American Families Plan (2021)

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    Biden Insists He Can Do More With Less on the Economy

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    The president’s aides say they have found ways to replace lead pipes, wire homes for broadband and build charging hubs for electric cars, for less money than initially proposed.President Biden and his team have entered a “do more with less” phase of his economic agenda, dictated by the political realities of a closely divided Congress.The American Jobs Plan that Mr. Biden unveiled in March included $330 billion in new spending that the administration promised would replace every lead drinking pipe in America, connect every home to high-speed internet and build 500,000 charging stations for electric cars and trucks.The compromise agreement that Mr. Biden struck with centrist senators last month would still accomplish all of those goals, White House officials insist — even though it spends only about 40 percent of what Mr. Biden initially proposed for broadband, electric vehicles and water infrastructure.Biden aides say they have found creative ways to stretch federal dollars, often by leveraging private investment, in order to maintain the president’s top goals for his economic program. But they have had to scrap other targets as a result, and Mr. Biden is now barreling toward another round of potentially difficult compromises, this time forced by moderates in his own party, over the second half of his agenda, known as the American Families Plan.In a speech on Wednesday, Mr. Biden gave no hint that he was scaling back his ambitions.“It’s time that we have to think bigger and we have to act bolder,” Mr. Biden said at a community college in suburban Chicago, his latest stop in a tour to rally support for his agenda.Using sweeping rhetoric, the president compared his ambitions to those of former President Ronald Reagan, who presided over an economic boom during his eight-year tenure.In 1984, “Ronald Reagan was telling us it was an American morning,” Mr. Biden said, referring to Mr. Reagan’s re-election campaign ad that bragged that it was “morning in America” because of his policies.“This is going to be an American century,” Mr. Biden said.But first, there will have to be compromise. The negotiations ahead will pose a challenge to the expansive vision Mr. Biden laid out to overhaul the American economy, with new and costly government interventions to lift advanced industries and train and support the workers of the future. His objective in the weeks to come will be to pack as much of that agenda as possible into a pair of bills that are unlikely to spend as much as he wants, with his economic legacy hanging on the choices he and congressional leaders make.Administration officials say Mr. Biden will continue to prioritize large and unifying national goals, including the extension of an enlarged tax credit for parents, the creation of America’s first federally funded paid leave program for workers and a government guarantee of four additional years of public education via preschool and community college.“The president is fully committed to delivering on the full ambition of the jobs plan and the families plan,” Brian Deese, the director of the White House National Economic Council, said in an interview, in which he called the bipartisan infrastructure deal a “historic investment.”“But,” Mr. Deese added, “I think the president has made clear that he understands the nature of the legislative process — that he understands that at the end of the day, nobody’s going to get everything that they want.”Workers removing pieces of lead pipe in Newark. Mr. Biden’s original infrastructure plan promised to replace every lead drinking pipe in the country.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesIn order to reach a $579 billion consensus framework with a group of senators that included five Republicans, Mr. Biden agreed to drop entire planks of the first half of his agenda, the jobs plan, including housing and home health care. He also lost about a third of his proposed spending in areas like roads, bridges and broadband.Some of those dropped items could resurface in a second economic package that Mr. Biden is negotiating: a plan to bundle as much as possible of the remainder of the president’s $4 trillion agenda into a bill passed entirely with Democratic votes. Along with housing and health care, that bill could include Mr. Biden’s proposals for child care, education and poverty, along with some additional efforts to reduce the emissions that cause climate change.But not all of the trimmed money will end up in that bill.Mr. Biden has promised Senate negotiators he will not push for additional spending in the partisan bill in specific areas like broadband and water pipes that were addressed in the bipartisan deal. Centrist Democrats in the Senate, including Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, are likely to agree to only some of Mr. Biden’s proposed spending programs in the partisan bill, in large part because they oppose parts of Mr. Biden’s plans to tax corporations and high earners in order to offset the cost of new spending.Mr. Biden has repeatedly said he had to make difficult choices on physical infrastructure and settle for a deal that falls well short of his ambitions. But he has also cast the bipartisan deal as the nation’s largest increase in infrastructure spending since President Dwight D. Eisenhower created the interstate highway system, claiming that it would create “millions” of new jobs — without providing any White House estimates to back that up — and that it would achieve many of the same goals as his far more expensive original plan.In some cases, Mr. Biden has narrowed his ambitions to focus on the highest priorities of his agenda — like removing lead pipes that poison children and stunt their academic development. Administration officials say the bipartisan deal will allow them to work through far less of the nation’s road maintenance backlog than Mr. Biden’s plan would have. The administration also agreed to reduce funding for an effort to help communities of color that were disrupted by past infrastructure efforts, like Black neighborhoods in New Orleans and Syracuse, from $20 billion in Mr. Biden’s plan to $1 billion in the bipartisan bill.In other areas, the White House overhauled its entire funding approach to try to keep its goals.The American Jobs Plan would have spent $174 billion to help the United States support a rapid acceleration in electric vehicle production and usage, including the 500,000 charging stations that have been a favorite Biden talking point going back to the presidential campaign.An electric vehicle charging in Clifton, N.J. Mr. Biden’s plan included funding for 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations.Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesThe bipartisan agreement contains less than one-tenth as much spending on electric vehicles, which many Republicans say do not fit the traditional definition of infrastructure. White House officials say there is $7.5 billion in the agreement for federal grants to build charging stations across the country, and another $7.5 billion in a new financing tool that will generate loans and public-private partnerships to support charging stations.Some liberal groups blasted the switch. In a joint statement, Varshini Prakash, the executive director of the Sunrise Movement, and Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of Justice Democrats, said Mr. Biden’s jobs plan “is already based on Biden’s compromise with progressive Democrats after the 2020 primaries.”