President Joe Biden just rolled out a new proposal to create a bunch of jobs through a massive taxpayer-funded spending spree on infrastructure projects and a grab bag of other leftist priorities.
The $2 trillion plan aims to remake the economy, enact the Green New Deal, and boost organized labor’s size and control over the private sector.
True infrastructure (i.e., highways, bridges, transit, and airports) along with Amtrak comprise just $650 billion of the total $2 trillion. The rest is what he wants to do with our homes, cars, public schools, manufacturing, and childcare.
As my colleague, Kelsey Bolar noted today, “In sum, only about a quarter of the plan has to do with ‘infrastructure’ in the traditional sense, similar to how Biden’s COVID-19 ‘relief’ bill had very little to do with fighting the virus.”
You can read more about what’s in the plan in the Washington Post.
Here are 3 scary things about this package that the media is glossing over:
- This package is just part 1; part 2 is on the way. Biden plans to announce another $2 trillion in spending on healthcare expansion, childcare subsidies, and free college later this month. All told this infrastructure spending could cost $4 trillion on top of the nearly $2 trillion for the recent stimulus package that included $1,400 “stimmy” checks to most Americans.
By the end of his first three months, Biden would have spent nearly $6 trillion at a cost of $18,300 to every man, woman, and child—above normal budgeted federal spending. So much for moderate Joe.
- Many workers will be forced out of independent contracting, while most workers may be forced into unions. Biden calls for the enactment of the Protecting the Right to Organize or PRO Act. The PRO Act would repeal right-to-work laws, which free workers from paying union dues even if they do not belong to a union; force employers to hand over the private contact information of all employees to the union, which opens them up to harassment if they opt out of the union; and narrow the definition of independent contractors, which would effectively reclassify millions of workers as employees to more easily be unionized.
- Taxes will rise on some and incomes will fall for many. On the campaign trail, candidate Biden promised no tax increases on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year. His administration has already back-peddled on that by changing what “anyone” includes. Meanwhile, they are floating corporate tax increases to levels that would make America less competitive than other countries again.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has found that tax increases on individual labor would reduce economic growth. At the same time, according to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, corporate tax increases lead to smaller paychecks for low and middle-income earners as corporations pass the tax increases onto workers, shareholders, and customers.
With massive spending proposals, there are always more surprises that only come to light over time. There is no doubt that this plan is chock full of pork to get Democrats on all sides on board despite the hefty price tag. We’ve seen how these green corporate boondoggles and failed shovel-ready jobs programs work out. They don’t.
But, it’s worrisome that Biden and the left are using the pandemic as an excuse to enact partisan policies they could not have passed during better times.
In addition, they are attempting to get around the budgetary process and bipartisan compromise by pushing for sweeping legislative proposals using a simple majority vote.
Many of these policies should be weighed and voted on as stand-alone legislation because they are so consequential. Instead, Biden is forcing congressional members to swallow the whole thing or face a backlash from constituents.
This plan is not how we “build back better” but how we spend big to go broke.