Biden’s infrastructure plan offers a bridge to a better American future

Our country is decades overdue for a federal infrastructure program that is big and bold enough to substantially modernize tens of thousands of miles of crumbling roads and bridges, disentangle airports and significantly upgrade the nation’s overstressed electrical grids.

Has such a program finally arrived with President Joe Biden’s announcement Wednesday of a sweeping, eight-year, $2 trillion American Jobs Plan?

For the nation’s sake, we hope so.

Biden’s proposal — New Deal-esque in its grand scope — promises to help set straight the nation’s roads, school buildings, transit systems, affordable broadband capabilities and more. And to bring this about, the plan would provide much-needed jobs for hundreds of thousands of Americans.

“It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said as he announced his plan at the Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center, in Pittsburgh. “It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America, unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the Interstate Highway System and the Space Race decades ago.”

Good for Chicago

The American Jobs Plan would set aside $621 billion for roads, bridges, airports, seaports, electric vehicles and public transit.

In Chicago, that could mean finally funding major construction projects now on the boards, such as the $3 billion North Lake Shore Drive rebuild, the $2.3 billion CTA Red Line extension to 130th Street and the $8.5 billion O’Hare Airport expansion, set to begin in 2023.

What should not be allowed, on the part of Chicago or any local or state government, is the frittering away of the new federal funds on the usual housekeeping concerns, such as trimming trees or buying new trucks for Streets and San. Every new dollar should represent extra value, a way to build an America for the future.

Biden proposes to spend $100 billion to expand affordable high-speed broadband service, and an additional $100 billion for clean energy and new electrical power lines.

Another $300 billion would be used to upgrade schools and build new ones, while also constructing and upgrading affordable housing across the country.

Calling on wealthy to pay fairer share

Predictably, GOP lawmakers — the same ones who did nothing for four years while Donald Trump promised, but never delivered, an infrastructure plan — are already lining up against Biden’s effort.

“It’s like a Trojan horse,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told reporters. “It’s called infrastructure, but inside the Trojan horse it’s going to be more borrowed money and massive tax increases on all the productive parts of our economy.”

But McConnell and the GOP’s real beef is likely this: Biden plans to fund the measure by making wealthy businesses — a mollycoddled and well-protected class under GOP leadership — pay for most of it.

The plan calls for raising the federal corporate tax from 21% to 28% and increasing the baseline tax on U.S. companies’ overseas profits from 13% to 21%.

Biden says it is not his intent to punish the rich.

“This is not to target those who’ve made it — not to seek retribution,” he said in his speech. “This is about opening opportunities for everybody else. And here’s the truth: We all will do better when we all do well.”

Dems demanding more

And while the GOP balks over the price tag, some Democratic lawmakers question whether the $2 trillion should be even more.

“This is not nearly enough,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted Tuesday. “The important context here is that it’s $2.25T spread out over 10 years. For context, the COVID package was $1.9T for this year *alone,* with some provisions lasting 2 years.”

But that stance willfully ignores the political reality that Biden’s bill might be a tough sell as it is. Adding more to it from the outset would likely be the kiss of death.

The time is now

We don’t take lightly that $2 trillion is a staggering amount of money. It’s four times the inflation-adjusted cost of the entire U.S. space program, from the selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts in 1960, through the Apollo moon missions, to the launch of Skylab in 1973.

So we, of course, expect Congress to do its job and examine this plan thoroughly.

But Washington lawmakers must also keep in mind that the total tab will be necessarily high because lawmakers and previous presidential administrations kicked the can down the road by issuing only band-aid fixes for our infrastructure issues.

The time to deal with the issue is now.

And while we understand that turning the bill into a law that remains big, bold and future-oriented, we urge the president — the scrapper from Scranton — to take up the battle and give our nation the victory it needs.

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