“We can’t afford to water the policies down any further,” they added.The compromise plan similarly reduces the broadband funding Mr. Biden proposed, to $65 billion from $100 billion. Aides say that will still be enough money to wire every home in the country for high-speed internet, citing estimates from the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, though they concede the effort could take longer than anticipated in Mr. Biden’s original plan. Some outside experts say the money will not be enough to reach the most difficult-to-wire homes in the country. “It will not bridge the digital divide alone,” said Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program who leads the Metropolitan Infrastructure Initiative.It could be more difficult for Mr. Biden to wring efficiencies out of his families plan, which includes $1.8 trillion in spending and tax cuts focused on what administration officials call “human infrastructure.” The plan includes federal funding for workers to take paid leave to care for themselves or a family member, universal prekindergarten for 3- and 4-year-olds, two free years of community college and the extension of an expanded tax credit for parents that is meant to fight child poverty.If Mr. Biden is forced to trim that spending to appease Democratic centrists, he will face difficult choices. He could eliminate certain efforts entirely, or reduce their reach — for example, by guaranteeing free prekindergarten only to children of low- and middle-income families.He could also take a time-honored route in Washington when it comes to the tax credits in his plan, including the child poverty effort: Mr. Biden’s legislation could create or extend those credits for only a year or two, then count on a future Congress to make them permanent. More

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    A Look at What's Inside Biden’s $6 Trillion Plan

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    President Biden’s funding request to Congress lays out his economic ambitions, with proposals for significant new spending in areas like infrastructure, education and the environment.President Biden’s first budget request maps out a vision of an expansive federal government in the years to come, with increased spending in areas like infrastructure, education and climate change.The $6 trillion plan for the 2022 fiscal year, released on Friday, provides a detailed accounting of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda. It includes two marquee proposals that he has put before Congress: the American Jobs Plan, which calls for new spending on the nation’s infrastructure, and the American Families Plan, which addresses issues like child care, universal prekindergarten and paid family and medical leave.As part of those plans, Mr. Biden is seeking to increase taxes on corporations and high earners. The president’s tax proposals are detailed in the budget request as well.The budget expands on a proposal that Mr. Biden released in April covering discretionary spending, which sketched out his desire to inject funds across domestic agencies, a sharp reversal from President Donald J. Trump’s spending policies.Here are some of the notable proposals in Mr. Biden’s budget request.— Thomas KaplanAn offshore wind turbine facility near Block Island, R.I.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesClimate change is back in the budget.The budget proposal adds $14 billion in new money across government agencies to policies and programs devoted to climate change — a stark contrast to the Trump administration, which tried, unsuccessfully, to zero out funding for dozens of clean energy programs.It also includes the first request for international climate change assistance since 2017. The Biden administration will ask Congress for $1.2 billion for the Green Climate Fund, a United Nations entity created as part of the Paris agreement on climate change to help developing countries.President Barack Obama pledged $3 billion to the fund but delivered only a third of the money during his term. Mr. Trump withdrew from the Paris agreement and also stopped payments into the Green Climate Fund. Mr. Biden, on his first day in office, recommitted the United States to the global accord and promised to restore Mr. Obama’s foreign aid commitments.Domestically, the Biden administration said its funding across agencies would help build the nation’s capacity to transition from fossil fuels to wind, solar and other renewable energy. The budget proposal also includes details of the administration’s pledge to devote at least 40 percent of spending on climate change to communities of color, which studies have shown are disproportionately affected by both air pollution and climate change.The administration is proposing $11.2 billion for the Environmental Protection Agency, a 22 percent increase from the previous year. The E.P.A. was consistently targeted for deep cuts under the Trump administration, and its climate change and health programs were typically dealt particularly heavy blows.The new blueprint makes the case for new spending on environment infrastructure — like replacing all of the country’s lead pipes — after a decade of budget caps and cuts that the administration said caused the agency’s budget to decline by 27 percent since 2010.It includes $936 million for a new E.P.A. program to address racial disparities in exposures to environmental contamination. That program will include $100 million for air quality monitoring and notification technology in communities that will provide real-time data in places with the highest levels of exposure to pollution.The budget allocates $580 million to plug old oil and gas wells and clean up abandoned mines — a plan the Biden administration has eyed for both new jobs protecting communities against the environmental dangers that thousands of old abandoned mines across the country pose as well as a way to prevent future global warming pollution.David Coursen, a former E.P.A. attorney who works with the Environmental Protection Network of former agency officials, called the budget request “robust” and said it would “help rebuild the agency after years of chronic disinvestment.”— Lisa FriedmanA hydrogen fuel pump station in Torrance, Calif.