Geoff Earle writes for the Daily Mail about one significant source of opposition to the president’s new $2 trillion plan.
Major American business groups have lined up against President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan – even after many of them got behind his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief effort.
The opposition signals the headwinds the White House is up against promoting a package the Biden is designating as the next big push of his agenda, and one that he said Friday would create 19 million jobs.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce went after the plan as ‘dangerously misguided.’
Properly done, a major investment in infrastructure today is an investment in the future, and like a new home, should be paid for over time — say 30 years — by the users who benefit from the investment,’ the group said in a statement.
‘We strongly oppose the general tax increases proposed by the administration which will slow the economic recovery and make the U.S. less competitive globally — the exact opposite of the goals of the infrastructure plan.’
Notably, the group supported Biden’s first major achievement, the coronavirus law.
‘We support the new administration’s focus on removing roadblocks to vaccinations and reopening schools, both of which are important steps to accelerating a broad-based economic recovery for all Americans,’ said the group’s head, Neil Bradley, a former House Republican leadership staffer.
The Business Roundtable, another powerful business group, blasted tax increases it said would create ‘new barriers to job creation and economic growth,’ while the National Association of Manufacturers said it would ‘turn back the clock to the archaic tax policies’ – a possible reference to Biden’s call to boost corporate tax rates up to 28 per cent from 21 percent. The 2017 tax law signed by President Trump brought them down from 35 per cent.
Biden and the White House are doubling down on the tax hikes they say are meant not only to fund roads, bridges and job training but to bring more fairness to the tax code.
