday he was open to compromise on the financing, but he has no patience for those with an outdated idea of what infrastructure means.
"We are America," Biden said defiantly from the White House in an address promoting his $2.25 trillion infrastructure and jobs plan. "We don't just fix for today. We build for tomorrow."
Biden appeared to be addressing Republican complaints that his infrastructure proposal wasn't really an infrastructure package at all but a free-for-all behemoth spending bill with all sorts of Democratic desires, including expanded health care, better wages and benefits for caregivers, and efforts to combat climate change. Republican lawmakers - who already are lining up to commit to voting against it - say a small fraction of the measure is for such traditional items as roads, bridges, ports and airports.
But the 78-year-old Biden cast those naysayers as vestiges of a much earlier time. Infrastructure in the 21st century, the president said, had to include things like high-speed internet, lead-free pipes for schools and daycare centers, and help for the "sandwich generation" trying to care for children and aging parents at the same time.
"How many of you know when you send your child to school the fountain they're drinking out of is not fed by a lead pipe? How many of you know the school your child is in still has asbestos in the walls? Is that not infrastructure?" Biden bellowed.
"Is it really your position, my (Republican) friends, that our veterans don't deserve the most modern facilities?" Biden said, referring to the more than $18 billion in the plan to upgrade Veterans Administration hospitals.
Biden said he was open to negotiation and compromise, and he reiterated that he will be inviting Republican lawmakers to the White House to hear alternatives. The president also said he was open to different financing from what he has suggested - raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% - as long as it does not raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year.
Biden noted a study that found at least 55 major corporations used legal loopholes to pay no federal income taxes last year.
"I am not trying to punish anybody. But dammit, maybe it's because I come from a middle class neighborhood, I'm sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced," the president said.
Republicans are wary of another big spending bill, after Biden - without a single GOP vote - won passage of a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief and "rescue" package, which includes such items as direct checks to taxpayers of as much as $1,400 per person.
The ultimate price of the infrastructure bill - titled the American Jobs Plan - is a complicated equation. Biden claims the spending, which is spread out over eight years, would be paid for in 15 years with the corporate tax hike. That's a much longer term projection than is normally made in Washington, where budget outlooks are in the five-10 year range.
Biden also says the package will create millions of jobs and notes a Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce report finding that 90% of the jobs would not require a college degree.
A study released Wednesday by the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget Model projects that Biden's plan - without any tax increases - would increase government debt by 4.72% by 2050, while reducing the gross domestic product by 0.33%.
If the tax provisions are enacted along with the spending,the outlook changes: Penn Wharton found that government debt would increase by 1.7% by 2031 but then drop by 6.4% by 2050. The GDP would drop, however, by 0.8%.
Republicans are in a political quandary. Infrastructure spending is popular. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week found that strong majorities support investment in infrastructure, though it drops to plurality support when described as a Biden or Democratic plan.
If Republicans simply refuse to engage, they miss the opportunity to amend or shrink the package or to change the funding mechanism. But under a recent ruling by the Senate parliamentarian, Democrats could, if they want, add the package to another "reconciliation" bill that cannot be filibustered.
Democrats could then pass the package without GOP support, but it would require the approval of all 50 Democratic senators, which is not at all guaranteed.
"Debate is welcome. Compromise is inevitable. Changes are certain," Biden said. "We'll be listening. We'll be open to good ideas and good faith negotiations . . We will not be open to doing nothing. Inaction simply is not an option."
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