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesA plan to fund clean energy technologies.President Biden’s budget proposes more than $800 billion over the next decade in new spending and tax breaks in a bid to accelerate the deployment of clean-energy technologies aimed at fighting climate change, from hydrogen fuels to the next generation of nuclear power plants.Mr. Biden has vowed to slash America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 to help stave off the worst effects of global warming, and the White House is betting that it can reach that goal in large part by using the federal government’s resources to help fund millions of new wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles as well as newer technologies that do not produce carbon dioxide.The overwhelming majority of the new energy spending being proposed in the budget would depend on Congress passing Mr. Biden’s infrastructure proposal, which still faces an uncertain fate. Republicans in the Senate have pushed back against spending on items like electric vehicle charging stations.In his budget, Mr. Biden is proposing $265 billion over the next decade to expand and extend federal tax breaks for companies that build clean energy sources such as offshore wind turbines or battery storage on the grid. He is also calling for $9.7 billion worth of tax credits to help maintain America’s existing fleet of nuclear reactors, which do not produce carbon dioxide emissions but have faced the risk of closure in recent years because of competition from cheap natural gas.The budget also proposes $10 billion in tax credits for trucks that do not produce planet-warming emissions, such as those powered by batteries or hydrogen, as well as $6.6 billion for cleaner jet fuels and $23 billion to incentivize new electric transmission lines that can transport wind and solar power from far-flung regions in the country. And it proposes to spend $23 billion over the next decade on tax credits for companies that install “carbon capture” technology at power plants or factories.Mr. Biden is requesting to increase the Energy Department’s budget by $4.3 billion, or 10.4 percent, with much of the focus on enabling the deployment of clean energy sources. That includes $1.9 billion to help make homes more energy-efficient and speed up permitting of transmission lines.Mr. Biden is also calling for federal agencies to spend $50 billion over the next decade to procure clean-energy technologies for their own use, including electrified Postal Service vehicles, lower-carbon materials such as steel and cement, as well as electricity from advanced nuclear power plants that are still under development.To a smaller extent, Mr. Biden is also proposing to cut the federal government’s spending on fossil fuels, by rescinding $35 billion worth of subsidies over the next decade for oil, gas and coal companies, including the repeal of tax breaks for well depreciation and a tax credit for drilling expenses. The administration is proposing to raise an additional $84 billion by changing how the government treats extraction and foreign income for oil and gas producers.In addition to spending, Mr. Biden’s climate plans will depend heavily on a separate proposal for a clean electricity standard that would require the nation’s electric utilities to steadily increase their use of all these new low-carbon energy sources until they had zeroed out their emissions in 2035. That policy is only mentioned in passing in the budget, and it would require Congress’s approval.— Brad PlumerHomes destroyed by Hurricane Delta in Creole, La., last year.Mario Tama/Getty ImagesFEMA aims to cushion the rising cost of flood insurance.The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which Mr. Biden has leaned on heavily in the first few months of his presidency, would see its budget stay roughly constant, at about $3.3 billion. Much of the agency’s funding comes in the form of emergency injections of money by Congress after a disaster.But FEMA’s budget request is important for another reason: It shows the administration’s struggle to address the rising costs of climate change, and how those costs affect American households.As climate change gets worse, more frequent and severe floods have pushed FEMA to increase the cost of federal flood insurance, which covers about five million policyholders. Those price increases have generated intense pushback from lawmakers warning that their constituents will suffer — including Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, who objected in March to FEMA’s overhaul of rates.The budget request addresses that concern, proposing to help subsidize premiums for homeowners who might not otherwise be able to afford flood insurance. The goal of those subsidies, FEMA says, is to increase the number of people in flood zones who have coverage.The attempt to reform flood insurance is just one indication of the federal government’s concern that climate change, in addition to its growing human toll, will also wreak havoc on the budget.The budget request calls the impact of climate change a “primary risk,” one that “will likely have significant effects on the long-run fiscal outlook.”The White House presented that financial concern as a selling point for Mr. Biden’s efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “The budget’s climate policies serve to mitigate long-run impacts of climate change,” the request said.— Christopher FlavelleThe most ambitious health care ideas come with no numbers.The budget for the Health and Human Services Department includes significant increases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health. But it is perhaps more notable for what it does not include.In its budget summary, the White House signaled its commitment to a range of major health reform proposals, including the creation of a public option health insurance plan; an effort to lower prescription drug costs; a plan to lower the age of eligibility for Medicare; and an expansion of Medicare benefits, to add vision, hearing and dental coverage.But the costs of those expansive policy changes were omitted from the official budget calculations, making it difficult to assess their real cost.Those omissions are unusual. The Trump administration’s budgets also included a number of large health policy initiatives, such as repealing provisions of the Affordable Care Act and a different set of prescription drug reforms. That administration’s budgets included at least a rough accounting of the costs and savings associated with those ideas.Several of the proposals are the subject of active discussion on Capitol Hill. The leaders of two key congressional committees announced this week that they would begin work on a new public option proposal, which would allow certain Americans to buy a government-run health insurance plan instead of private insurance. The House has worked for years on a bill to lower prescription drug prices and extend Medicare benefits for more services. And progressives have been pushing for expanded Medicare eligibility in recent months, a proposal that was also part of Mr. Biden’s campaign platform.Unlike the budgets of the Obama and Trump years, the Biden budget does not propose any policy changes in Medicare. Both previous administrations had suggested a series of small changes meant to improve the efficiency of the program without reducing benefits. Instead, the budget summary document notes that “that we can reform Medicare payments to insurers and certain providers to reduce overpayments and strengthen incentives to deliver value-based care,” a possible sign that such initiatives could be considered in the future. The only major change in Medicare is an expansion of the budget for its fraud unit, additional spending that is estimated to result in about $1 billion in savings a year.While each of the unspecified policy ideas is popular with Democratic voters, each has the potential to upset key health care lobbies, by reducing their funding or replacing their market share with direct government services.The budget does include an extension of new Obamacare subsidies passed by Congress as part of the American Rescue Plan. Those subsidies, which lower the cost of health insurance for most Americans who buy their own insurance, are estimated to cost $163 billion over the next decade. It also includes an additional $400 billion over a decade in spending for home and community-based care for elderly and disabled people, a change proposed as part of the American Jobs Plan.— Margot Sanger-KatzBorder Patrol agents questioning migrants from Central America in Yuma, Ariz., this month.