Biden Introduces $1.3 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Funded Entirely By Higher Taxes on Corporations and Wealthy
Democratic 2020 candidate Joe Biden rolled out a $1.3 trillion plan to tackle infrastructure on Thursday, promising to pay for “every cent” of the proposal by increasing taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
The former vice president’s plan involves a $1.3 trillion investment over ten years to go toward updating school buildings, improving high-speed broadband access, and repairing highways.
Biden plans to help the U.S. move closer to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions over the same time period by bringing back the full electric-vehicle tax credit to encourage Americans to buy low-carbon vehicles. He also proposed installing 500,000 public charging outlets nationally.
The plan says these measures will revitalize low-income communities and “equip the American middle class to compete and win in the global economy.”
“Every cent of Joe Biden’s $1.3 trillion investment in our nation’s infrastructure will be paid for by making sure the super-wealthy and corporations pay their fair share,” the plan reads.
The funding will take the form of “revenue raised through reversing the excesses of the Trump tax cuts for corporations; reducing incentives for tax havens, evasion, and outsourcing; ensuring corporations pay their fair share; closing other loopholes in our tax code that reward wealth, not work; and ending subsidies for fossil fuels.”
The former vice president also blamed President Trump by name for failing to deliver on his campaign promises to repair the country’s crumbling infrastructure.
Trump “has been promising an infrastructure plan since his earliest days in office and keeps holding ‘Infrastructure Weeks’—but has failed to actually deliver results,” Biden said in the plan. “Instead, Trump has focused on privatizing construction projects to benefit his wealthy friends, leaving communities across the country suffering and our nation falling behind.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer agreed in an April meeting with Trump that the country’s infrastructure, much of which receives a D+ grade from the American Society of Civil Engineers, requires $2 trillion in spending to fix. However, Trump walked out of another meeting the next month, saying Democrats had turned the infrastructure talks into “a little bit of a game.”
Amid bitter partisan fighting, the administration has been unsuccessful in its attempts to convince Congress to pass a major infrastructure plan, frustrating business communities.
