Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg claimed on Sunday that President Joe Biden’s enormous $2 trillion infrastructure plan will pay for itself.
“Across 15 years, it would raise all of the revenue needed for these once-in-a-lifetime investments,” Buttigieg told NBC News. “So by year 16, you’d actually see this package working to reduce the deficit.”
“We’re just asking corporations to pay their fair share at a rate, by the way, that would be lower than it’s been for most of my life,” he continued, referring to the 28% increase in corporate taxes the bill would require.
The bill would also tighten a series of international tax rules.
Biden’s infrastructure plan allocates only $620 billion to public works such as highways, railroads, bridges, and waterways.
The rest would go to unrelated leftist spending on climate change and social justice initiatives.
For example, the plan includes $10 billion to create a “Civilian Climate Corp” that would “put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience, and advancing environmental justice.”
The proposal also sets aside a whopping $20 billion for “a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.”
Biden would also spend more on the electric vehicle industry than he would on actual infrastructure improvements.
But Buttigieg argued all of this spending is necessary.
“Right now, we’re still coasting off of infrastructure choices that were made in the 1950s,” Buttigieg explained. “Now’s our chance to make infrastructure choices for the future that are going to serve us well in the 2030s and on into the middle of the century.”
Because of the infrastructure plan’s green energy initiatives, America “will be much more economically competitive” by 2035, he said. “But if there are other ideas, now’s a great time to hear them.”