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesFunding to deal with migrants at Southern border.Mr. Biden requested $3.2 billion for the office that manages migrant children and teenagers who have been arriving alone at the U.S.-Mexican border in record numbers this year. It is a $1.3 billion increase over what the Trump administration sought in the 2021 budget request.The budget includes funding for asylum and refugee programs to support as many as 125,000 admissions in fiscal year 2022. And to address the backlog in immigration cases, the budget includes $891 million for immigration judges and their staff. As part of that effort, the administration requested $345 million for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services to process asylum cases that have been backlogged for years.The administration has been struggling to place migrant children housed in Health and Human Services centers with family members in the United States, which as of Wednesday, is taking an average of 39 days.The budget request includes $15 million to test a new program that would provide migrants with legal representation, which can help them move faster through the bureaucracy.— Eileen SullivanA Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft at an air show in Berlin.Axel Schmidt/ReutersThe Pentagon pivots to a possible war with China.After nearly 20 years of funding overseas combat through supplemental accounts, the Pentagon will now be paying for its wars in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries through its overall budget of $715 billion in 2022.While the Army will see a small increase of funding for training Afghan security forces, its overall spending on combat operations will drop more than 21 percent to $18.4 billion..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media 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(min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The armed services’ budget requests reflect the Biden administration’s shift away from fighting against insurgent groups and a renewed focus on preparing for conventional wars against countries equipped with similar ships and aircraft, with China as their priority.The naval services are placing bets on the need for new anti-ship missiles, including giving the Marine Corps the ability to launch attacks on enemy warships over the horizon from truck-mounted launchers on land. Instead of pursuing the 355-ship fleet envisioned by the previous administration, the new budget’s funding of eight new ships in 2022 will see an overall modest rise to 296 ships, even after the Navy decommissions a number of the earliest Littoral Combat Ships that have been plagued by mechanical problems.The Army, Navy and Air Force are all investing in hypersonic weapons — missiles with conventional explosive warheads that can fly at many times the speed of sound and hit targets at ranges previously only reachable by cruise missiles or nuclear ballistic missiles. In the wake of the United States leaving the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty in August 2019, the Army is continuing the development of artillery rockets capable of ranges previously banned by that agreement.The Pentagon will be buying 48 more F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for the Air Force, and 37 for the Navy and Marine Corps.Military personnel will be receiving a 2.7 percent raise, and troop levels will remain relatively flat with slight reductions in all services save for the Air Force, which will increase its ranks by less than one percent.— John IsmayA reinvestment in diplomacy, democracy and refugees.Mr. Biden has stressed the value of restoring American diplomacy and alliances, and his budget requests an increase of $6.3 billion for the State Department and international programs, more than 11 percent above current levels — and almost 50 percent more than the last budget proposed by Mr. Trump, who repeatedly targeted the State Department for cuts.Prioritizing the threat of the coronavirus, the overall $63.6 billion request includes $1 billion in foreign aid to combat the spread of Covid-19, promote global health security programs and increase research to detect and stop future viral outbreaks.Programs supporting refugees and conflict victims would also grow: The budget asks for $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for vulnerable people overseas. And it would offer $861 million in assistance to Central American nations to help address the root causes of migration from those countries to America’s southern border.In response to growing cybersecurity threats and breaches, the budget asks $500 million for the Technology Modernization Fund, $110 million for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and $750 million “to respond to lessons learned from the SolarWinds incident,” a massive intrusion into federal computer networks attributed to Russia.— Michael CrowleyAddressing violence against women and gender rights.The budget proposes giving the Justice Department the funding it needs to enforce key pieces of Mr. Biden’s domestic policy agenda on a range of issues that the previous administration did not prioritize, including enforcement of environmental laws, efforts to end gender abuse and initiatives to curb gun violence.The Justice Department’s Violence Against Women Act programs could get $1 billion, nearly double the 2021 amount, to fund existing programs and new initiatives that expand protections for transgender survivors of gender-based violence and support people of color who may not have had access to intervention and counseling resources in the past.The proposed budget also allocates $2.1 billion to address gun violence as a public health crisis, a number that is about 12 percent higher than in the previous year. — Katie BennerA teacher’s assistant and students at a Head Start program in Jacksonville, Fla., in 2018.Eve Edelheit for The New York TimesInvestments in high-poverty schools.The budget describes the need to address entrenched disparities in education as both a moral and economic imperative.It includes a $36.5 billion investment in high-poverty schools, a $20 billion increase from the previous year — which it describes as the largest year-over-year increase to the program, known as Title I, since it was created by President Lyndon B. Johnson.It includes $7.4 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, an increase of $1.5 billion from the previous year, designed to expand access to quality, affordable child care.It also seeks to increase aid to early education programs, increasing the maximum Pell Grant by $400, the largest one-time increase since 2009.Mr. Biden is also expanding Head Start programs, which provide early intervention education and support for low-income students. The budget includes an $11.9 billion investment in the program, an increase of $1.2 billion. The coronavirus relief package also included an additional $1 billion for Head Start.— Annie KarniNew York City public housing in Manhattan.Joshua Bright for The New York TimesA renewed emphasis on protecting workers and job training.The budget provides a significant boost in funding for the Labor Department, including more money for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is responsible for ensuring worker safety, and the Wage and Hour Division, which enforces fair labor laws. Mr. Biden is proposing a 14 percent increase to the Labor Department’s budget.OSHA was widely criticized during the pandemic for failing to do enough to protect workers at meatpacking and other plants where thousands of employees became infected. The agency has lost hundreds of inspectors in recent years, according to the National Employment Law Project, hindering its ability to conduct thorough inspections.