American Jobs Plan (2021)

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    Progressive Lawmakers to Unveil Legislation on Energy and Public Housing

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    The proposal, billed as the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, offers a clear policy marker for liberals as Democrats seek to influence President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan.WASHINGTON — Top liberal lawmakers are set to unveil legislation on Monday that would modernize the public housing system and start a transition to renewable energy, offering a clear policy marker for progressives as Democrats haggle over the details of President Biden’s infrastructure plan and how to push it through Congress.The introduction of the legislation, led by Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, is the first of multiple proposals from progressive lawmakers as they seek to influence a $2.3 trillion infrastructure overhaul to address climate change and economic inequities.Their proposal comes as Mr. Biden and his allies are navigating congressional crosscurrents that include the larger policy demands of a Democratic caucus that has little room for disagreement and Republicans who say they want to compromise, but have largely panned a plan paid for by tax increases. While the president has outlined the broad contours of his proposal, it is up to lawmakers to reach agreement on the final provisions and details of the legislation.Some lawmakers are floating the prospect of downsizing Mr. Biden’s legislative plan to win the 10 Republican votes needed to overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate, amid a flurry of lobbying from rank-and-file members. Progressive Democrats like Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Sanders are instead doubling down on their call for a larger package than the president proposed and pushing to shape what could be one of the largest investments of federal dollars in a generation.The progressives’ legislation, billed as the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, is a prong of the broader climate platform that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and others have long championed to help the United States wean itself from fossil fuels. It would repeal limitations on the construction of public housing and create grant programs to ensure improvements that not only address unsafe and aging housing, but reduce carbon emissions.“We’re here to make sure the Democratic Party upholds its values and keeps its promises, and to also push and expand the scope and the ambition of the Democratic Party,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said in an interview. She and other liberal lawmakers are expected to reintroduce additional parts of the Green New Deal this week.Filling sand bags to protect public housing before a hurricane in Lumberton, N.C., in 2019. Republicans have seized on the climate and housing provisions in President Biden’s infrastructure plan as overreach.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesTo qualify for the grants, recipients would have to adhere to strong labor standards, such as protection of collective bargaining and use of American manufacturing and products. The legislation would also fund tenant protection vouchers for displaced residents and create apprenticeship programs for residents.When Mr. Biden outlined his proposal last month, he called for more than $40 billion to improve public housing infrastructure. At an event in New York on Sunday, a group of lawmakers from the state, including Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, pushed for at least double that figure.“Public housing has been neglected, left to get worse, and we’re not going to stand for it anymore,” Mr. Schumer said. The president’s plan, he added, was “a good start, but it ain’t enough.”Mr. Sanders, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and allies envision the proposal costing between $119 billion and $172 billion over 10 years to meet the needs of their constituents, according to an estimate provided to The New York Times. It aims to create thousands of maintenance and construction jobs.“Probably our best bet would be one bill — and it should be a large bill,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview. “I think it’s just easier and more efficient for us to work as hard as we can in a comprehensive broad infrastructure plan, which includes human infrastructure as well as physical infrastruture.”Republicans, who have sought to weaponize the Green New Deal in recent years as egregious federal overreach that would harm the economy, have already seized on the climate and housing provisions in Mr. Biden’s plan as far beyond the traditional definition of infrastructure. Mr. Biden is also preparing a second proposal that would focus even more on projects outside what Republicans call “real” infrastructure and could bring the total cost to $4 trillion.“Republicans are not going to partner with Democrats on the Green New Deal or on raising taxes to pay for it,” Senator John Barrasso, Republican of Wyoming, said at a news conference last month. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, has repeatedly warned that the infrastructure plan is “a Trojan horse” for liberal priorities, while Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 House Republican, declared last week that “it’s a lot of Green New Deal” that would lead voters to turn away from Democrats.