US Pres. Biden: We Will Create 19 Million Jobs if we Pass the Infrastructure Plan

“In the first two months of our administration, we have seen more jobs created than any in history,” — Joe Biden

Wednesday (31st March 2021). Joe Biden delivering his speech unveiling the infrastructure plan.

On Wednesday 31st March 2021, Biden launched the first half of his massive infrastructure package, which involves both conventional blue-collar development programmes and cutting-edge measures to help America move to a greener future.

The plan, which was introduced at a carpenters’ training facility near Pittsburgh, harkens back to a Rooseveltian period, when the industrial brawn of unionised Americans fuelled the economy, an assertive government steered business and directly generated employment, and constructing massive, costly infrastructure made entirely in the United States revived the economy.

“It is 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,”

A total of $621 billion will be spent on transport infrastructure. The bulk of this funding would go into conventional ‘New Deal’ programmes including highways, bridges, mass transit, railroads, and airports.

$174 billion will be spent on electric cars, including tax subsidies to help customers buy them, grants for states to construct 500,000 public charging stations, and improvements in domestic supply chains (the White House bemoans the fact that America’s electric-vehicle demand is just one-third that of China’s).

“Climate change is the number one issue facing humanity” — Joe Biden

At least $100 billion will be spent on modernising the power grid, which has collapsed spectacularly in both Texas and California in the last year.

• About the same sum would be spent on drinking-water systems, including the removal of lead pipes in 9 million households.

Housing, libraries, community colleges, child-care facilities, veterans’ hospitals, and public buildings will get $213 billion in smaller-scale construction and energy-efficient retrofitting.

The administration estimates that disadvantaged groups will gain 40% of the bill’s benefits; however, the exact process by which this will happen is unclear. Many of the spoils were dispersed by a woke calculus.

Historically black colleges and universities will receive half of the $40 billion in laboratory improvements. A historically black college is now expected to be partnered with a proposed national climate lab.

Biden has made it clear who he wants to wield the shovels: union workers.

“It’s about time they start to get a piece of the action,” Biden said in Pittsburgh.