— Glenn ThrushThe I.R.S. would get more money to catch tax cheats.For years, the budget of the Internal Revenue Service has been depleted as Republicans sought to starve it of resources in negotiations over appropriations.The Biden administration’s budget changes that, providing $13.2 billion to the tax collection agency so that it can ramp up enforcement activity. A well-staffed I.R.S. is central to the White House’s plan to shrink the “tax gap” and crack down on large companies and wealthy individuals who have avoided paying what they owe.The Treasury Department, which oversees the I.R.S., believes that an $80 billion investment in the I.R.S. over 10 years could yield $700 billion in additional tax revenue.On top of its usual tax collection duties, the I.R.S. has also been at the center of the Treasury Department’s economic relief effort. It has been responsible for distributing stimulus payments and will soon be making monthly payments of the child tax credit.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen warned this week that her department, to which the budget allocates $15 billion, “cannot continue to be good stewards of this recovery” without sufficient resources.— Alan Rappeport More

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    Biden's Plan: President to Propose $6 Trillion Budget to Boost Middle Class, Infrastructure

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    The president’s plans to invest in infrastructure, education, health care and more would push federal spending to its highest sustained levels since World War II.WASHINGTON — President Biden will propose a $6 trillion budget on Friday that would take the United States to its highest sustained levels of federal spending since World War II as he looks to fund a sweeping economic agenda that includes large new investments in education, transportation and fighting climate change. More

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    Republicans Promise Counteroffer as Infrastructure Talks Falter

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    President Biden and Democrats are facing difficult decisions about how to move their infrastructure plan through Congress as bipartisan momentum flags.WASHINGTON — With bipartisan negotiations faltering, President Biden and Senate Democrats are facing difficult decisions about how to salvage their hopes of enacting a major new infrastructure package this year, and waning time to decide whether to continue pursuing compromise with Republicans or try to act on their own. More

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    Biden’s Proposals Aim to Give Sturdier Support to the Middle Class

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    Perhaps the most striking difference between the middle class of 50 years ago and the middle class today is a loss of confidence — the confidence that you were doing better than your parents and that your children would do better than you.President Biden’s multitrillion-dollar suite of economic proposals is aiming to both reinforce and rebuild an American middle class that feels it has been standing on shifting ground. And it comes with an explicit message that the private sector alone cannot deliver on that dream and that the government has a central part to play.“When you look at periods of shared growth,” said Brian Deese, director of Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council, “what you see is that public investment has played an absolutely critical role, not to the exclusion of private investment and innovation, but in laying the foundation.”If the Biden administration gets its way, the reconstructed middle class would be built on a sturdier and much broader plank of government support rather than the vagaries of the market.Some proposals are meant to support parents who work: federal paid family and medical leave, more affordable child care, free prekindergarten classes. Others would use public investment to create jobs, in areas like clean energy, transportation and high-speed broadband. And a higher minimum wage would aim to buoy those in low-paid work, while free community college would improve skills.That presidents pitch their agendas to the middle class is not surprising given that nearly nine out of 10 Americans consider themselves members. The definition, of course, has always been a nebulous stew of cash, credentials and culture, relying on lifestyles and aspirations as much as on assets.But what cuts across an avalanche of studies, surveys and statistics over the last half century is that life in the middle class, once considered a guarantee of security and comfort, now often comes with a nagging sense of vulnerability.Salaries for teachers, hospital workers and child care providers are determined largely by the government, and do not necessarily reflect their value in an open market.Philip Keith for The New York TimesBefore the pandemic, unemployment was low and stocks soared. But for decades, workers have increasingly had to contend with low pay and sluggish wage growth, more erratic schedules, as well as a lack of sick days, parental leave and any kind of long-term security. At the same time, the cost of essentials like housing, health care and education have been gulping up a much larger portion of their incomes.The trend can be found in rich countries all over the world. “Every generation since the baby boom, has seen the middle-income group shrink and its economic influence weaken,” a 2019 report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development concluded.In the United States, the proportion of adults in the middle bands of the income spectrum — which the Pew Research Center defines as roughly between $50,000 and $150,000 — declined to 51 percent in 2019 from 61 percent 50 years ago. Their share of the nation’s income shrank even more over the same period, to 42 percent from 62 percent.Their outlook dimmed, too. During the 1990s, Pew found rising optimism that the next generation would be better off financially than the current one, reaching a high of 55 percent in 1999. That figure dropped to 42 percent in 2019.The economy has produced enormous wealth over the last few decades, but much of it was channeled to a tiny cadre at the top. Two wage earners were needed to generate the kind of income that used to come in a single paycheck.“Upper-income households pulled away,” said Richard Fry, a senior economist at Pew.Corrosive inequality was just the beginning of what appeared to be a litany of glaring market failures like the inability to head off ruinous climate change or meet the enormous demand for affordable housing and health care. Companies often channeled profits to buy back stock instead of using them to invest or raise wages.The evidence was growing, liberal economists argued, that the reigning hands-off economic approach — low taxes on the wealthy, minimal government — was not producing the broad-based economic gains that sustained and grew the middle class.