With the inauguration of Joe Biden as president, we move into an entirely new chapter in U.S. history. Rest assured there will be good points and bad points to the next four years.
Job number one has to be to get COVID-19 under control. A re-dedication to vaccination and the coming of the warm weather ought to be a potent one-two punch to slow this thing down. Further relief legislation from Congress ought to help the economy get on its feet again, but that will take time.
One of the most robust economic stimulus plans available to the federal government will be a new infrastructure bill. Make no mistake, that bill is coming. Details trickling out indicate that Biden wants to spend $2 trillion on infrastructure, including $50 billion on road and bridge repairs just in his first year in office. If that watermark is reached as part of a 10-year plan that is a $500 billion investment.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, we need the infrastructure plan to focus on infrastructure. While expanding broadband and climate considerations are noble tasks, let’s be clear that we are talking about heritage infrastructure here: roads and bridges, railways, ports, waterways and pipelines.
Incoming Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg will be tasked with overseeing this massive investment. His work is cut out for him.
Paying the bill for infrastructure is going to be where the rubber meets the road. A divided Congress will find this tough sledding, but I am confident the plan will come to fruition. One of the more unique funding mechanisms I have heard about is replacing gas taxes with “carbon taxes.”
Carbon taxes are a “fee imposed on the burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, gas),” according to the Carbon Tax Center. “Policymakers could use the resulting revenue to pay for infrastructure, lower individual and corporate taxes, reduce the budget deficit, invest in clean energy and climate adaptation, or for other uses,” according to the Tax Policy Center.
This is an idea that has been kicked around before, but maybe the time is right. That and other ideas are open for discussion. One thing for certain: anything that happens in Washington will make some happy and some mad. It’s going to get very interesting, very quickly.
Mark S. Kuhar, editor
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Twitter: @editormarkkuhar