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The Scale and Structure of
the American Jobs Plan
The American
Jobs Plan—the $2.3 trillion infrastructure
proposal unveiled by the Biden administration this week—is “not a plan
that tinkers around the edges,” as the president said
Wednesday.
In tone and approach, that’s
already a positive shift: an acknowledgment that generations of public
underinvestment and needlessly
prolonged joblessness are neither inevitable nor acceptable, as Roosevelt experts
have said during
this pandemic and
in the decade after the Great Recession.
But more is possible, and
necessary.
“As in any big economic package, we
must focus on both the scale and structure of funding—how much we’re
spending, how we’re spending the money, and who’s deciding where and
how to spend it,” Roosevelt President & CEO Felicia
Wong writes in an
analysis of the plan.
In its structure, she argues, the
AJP is particularly strong in its commitments to care work and worker
empowerment and in its potential for virtuous feedback
loops.
But the plan’s scale still falls
far short of our economic and climate needs, she writes—about
one-third of the $10
trillion we should
be spending per year over 10 years to decarbonize the
economy.
“So, two cheers for a huge step
forward—a vision worth fighting for, and a big down payment,” Wong
writes. “For now, we’re reserving our third cheer, since the federal
government will need to make regular, necessary investments beyond
this overdue down payment.”
Another pillar of the American Jobs
Plan: corporate tax increases. As the Roosevelt Institute, the
Groundwork Collaborative, the Center for American Progress, the
Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, and the Economic Policy
Institute write in a joint statement, “robust taxation of corporations
and the wealthy can directly counter damaging inequality, rebalance
power in our economy, and increase the competitiveness of American
workers.” Read
on.
How to Implement a Wealth
Tax
"One of the ironic advantages of having a society with as much
distortion inequality as we have is that we can raise a lot of revenue
by taxing only those with incomes over $400,000 and corporations,”
says
Roosevelt Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz.
Taxing wealth is another viable—and
popular—option.
A tax on the wealth of
multimillionaires and billionaires would be fair,
just, and effective, reducing racial wealth gaps and restoring equity to our tax
system.
It’s
constitutional, as David Gamage, Ari Glogower, and Roosevelt Fellow Kitty
Richards explained earlier this year.
And it’s no more challenging to
design and implement than an income tax, as they write in a new
report. Learn
more in How to Measure and Value Wealth for a Federal Wealth Tax
Reform.
 How to Achieve a Climate-Forward
Recovery
This Wednesday, April 7, 2021, at 3:00 PM ET, join us to learn more
about what the Biden-Harris administration's economic and
infrastructure plans mean for climate change and environmental
justice. What does a climate-forward economy look like, and how can we
achieve it?
Moderator:
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Rhiana Gunn-Wright, Roosevelt Institute Director of Climate
Policy
Featured speakers:
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Brandon Hurlbut, Co-Founder of Boundary Stone Partners and
former Obama administration US Department of Energy Chief of
Staff
-
Lenore Palladino, Roosevelt Institute Fellow and Assistant
Professor of Economics and Public Policy at UMass Amherst
- John
Washington, People's Action Organizer and Political
Educator
Register
now.
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