“The unregulated economy is not working for most Americans,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics. “The government has an important role,” he emphasized, in regulating the private sector’s excesses, redistributing income and making substantial public investments.Skeptics have warned of government overreach and the risk that deficit spending could ignite inflation, but Mr. Biden and his team of economic advisers have, nonetheless, embraced the approach.“It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom and middle out,” Mr. Biden said in his speech to a joint session of Congress last week, a reference to the idea that prosperity doesn’t trickle down from the wealthy, but flows out of a well-educated and well-paid middle class.He underscored the point by singling out workers as the dynamo powering the middle class.“Wall Street didn’t build this country,” he said. “The middle class built the country. And unions built the middle class.”Of course, the economy that lifted millions of postwar families into the middle class differed sharply from the current one. Manufacturing, construction and mining jobs, previously viewed as the backbone of the labor force, dwindled — as did the labor unions that aggressively fought for better wages and benefits. Now, only one out of every 10 workers is a union member, while roughly 80 percent of jobs in the United States are in the service sector.And it is these types of jobs, in health care, education, child care, disabled and senior care, that are expected to continue expanding at the quickest pace.Most of them, though, fall short of paying middle-income wages. That does not necessarily reflect their value in an open market. Salaries for teachers, hospital workers, lab technicians, child care providers and nursing home attendants are determined largely by the government, which collects tax dollars to pay their salaries and sets reimbursements rates for Medicare and other programs.They are also jobs that are filled by significant numbers of women, African-Americans, Latinos and Asians.“When we think about what is the right wage,” Mr. Stiglitz asked, “should we take advantage of discrimination against women and people of color, which is what we’ve done, or can we use this as the basis of building a middle class?”Mr. Biden’s spending plans — a $2.3 trillion infrastructure package called the American Jobs Plan, and a $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that concentrates on social spending — aim to take account of just how much the work force and the economy have transformed over the past half-century and where they may be headed in the next.The president’s economic team took inspiration from Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the public programs that followed it.After World War II, for instance, the government helped millions of veterans get college educations and buy homes by offering tuition assistance and subsidized mortgages. It created a mammoth highway system to undergird commercial activity and funneled billions of dollars into research and development that was used later to develop smartphone technology, search engines, the human genome project, magnetic resonance imaging, hybrid corn and supercomputers.Mr. Biden, too, wants to fix roads and bridges, upgrade electric grids and invest in research. But his administration has also concluded that a 21st-century economy requires much more, from expanded access to high-speed broadband, which more than a third of rural inhabitants lack, to parental leave and higher wages for child care workers.The basic necessities that make it possible for parents to fully participate in the work force, like child care and parental leave, are still missing, said Betsey Stevenson, an economics professor.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times“We’ve now had 50 years of the revolution of women entering the labor force,” and the most basic necessities that make it possible for parents to fully participate in the work force are still missing, said Betsey Stevenson, a professor at the University of Michigan and a former member of the Obama administration’s Council of Economic Advisers. She paused a few moments to take it in: “It’s absolutely stunning.”Right before the pandemic, more women than men could be found in paying jobs.Ensuring equal opportunity, Ms. Stevenson noted, includes “the opportunity to get high-quality early-childhood education, the opportunity to have a parent stay home with you when you’re sick, the opportunity for a parent to bond with you when born.”When it comes to offering this type of support, she added, “the United States is an outlier compared to almost every industrialized country.”The administration also has an eye on how federal education, housing and business programs of earlier eras largely excluded women, African-Americans, Asians and others.In the Biden plan are aid for colleges that primarily serve nonwhite students, free community college for all, universal prekindergarten and monthly child payments.“This is not a 1930s model any more,” said Julian E. Zelizer, a political science professor at Princeton University.And it’s all to be paid for by higher taxes on corporations and the top 1 percent.Passage in a sharply polarized Congress is anything but assured. The multitrillion-dollar price tag and the prospect of an activist government have ensured the opposition of Republicans in a Senate where Democrats have the slimmest possible majority.But public polling from last year showed widening support for the government to take a larger role.“What is so remarkable about this moment is this notion that public investment can transform America, that these are things government can do,” said Felicia Wong, president of the left-leaning Roosevelt Institute. “This is fundamentally restructuring how the economy works.”The middle class today differs in significant ways from the middle class of 50 years ago and perhaps the most striking is a loss of confidence.Evan Jenkins for The New York Times More

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    Senate Passes $35 Billion Water Bill, but Bigger Infrastructure Fights Loom

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    The lopsided vote was a reminder that bipartisan cooperation on public works projects is possible, but lawmakers in both parties said the spirit of compromise could be fleeting.WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly approved a $35 billion measure to clean up the nation’s water systems, offering a brief moment of bipartisan cooperation amid deep divisions between the two parties over President Biden’s much larger ambitions for a multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package.Republicans and Democrats alike hailed passage of the bill on an 89-to-2 vote as evidence that bipartisan compromise is possible on infrastructure initiatives, but lawmakers in both parties suggested that the spirit of deal-making could be fleeting.Mr. Biden and Democratic leaders have said they want Republican support for a broad infrastructure package that aims to improve the nation’s aging public works system and address economic and racial inequities, after pushing a nearly $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill into law with just Democratic votes. But Republicans have panned those proposals, which are to be financed with tax increases on high earners and corporations, and Democrats have said they may have to move them unilaterally if no compromise can be reached.