U.S. President Joe Biden earlier last month unveiled his $2.3 trillion infrastructure and economy recovery package as his government focuses on reviving the post-pandemic economy. The plan aims to revitalize United States’ highway networks, water services, broadband, and manufacturing amongst other things. The $2.3 trillion is to be spent over eight years. Its cost would be offset by raising the corporate tax rate to 28 per cent for over 15 years with measures designed to stop offshoring profits overseas.
While unveiling the plan, Biden called it a transformational effort that could create the “most resilient, innovative economy in the world.”
Here are some highlights from the massive plan:
$650 Billion For Transportation
The proposal calls for the modernization of 20,000 miles of highways and intersections, as well as the top ten “economically important bridges” and 10,000 other bridges. It includes $20 billion for road safety measures to minimise cyclist and pedestrian deaths, as well as $20 billion to reconnect communities separated by highway projects. For public transit, it would double the federal funding with an $85 billion investment and invest $80 billion in Amtrak.
The plan includes $25 billion for airports, $17 billion for inland waterways, coastal ports and ferries, and investments in cleaning port air pollution.
Another $25 billion is set aside for ambitious highway initiatives that are “too huge for existing financing schemes.” $174 billion are set aside to give the makers of electric vehicles a boost by enhancing the domestic supply chain and giving subsidy to the customers for buying them.
$650 Billion For Home Infrastructure
These funds are injected towards improving drinking-water infrastructure, expanding broadband access, upgrading electric grids and increasing the quality of housing. It would replace 100 per cent of the water-bearing lead pipes and service lines across the country which serve as many as 10 million families.
The plan also proposes access to broadband service to almost 35 per cent of rural Americans, along with building or retrofitting two million housing units, and veterans hospitals.
In order to “upgrade and build new public schools,” a total of $100 billion are allotted, through $50 billion in direct grants and an additional $50 billion leveraged through bonds. The plan entails capping and sealing oil and gas wells as well as abandoned mines, which would generate “hundreds of thousands” of employment opportunities for workers in areas where oil and mining work has dried up.
$400 Billion For The ‘Care Economy’
The plan proposes to create “well-paying caregiving jobs with benefits” for the one in six essential care workers living in poverty. It will fund home or community-based care for hundreds of thousands of senior citizens and people with disabilities.
$580 Billion For Manufacturing, Training & Research
The allocation includes a $50 billion investment in domestic semiconductor manufacturing, $180 billion in research and development with an emphasis on clean energy, and unspecified amounts as incentives for companies to create new jobs in coal communities and grow the U.S. supply chain.
Increase Corporate Taxes To Help Pay The Bill
The bill will make a number of amendments to US tax laws in order to completely shift the burden of the plan onto businesses.
These include increasing the corporate tax rate in the United States from 21 per cent to 28 per cent which was set up by the Trump administration. This also eliminates all fossil fuel industry subsidies and loopholes and establishes a minimum tax on income companies use to report profits to investors.
The changes would contribute 0.5 per cent to US GDP per year in corporate revenue, which will fully pay for investments within the next 15 years, and reduce the government deficit after that.
