Republican congressmen are criticizing both the size of President Joe Biden’s proposed $2.25 trillion “infrastructure” plan and the fact that its funding is based on an increase in the corporate tax rate, while Democrats are touting it as a way to generate long-term job growth, The Hill reported.
“We think we can not only have a strong job rebound this year, but we can sustain it over many years,” National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told Fox News. “That’s the goal,” adding that “let’s also think to the longer term about where those investments that we can make that will really drive not just more job growth but better job growth, not just job growth in the short term but job growth in the long term by investing in our infrastructure, by investing in our research and development in a way that we haven’t since the 1960s.”
The Biden administration says its plan would provide billions of dollars to rebuild such structures as roads, bridges, and tunnels while also funding efforts to transition the United States away from the use of fossil fuels.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg explained on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the legislation would be completely funded by an increase to the corporate tax rate and that it would also start cutting into the deficit after 15 years.
“Now is our chance to make infrastructure choices for the future that are going to serve us well in the 2030s and on into the middle of the century, when we will be judged for whether we met this moment here in the 2020s,” Buttigieg said. He added that “across 15 years, it would raise all of the revenue needed for these once-in-a-lifetime investments. So by year 16, you’d actually see this package working to reduce the deficit.”
But Republicans have slammed the tax hike included in the legislation, with Sen Roger Wicker, R-Miss, calling the rise in the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% “a big mistake for the administration,” according to The Hill. Wicker added the proposal represented “a repeal of one of our signature issues in 2017,” referring to the GOP tax reform bill that passed that year.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., stressed Republicans would be willing to back a smaller infrastructure package, telling Fox News that “I think there’s an easy win here for the White House if they would take that win, which is make this an infrastructure package, which is about 30 percent [of what their proposal entails]… My advice to the White House has been take that bipartisan win, do this in a more traditional infrastructure way.”
It is unclear , however, if Democrats will attempt to gain Republican backing to help pass the bill, as there is disagreement in the party if the effort it worth it or if it is better to push through the legislation by usinig budget reconciliation.
Source: Newmax
