WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden and his team presented a very puffy projection of how many jobs his infrastructure plan would create, a report his press secretary corrected Tuesday. Biden also went beyond dismissing the possible disadvantages of the tax increases needed to pay for all the roads and bridges.
A look at the administration’s infrastructure sales in recent days:
SOCIAL TAXES
PRAYING, on the question of whether his proposed increase in corporate income tax will drive American companies overseas: “Not at all … because there is no evidence for it … it is bizarre.” – comments to reporters Monday.
THE FACTS: Barely bizarre. Biden’s administration is aware that lower tax rates abroad could attract U.S. companies to pull over. Whether the proposed tax increase would be large enough to have it is another matter.
The same day that Biden made his remarks, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen endorsed a global minimum tax rate on companies, precisely to prevent countries from lowering rates to attract businesses.
Yellen said it was time to end a thirty-year “bottom-up” race of countries reducing their tax rates to gain an advantage. Her approach suggests that the government at least accepts the possibility that an increase in U.S. tax rates could lead to U.S. multinational corporations moving their headquarters abroad.
Biden proposes raising the U.S. corporate tax rate to 28% from 21% to partially pay for its infrastructure proposal. President Donald Trump has lowered the rate of 35% in his 2017 tax law.
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INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS
PRAY, about its $ 2.3 billion infrastructure plan: ‘Independent analysis shows that if we succeed in this plan, the economy will create 19 million jobs – good jobs, blue-collar jobs, well-paying jobs.’ White House notes Friday.
BRIAN DEESE, director of the White House National Economic Council: “Just looking at the analyzes we saw this week, Moody’s proposes that it will create 19 million jobs.” – “Fox News Sunday.”
THE FACTS: That’s not what Moody’s Analytics said. The infrastructure plan is not expected to create nearly 19 million jobs in less than a decade.
Instead, the economic advisory firm calculated that nearly 16 million jobs would be created in the U.S. by 2030, without Biden’s infrastructure plan or the $ 1.9 billion bailout package approved last month. With 1.6 million a year, that would be a slow pace of job creation, below the roughly 2.2 million before the pandemic.
Moody’s says the rescue plan will create about 700,000 jobs over the next decade that would not otherwise exist, and he says the infrastructure plan would create about 2.6 million over the next decade. It would amount to about 19 million, but with a modest share due to the infrastructure proposal.
Asked about the study on Tuesday, Jen Psaki, Biden’s press secretary, correctly described it:
“Moody’s did an analysis that showed that the economy would create 19 million jobs over the next decade if Congress passed the U.S. Jobs Plan – nearly 3 million more than that,” she said. “So this is the – this is what the impact of the US Jobs Plan would be: 2.7 million, to be completely clear.”
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MOTORWORKS
TRANSPORT SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: “I hope to have car workers, union workers, who make cars one way or another. Why do they not let the revolution lead to electric vehicles, where by the way there is a very strong competition with China and many other places? ‘- mark Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
THE FACTS: this scenario disguises one likely effect of the transition to the production of much more electric vehicles – less work for car manufacturing.
It does not take as many people to build an electric car as a gas-powered car, and the work that would be created in these new factories may pay less.
Electric vehicles generally have 30% to 40% fewer parts than traditional cars and are easier to build. Many jobs that use the batteries used in electric cars are also not unions at companies that supply the car manufacturer, rather than unions that are run by the American car companies themselves.
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Associated Press author Cal Woodward contributed.
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NOTE FROM THE EDITOR – A Look At The Truth Of Claims By Political Figures.
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