President Joe Biden is set to give his first address to Congress on Wednesday night, unveiling two anticipated new plans for his administration. The first is the “American Families Plan,” an investment that will cost $1.8 trillion and cover a range of areas from education to taxes to families. The second is known as the infrastructure plan, or “American Jobs Plan,” which covers many sectors and is projected to cost $2.7 trillion.
In a statement on the plan, the White House said, “this is no time to build back to the way things were. This is the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy. The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China.”
The White House said that “the President’s plan will unify and mobilize the country to meet the great challenges of our time: the climate crisis and the ambitions of an autocratic China,” but it will also prioritize “addressing long-standing and persistent racial injustice.”
According to the White House, President Biden’s American Jobs Plan will cover a range of issues.
Transportation Infrastructure:
- Invest an additional $621 billion in transportation infrastructure and resilience.
- Invest $115 billion to modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair.
- Invest $85 billion to modernize existing transit and help agencies expand their systems to meet rider demand.
- Invest $80 billion to address Amtrak’s repair backlog; modernize the high traffic Northeast Corridor; improve existing corridors and connect new city pairs; and enhance grant and loan programs that support passenger and freight rail safety, efficiency, and electrification.
- Invest $174 billion to win the EV market.
- Invest $25 billion in our airports, including funding for the Airport Improvement Program, upgrades to FAA assets that ensure safe and efficient air travel, and a new program to support terminal renovations and multimodal connections for affordable, convenient, car-free access to air travel.
- Invest $17 billion in inland waterways, coastal ports, land ports of entry, and ferries, which are all essential to our nation’s freight.
Redress Historic Inequities and Build the Future of Transportation Infrastructure:
- Includes $20 billion for a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.
- Includes $25 billion for a dedicated fund to support ambitious projects that have tangible benefits to the regional or national economy but are too large or complex for existing funding programs.
Invest $50 billion to improve infrastructure resilience and:
- Safeguard critical infrastructure and services, and defend vulnerable communities.
- Maximize the resilience of land and water resources to protect communities and the environment.
Drinking Water Infrastructure, Electric Grid, and High-Speed Broadband:
- Invest $111 billion to ensure clean, safe drinking water is a right in all communities.
- Invest $100 billion to revitalize America’s digital infrastructure.
- Invest $100 billion to reenergize America’s power infrastructure.
Housing:
- Invest $213 billion to produce, preserve, and retrofit more than two million affordable and sustainable places to live.
The President is calling on Congress to:
- Produce, preserve, and retrofit more than a million affordable, resilient, accessible, energy efficient, and electrified housing units.
- Build and rehabilitate more than 500,000 homes for low- and middle-income homebuyers.
- Eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.
- Address longstanding public housing capital needs.
- invest $40 billion to improve the infrastructure of the public housing system in America.
- Put union building trade workers to work upgrading homes and businesses to save families money.
- Establish a $27 billion Clean Energy and Sustainability Accelerator to mobilize private investment into distributed energy resources; retrofits of residential, commercial and municipal buildings; and clean transportation.
Schools:
- Invest $100 billion to upgrade and build new public schools, through $50 billion in direct grants and an additional $50 billion leveraged through bonds.
- Invest $12 billion in community college infrastructure.
Child care:
- Invest $25 billion to help upgrade child care facilities and increase the supply of child care in areas that need it most.
- Expanded tax credit to encourage businesses to build child care facilities at places of work.
VA Hospitals and Federal Buildings:
- Invest $18 billion for the modernization of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics.
- Invests $10 billion in the modernization, sustainability, and resilience of federal buildings, including through a bipartisan Federal Capital Revolving Fund to support investment in a major purchase, construction or renovation of Federal facilities.
Solidify Infrastructure of Care Economy:
- $400 billion toward expanding access to quality, affordable home- or community-based care for aging relatives and people with disabilities.
- Expand access to long-term care services under Medicaid.
- Put in place an infrastructure to create good middle-class jobs with a free and fair choice to join a union.
R&D and Technologies of the Future:
- Invest $180 billion in order to:
- Advance U.S. leadership in critical technologies and upgrade America’s research infrastructure.
- Establish the United States as a leader in climate science, innovation, and R&D.
- Eliminate racial and gender inequities in research and development and science, technology, engineering, and math.
American Manufacturers and Small Businesses:
- Invest $300 billion in order to:
- Strengthen manufacturing supply chains for critical goods.
- Protect Americans from future pandemics.
- Jumpstart clean energy manufacturing through federal procurement.
- Make it in ALL of America: invest $20 billion in regional innovation hubs and a Community Revitalization Fund; invest $14 billion in NIST to bring together industry, academia, and government to advance technologies and capabilities critical to future competitiveness; quadruple support for the Manufacturing Extensions Partnership — increasing the involvement of minority-owned and rurally-located small- and-medium-sized enterprises in technological advancement.
- Increase access to capital for domestic manufacturers.
- Create a national network of small business incubators and innovation hubs.
- Partner with rural and Tribal communities to create jobs and economic growth in rural America.
Workforce Development:
- Invest $100 billion in order to:
- Pair job creation efforts with next generation training programs.
- Target workforce development opportunities in underserved communities.
- Build the capacity of the existing workforce development and worker protection systems.
- Empower Workers: “update the social contract that provides workers with a fair shot to get ahead, overcome racial and other inequalities that have been barriers for too many Americans, expand the middle class, and strengthen communities.”
- Create good jobs: “demands that employers benefitting from these investments follow strong labor standards and remain neutral when their employees seek to organize a union and bargain collectively.”
- Protect workers: “In addition to a $10 billion investment in enforcement as part of the plan’s workforce proposals, the President is calling for increased penalties when employers violate workplace safety and health rules.”
In order to allegedly pay for the American Jobs Plan, the White House is also set to announce another plan called the “Made in America Tax Plan,” which the White House said is aimed at making sure “corporations pay their fair share in taxes and encourage job creation at home.”
The American Jobs Plan “will invest about $2 trillion this decade. If passed alongside President Biden’s Made in America corporate tax plan, it will be fully paid for within the next 15 years and reduce deficits in the years after.”
The Made In America Tax Plan will:
- Set the Corporate Tax Rate at 28 percent.
- Discourage Offshoring by Strengthening the Global Minimum Tax for U.S. Multinational Corporations.
- End the Race to the Bottom Around the World:
- “President Biden is also proposing to encourage other countries to adopt strong minimum taxes on corporations, just like the United States, so that foreign corporations aren’t advantaged and foreign countries can’t try to get a competitive edge by serving as tax havens.”
- Prevent U.S. Corporations from inverting or claiming tax havens as their residence.
- Deny Companies Expense Deductions for Offshoring Jobs and Credit Expenses for Onshoring.
- Eliminate a Loophole for Intellectual Property that Encourages Offshoring Jobs and Invest in Effective R&D Incentives.
- Enact A Minimum Tax on Large Corporations’ Book Income.
- Eliminate Tax Preferences for Fossil Fuels and Make Sure Polluting Industries Pay for Environmental Clean Up.
- Ramping Up Enforcement Against Corporations.