President Joe Biden on Wednesday outlined a $2.3 trillion US plan to re-engineer the nation’s infrastructure over the next eight years in what he billed as “a once in a generation investment in America” that would undo his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement of giant tax cuts for corporations in the process.
Speaking at a carpenters union training centre in Pittsburgh, Biden drew comparisons between his hard-hatted proposed transformation of the U.S. economy and the space race — and promised results as grand in scale as the New Deal or Great Society programs that shaped the 20th century.
“It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said. “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. In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II. It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.”
White House officials say the spending would generate those jobs as the country shifts away from fossil fuels and combats the perils of climate change.
-
ANALYSIS
Why the 1st big bill of the Biden era is such a ‘BFD’
It is also an effort to compete with the technology and public investments made by China, which has the world’s second-largest economy and is fast gaining on the United States’ dominant position.
“I’m convinced that if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this is the moment when America won the future,” Biden said.
[knowmore]
