Republicans took issue with the price tag on President Joe Biden’s agenda following his speech before a small group of House and Senate lawmakers at Wednesday night’s joint session of Congress.
Biden unveiled his American Family Plan, which stands at $1.8 trillion. Along with the administration’s $2.5 trillion American Jobs Plan and the already-signed $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which comes out at a total of $6.2 trillion. The administration claims that it will be “fully paid for” in 15 years and bring down the deficit.
“Independent experts estimate the American Jobs Plan will add millions of jobs and trillions of dollars in economic growth for years to come. These are good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. Nearly 90% of the infrastructure jobs created in the American Jobs Plan don’t require a college degree. Seventy-five percent don’t require an associate’s degree,” Biden said in his address. “The Americans Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America.”
In his remarks, Biden claimed that his Jobs and Family Plans can be paid for without increasing deficits or increasing taxes on people making less than $400,000 a year. Calling for “corporate America and the wealthiest 1% of Americans to pay their fair share,” Biden stated that there would be no federal taxes on more than $40 billion in profits.
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“We’re going to reform corporate taxes so they pay their fair share — and help pay for the public investments their businesses will benefit from,” he said, noting that his administration’s new tax plan will move the top tax bracket for the wealthiest 1%, those making $400,000 or more, back up to 39.6%.
Republicans are not buying it, however.
“It’s more taxing and more spending. I think Joe Biden has promised to unify the country and heal our division, and it certainly hasn’t been demonstrated nor is it, I think, been demonstrated by his legislative proposals,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of Republican leadership, said of Biden’s speech.
“In his first 100 days, he’s asked for $100 trillion of spending, and to put that in context, our total federal budget that we vote on every year is $1.4 [trillion], $1.5 trillion,” Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, told the Washington Examiner. “So it’s a massive amount of spending. I’d say his dad needs to take away the credit card.”
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, took particular issue with the cost of the proposed infrastructure bill in the Biden plan and his proposal for the military.
The bill “is using the popularity of transportation to get his agenda through, which is not transportation, and secondly, what he’s done to the military — it’s actually a reduction below the inflation rate, which is the only thing that’s lower,” Inhofe told the Washington Examiner. “In fact, it’s a 1.6% increase on everything else. The average is 16% increase. So it’s kind of more of what we had in the Obama administration.”
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Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, scolded the administration for not bringing Republicans in to negotiate legislation, saying in a statement, “Republicans in Congress are willing to work with the administration, but bipartisanship takes commitment from both sides. Cutting Republicans out of the process, like he did on the COVID package and may do on infrastructure, is no way to unite the country.”