“I think the expansive definition of infrastructure that we see in this sort of ‘Green New Deal wish list’ is called into question,” Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, said on “Fox News” last week. “I don’t think that the American people, when they think of infrastructure, are thinking of home health aides and other things that are included in this bill.”In acknowledgment of both Republican resistance to Mr. Biden’s plan and the lure of bipartisan legislation, some lawmakers have raised the possibility of first passing a smaller bill that addresses roads, bridges and broadband with Republican votes before Democrats use the fast-track budget reconciliation process to bypass the filibuster and unilaterally push the remainder of the legislative proposals through both chambers.“I think that if we come together in a bipartisan way to pass that $800 billion hard infrastructure bill that you were talking about, that I’ve been urging, then we show our people that we can solve their problems,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said on “Fox News Sunday.” While the progressives’ proposal is largely unchanged from its original iteration in 2019, the political landscape is vastly different, with Democrats in control of Washington. Mr. Sanders now oversees the Senate Budget Committee, and a historic investment of federal funds to counter the economic and health effects of the coronavirus pandemic has some lawmakers and voters more open to substantial spending.“The time has now caught up to the legislation, and I’m really thrilled about that,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said. “You have a respiratory pandemic that’s layered on communities that are suffering from childhood asthma, that are already dealing with lung issues, that have pre-existing hypertension, which are all indicated by factors of environmental injustice.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives have championed a broader climate platform.Anna Moneymaker for The New York TimesThe Congressional Progressive Caucus, in an outline of five priorities for the final infrastructure product, singled out key elements of the housing legislation, including the energy efficiency standards. But with slim margins in both chambers and a huge lobbying campaign underway to ensure pet policies and provisions are included, it is unclear how Democrats would work this proposal in and whether every member of the caucus would sign on.Mr. Sanders acknowledged that the path forward for his proposal — and a number of other liberal priorities — could be difficult even with Democrats in control. He and other members of his party are exploring using budget reconciliation to pass elements of Mr. Biden’s legislative agenda, including his infrastructure plan. But without Republican votes, every Senate Democrat would need to remain united behind the entire package.“That is not easy stuff,” Mr. Sanders said. “People have different perspectives, people come from very different types of states, different politics, and that’s going to be a very difficult job for both the House and the Senate.” More

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    Biden Takes On Sagging Safety Net With Plan to Fix Long-Term Care

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    The proposal to spend $400 billion over eight years faces political challenges and a funding system not designed for the burden it has come to bear.President Biden’s $400 billion proposal to improve long-term care for older adults and those with disabilities was received as either a long overdue expansion of the social safety net or an example of misguided government overreach.Republicans ridiculed including elder care in a program dedicated to infrastructure. Others derided it as a gift to the Service Employees International Union, which wants to organize care workers. It was also faulted for omitting child care.For Ai-jen Poo, co-director of Caring Across Generations, a coalition of advocacy groups working to strengthen the long-term care system, it was an answer to years of hard work.“Even though I have been fighting for this for years,” she said, “if you would have told me 10 years ago that the president of the United States would make a speech committing $400 billion to increase access to these services and strengthen this work force, I wouldn’t have believed it would happen.”What the debate over the president’s proposal has missed is that despite the big number, its ambitions remain singularly narrow when compared with the vast and growing demands imposed by an aging population.Mr. Biden’s proposal, part of his $2 trillion American Jobs Plan, is aimed only at bolstering Medicaid, which pays for somewhat over half the bill for long-term care in the country. And it is targeted only at home care and at community-based care in places like adult day care centers — not at nursing homes, which take just over 40 percent of Medicaid’s care budget.Still, the money would be consumed very fast.Consider a key goal: increasing the wages of care workers. In 2019, the typical wage of the 3.5 million home health aides and personal care aides was $12.15 an hour. They make less than janitors and telemarketers, less than workers in food processing plants or on farms. Many — typically women of color, often immigrants — live in poverty.The aides are employed by care agencies, which bill Medicaid for their hours at work in beneficiaries’ homes. The agencies consistently