Eighty-two unions and liberal groups, led by Americans for Tax Fairness, are urging President Joe Biden to create a wealth tax in order to pay for his massive infrastructure plan.
“Your tax and investment plans were the boldest of any major-party presidential nominee in modern American history. They received widespread media coverage and, perhaps more significant, your boldly progressive tax plan was heavily attacked by your political opponents, who spent untold millions of dollars and claimed falsely that the middle-class would pay more,” the groups wrote.
“Yet, you won the most votes ever of any U.S presidential candidate, with a central promise of your campaign to make the rich and corporations pay their fair share of taxes. You have a clear mandate to pursue your agenda.”
Biden is set to unveil a $2 trillion infrastructure plan Wednesday afternoon during a speech in Pittsburgh.
The bill, dubbed the America Jobs Plan, would be paid for with 15 years of higher taxes on corporations and include $115 billion for roads and bridges, $85 billion for public transit, $80 billion for passenger and freight railways, $213 billion for federal housing, $100 billion each for high-speed broadband, electric grid, clean energy, and public schools.
The plan also proposes investing more than $500 billion into the manufacturing sector, worker training, and research and development, and includes $400 billion to expand access to caregiving for older and disabled Americans and to improve the pay of the workers who provide that care.
Biden’s pledge to tackle climate change is also embedded throughout the plan.
Republicans say it goes too far beyond traditional infrastructure spending and compare its climate aspects to the Green New Deal.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Monday argued that “80% or more of people in this country, Democrats and Republicans, support investing in infrastructure,” because the U.S. ranks 13th globally in infrastructure quality, down from fifth in 2022.
Yet Republican lawmakers are not on board, for several reasons.
“We’re hearing the next few months might bring a so-called ‘infrastructure’ proposal that may actually be a Trojan horse for massive tax hikes and other job-killing left-wing policies,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said from the Senate floor last week.
“They’re terming it ‘social infrastructure.’ Never heard that before,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-Wyo., said last week. “I think we need to talk to the American people and say, ‘Is this what you envision with infrastructure? Are these job creators? Are we re-engineering our own social fabric here with a 50-vote majority?'”
“I don’t think the bill can grow into a multi-trillion-dollar catch-all,” said Missouri Rep. Sam Graves, the top Republican on the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. “A transportation bill needs to be a transportation bill, not a Green New Deal. It needs to be about roads and bridges.”
Source: Newmax
