President Biden’s economic advisors are poised to present him and congressional leaders with a $3 trillion proposal to boost the economy, reduce carbon emissions, and narrow economic inequality. The legislative strategy for advancing the sweeping package through Congress remains to be seen. However, media reports indicate the economic advisors will pitch a piece-meal approach, whereby Congress would tackle traditional infrastructure before turning to a second package that would include more “human infrastructure” focused proposals such as free community college, universal prekindergarten, and a national paid leave program. The traditional infrastructure portion of the package — which is expected to offer significant funding of rural roads, bridges, and broadband — would be funded mostly by taxes on businesses, including raising the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent and increasing the global minimum tax paid to 21 percent from about 13 percent. Internal discussions continue about whether some or all of these infrastructure investments could be enacted via the budget reconciliation process that Congress employed to pass the American Rescue Plan, which has the main benefit of requiring a majority vote rather than 60 votes to effectively pass in the Senate.