“We’re trying to work in a bipartisan way whenever we can — and this bill is a classic example,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, said of the water bill. “It doesn’t mean that we’ll be able to do the whole thing bipartisan, but we’ll do as much as we can.”The legislation approved on Thursday would authorize funding to shore up the nation’s water systems, particularly in rural and tribal communities that have long been neglected and suffer from poor sanitation and unclean drinking water. A House Democratic aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said House committees had their own substantial proposals and looked forward to negotiations.“I don’t want to overplay it, but I think it’s definitely a major positive,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, said of the lopsided vote on the water infrastructure bill, which she helped spearhead. Yet Ms. Capito cautioned that the moment of cooperation might not last long if negotiations faltered.Republicans have “made it clear that we don’t see the definition of infrastructure — physical core infrastructure — the same way” that Mr. Biden does, she said. The two spoke on Thursday afternoon in what the White House described as a friendly conversation in which both sides reiterated a desire to negotiate.In his speech before a joint session on Congress on Wednesday, Mr. Biden applauded an infrastructure counteroffer put forward by Senate Republicans and called on lawmakers to “get to work.” Ms. Capito and other Republicans have been in touch with the White House over their $568 billion framework for roads, bridges, airports, ports and broadband.But that plan, which Republicans have said is the largest infrastructure proposal they have offered, is a fraction of the spending Mr. Biden outlined, even before he unveiled a $1.8 trillion plan for investing in workers, child care and schools on Wednesday. It notably excluded all of Mr. Biden’s suggestions for how to pay for the spending — including tax increases on corporations — and did not provide clear alternatives.It remains unclear whether Democrats will agree to winnowing down the scope of the economic platform or plans to pay for it by undoing key elements of the 2017 tax plan in order to win a handful of Republican votes. Some Democrats, including Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a key moderate, have urged their colleagues to negotiate with Republicans.“I think there is a good reason for us to proceed with sincere bipartisan negotiations in the next few weeks — not indefinitely,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, told reporters on Thursday. He said that making the attempt would be crucial for getting the requisite 50 Democratic votes to pass something unilaterally if those talks stalled.Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said he was optimistic, after conversations with Mr. Biden and White House staff members, that Senate Republicans and the administration could hatch a deal around a “narrower” definition of infrastructure, leaving other liberal proposals in Mr. Biden’s plans for a separate bill.“I don’t know where the White House ends up on it,” Mr. Portman said. “The president last night said the right things, both in his speech and private conversations. I think they want to do an infrastructure package. They also want to do the other things. They understand that they don’t work together.”Republican leaders, however, were more skeptical. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said on Thursday that Mr. Biden had rattled off a “multitrillion-dollar shopping list that was neither designed nor intended to earn bipartisan buy-in.”With the nearly $1.9 trillion stimulus plan still popular with a majority of voters, some Democrats are eager to wield their slim majorities in both chambers to push as many liberal priorities into law as possible.Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who is the chairman of the Budget Committee, said he and his panel had begun work on a budget resolution, legislation needed to unlock the reconciliation process that would allow them to circumvent a filibuster and push through a fiscal package without Republican votes. (Democrats have not yet committed to using the maneuver.)“The calculus is, we get a lot more than we would if we chase our tail around and hope for this bipartisan mirage that is just over the horizon and keeps moving over the horizon,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut.Using reconciliation, Mr. Blumenthal acknowledged, could curtail certain provisions because of the strict rules that govern the process, and would not allow for any defections in the Senate. Even before Democrats try to muscle any legislation through that gantlet of parliamentary restrictions, they would have to ensure that the entire caucus in both chambers was united behind the contents.That prospect already appears charged, with several Democrats cautioning reporters in recent days that Congress, not Mr. Biden, is ultimately responsible for shaping the fine details of any legislative plan. Some Democrats are pushing to make certain provisions permanent, including an expanded monthly benefit to families with children that Mr. Biden has suggested extending through 2025.Other Democrats are advocating additional changes to the tax code, while several progressive lawmakers, including Mr. Sanders, are pushing to expand Medicare and include provisions to help lower the cost of prescription drugs.“What is going to happen is there is going to be a major, major piece of legislation that is going to go a long way to improving life for the American people,” Mr. Sanders said. “All of us are going to have to take a deep breath and understand that we have to go forward right now to address the crises facing the country even if the bill is not 100 percent of what we want.”Nicholas Fandos More

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    Biden $1.8 Trillion Plan: Child Care, Student Aid and More

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    The proposed American Families Plan would expand access to education and child care. It would be financed partly through higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday detailed a $1.8 trillion collection of spending increases and tax cuts that seeks to expand access to education, reduce the cost of child care and support women in the work force, financed by additional taxes on high earners.The American Families Plan, as the White House calls it, follows the $2.3 trillion infrastructure package President Biden introduced last month, bringing his two-part package of economic proposals to just over $4 trillion. He will present the details to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday evening.The proposal includes $1 trillion in new spending and $800 billion in tax credits, much of which is aimed at expanding access to education and child care. The package includes financing for universal prekindergarten, a federal paid leave program, efforts to make child care more affordable, free community college for all, aid for students at colleges that historically serve nonwhite communities, expanded subsidies under the Affordable Care Act and an extension of new federal efforts to fight poverty.Administration officials cast the plan as investing in an inclusive economy that would help millions of Americans gain the skills and the work flexibility they need to build middle-class lifestyles. They cited research on the benefits of government spending to help young children learn. In a 15-page briefing document, they said the package would help close racial and gender opportunity gaps across the economy.Many of the provisions, like