President Joe Biden Introduces Part One Of Infrastructure Plan

On March 31 in Pittsburgh, Penn. President Joe Biden introduced his American Jobs Plan of 2021, which requests that Congress approve $2 trillion over eight years to modernize the nation’s infrastructure, address climate change, and enhance U.S. manufacturing. The White House summary is here.

The plan would be financed in part by raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent over 15 years, increasing the minimum corporate tax rate for multinational companies to 21 percent, enacting a minimum 15 percent tax on reported income from large corporations, putting place new international taxes, and eliminating certain tax deductions and provisions.

All the taxes in the current proposal are on the business side of the tax code, none would impact families and businesses that pay through the individual tax code.

The American Jobs Plan is the first part in a two-part package. President Biden is expected to release the second package, the American Families Plan, within the next few weeks. The law firm of Holland and Knight provides a comprehensive overview of the plan here while Bloomberg Government has an outline here.

Broadly, the American Jobs Plan would invest:

• $621 billion in repairing and revitalizing surface transportation infrastructure, including roads, bridges, railways, and transit systems;
• $300 billion to boost U.S. manufacturing, including by investing $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and research and providing $50 billion to the National Science Foundation to create a technology directorate;
• $213 billion to build and retrofit more than two million affordable and sustainable places to live;
• $180 billion to upgrade research infrastructure and labs at universities and federal agencies and for climate-science research and addressing gender and racial inequalities in the science, math and technology fields;
• $174 billion for developing a nationwide network of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations and additional EV purchasing incentives;
• $111 billion to modernize drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems;
• $100 billion for workforce development programs, including training for those who have lost their jobs, as well as apprenticeship initiatives;
• $100 billion to expand high-speed broadband infrastructure; and
• $100 billion for new school construction and upgrades.

Notably absent from the proposal: specific funding for securing the electric grid against cyberattacks (even though the outline does include $100 billion for improving grid resiliency, the creation of new jobs and developing more clean electricity).

The White House said last week it would like Congress to pass the legislation by the end of this summer—a timeline that is very aggressive, especially since Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other Republicans vowed to fight the legislation.

Democrats on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, are preparing to draft legislative language and U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told her caucus she hopes to pass the measure by July 4, 2021.