tax credits to help families afford child care and a landmark expansion of a tax credit meant to fight child poverty, build on measures in the $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan Mr. Biden signed into law last month. The package would make many of those temporary measures permanent.But the plan also includes a maze of complicated formulas for who would benefit from certain provisions — and how much of the tab state governments would need to pick up.The package could face even more challenges than the American Jobs Plan, Mr. Biden’s physical infrastructure proposal, did in Congress. The president has said repeatedly that he hopes to move his agenda with bipartisan support. But his administration remains far from reaching a consensus with Republican negotiators in the Senate.Republicans have expressed much less interest in additional spending for education, child care and paid leave than they have for building roads and bridges. They have also chafed at the tax increases Mr. Biden has proposed, including the ones that will help pay for his latest package.The president is proposing an increase in the marginal income tax rate for the top 1 percent of American income earners, to 39.6 percent from 37 percent. He would increase capital gains and dividend tax rates for those who earn more than $1 million a year. And he would eliminate a provision in the tax code that reduces capital gains on some inherited assets, like vacation homes, that largely benefits the wealthy.Mr. Biden would also invest $80 billion in personnel and technology enhancements for the I.R.S., in hopes of netting $700 billion in additional revenues from high earners, wealthy individuals and corporations that evade taxes.Republicans and conservative activists have criticized all those measures. Administration officials told reporters that the president would be open to financing the spending and tax credits in his plan through alternative means, essentially challenging Republicans to name their own offsets, as Mr. Biden did with his physical infrastructure proposal.Still, many of the details in his new proposal poll well with voters across the political spectrum. Much of the package could win the support of the full Democratic caucus in Congress, which would need to band together to pass all or part of the plan through the fast-track process known as budget reconciliation, which bypasses a Senate filibuster.Expanded access to government-subsidized preschool and community college may have broad appeal. Workers with only high school degrees are often stuck in low-wage jobs, and two-thirds of mothers with young children are employed, and thus need reliable child care. The high cost of quality day care and pre-K puts these services out of reach for many families, who may rely on informal networks of relatives and neighbors who are untrained in early education.Expanding access to pre-K has been particularly popular over the past decade in states and cities, including some with Republican governors. A large body of research shows that achievement gaps between poor and middle-class children emerge in the earliest years of childhood and are present on the first day of kindergarten. Administration officials contend that free, quality early childhood education can both help cash-strapped parents and build students’ skills in ways that will help them become more productive workers.Still, there are major disagreements about how generous any expansion of pre-K should be. President Barack Obama’s administration generally favored a centrist approach in which new seats were geared toward lower-income families.Mr. Biden’s plan differs in that it calls for universal preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds, including those from affluent families. That is the same approach pioneered in recent years by city programs in New York and Washington, which expanded quickly to serve a diverse swath of families, but not without some evidence that they replicated the segregation and inequities of the broader K-12 education system.Bruce Fuller, a professor of education at the University of California, Berkeley, has been a critic of the universal approach, instead favoring more targeted programs. He questioned whether states would do their part to fund the expansion and said the goal of paying all early childhood workers $15 per hour was too modest to broadly improve the quality and stability of the work force.“How governors weigh these competing priorities, ethically and politically, remains an open question,” he said.The proposed investment from Washington comes at a precarious time. Preschool enrollment declined by nearly 25 percent over the past year, largely because of the coronavirus pandemic. As of December, about half of 4-year-olds and 40 percent of 3-year-olds attended pre-K, including in remote programs. And only 13 percent of children in poverty were receiving an in-person preschool education in December, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research.Unlike the preschool proposal, the child care plan is not universal. It would offer subsidies to families earning up to 1.5 times their state’s median income, which could be in the low six figures in some locations. It would also continue tax credits approved in the pandemic relief bill this year that offer benefits to people earning up to $400,000 a year.As with Mr. Biden’s previous policy proposals, the American Families Plan offers something to many traditional Democratic Party constituencies. The administration is closely tied to teachers’ unions, and while many early childhood educators are not unionized, the proposal also calls for investments in K-12 teacher education, training and pay, which are all union priorities. One goal is to bring more teachers of color into a public education system where a majority of students are nonwhite.The expansion of free community college would apply to all students, regardless of income. It would require states to contribute to meet the goal of universal access, senior administration officials said on Tuesday. Mr. Biden would also expand Pell grants for low-income students and subsidize two years of tuition at historically Black colleges and universities, as well as at institutions that serve members of Native American tribes and other minority groups.Mr. Fuller said he expected the community college proposal to effectively target spending to the neediest students. About one-third of all undergraduates attend public two-year colleges, which serve a disproportionate number of students from low-income families.The paid leave program will phase in over time. The administration’s fact sheet says it will guarantee 12 weeks of paid “parental, family and personal illness/safe leave” by its 10th year in existence. Workers on leave will earn up to $4,000 a month, with as little as two-thirds or as much as 80 percent of their incomes replaced, depending on how much they earn.Other provisions include late concessions to key Democratic constituencies. Administration officials had removed the health care credits last week but added them back under pressure from Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and others. They bucked pressure from House and Senate Democrats to make permanent an expanded child tax credit created by the pandemic relief bill, extending it through 2025. But the plan would make permanent one aspect of the expanded credit, which allows parents with little or no income to reap its benefits regardless of how much they earn. More