report labor shortages, which is perhaps unsurprising given the low pay.Raising wages may be essential to meet the booming demand. The Labor Department estimates that these occupations will require 1.6 million additional workers over 10 years.It won’t be cheap, though. Bringing aides’ hourly pay to $20 — still short of the country’s median wage — would more than consume the eight-year outlay of $400 billion. That would leave little money for other priorities, like addressing the demand for care — 820,000 people were on states’ waiting lists in 2018, with an average wait of more than three years — or providing more comprehensive services.The battle over resources is likely to strain the coalition of unions and groups that promote the interests of older and disabled Americans, which have been pushing together for Mr. Biden’s plan. And that’s even before nursing homes complain about being left out.The president “must figure out the right balance between reducing the waiting list and increasing wages,” said Paul Osterman, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management who has written about the nation’s care structures. “There’s tension there.”Elder care has long been at the center of political battles over social insurance. President Lyndon B. Johnson considered providing the benefit as part of the creation of Medicare in the 1960s, said Howard Gleckman, an expert on long-term care at the Urban Institute. But the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Wilbur Mills, warned how expensive that approach would become when baby boomers started retiring. Better, he argued, to make it part of Medicaid and let the states bear a large chunk of the burden.This compromise produced a patchwork of services that has left millions of seniors and their families in the lurch while still consuming roughly a third of Medicaid spending — about $197 billion in 2018, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. By Kaiser’s calculations, Medicaid pays for roughly half of long-term care services; out-of-pocket payments and private insurance together pay a little over a quarter of the tab. (Other sources, like programs for veterans, cover the rest.)Unlike institutional care, which state Medicaid programs are required to cover, home and community-based care services are optional. That explains the waiting lists. It also means there is a wide divergence in the quality of services and the rules governing who gets them.Although the federal government pays at least half of states’ Medicaid budgets, states have great leeway in how to run the program. In Pennsylvania, Medicaid pays $50,300 a year per recipient of home or community-based care, on average. In New York, it pays $65,600. In contrast, Medicaid pays $15,500 per recipient in Mississippi, and $21,300 in Iowa.A home health aide accompanies a patient to a vaccine appointment. Elder care has long been at the center of political battles over social insurance.James Estrin/The New York TimesThis arrangement has also left the middle class in the lurch. The private insurance market is shrinking, unable to cope with the high cost of care toward the end of life: It is too expensive for most Americans, and it is too risky for most insurers.As a result, middle-class Americans who need long-term care either fall back on relatives — typically daughters, knocking millions of women out of the labor force — or deplete their resources until they qualify for Medicaid.Whatever the limits of the Biden proposal, advocates for its main constituencies — those needing care, and those providing it — are solidly behind it. This would be, after all, the biggest expansion of long-term care support since the 1960s.“The two big issues, waiting lists and work force, are interrelated,” said Nicole Jorwic, senior director of public policy at the Arc, which promotes the interests of people with disabilities. “We are confident we can turn this in a way that we get over the conflicts that have stopped progress in past.”And yet the tussle over resources could reopen past conflicts. For instance, when President Barack Obama proposed extending the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to home care workers, which would cover them with minimum-wage and overtime rules, advocates for beneficiaries and their families objected because they feared that states with budget pressures would cut off services at 40 hours a week.“We have a long road ahead of passing this into law and to implementation,” Haeyoung Yoon, senior policy director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, said of the Biden proposal. Along the way, she said, supporters must stick together.Given the magnitude of the need, some wonder whether there might be a better approach to shoring up long-term care than giving more money to Medicaid. The program is perennially challenged for funds, forced to compete with education and other priorities in state budgets. And Republicans have repeatedly tried to curtail its scope.“It’s hard to imagine Medicaid is the right funding vehicle,” said Robert Espinoza, vice president for policy at PHI, a nonprofit research group tracking the home care sector.Some experts have suggested, instead, the creation of a new line of social insurance, perhaps funded through payroll taxes as Social Security is, to provide a minimum level of service available to everyone.A couple of years ago, the Long-Term Care Financing Collaborative, a group formed to think through how to pay for long-term elder care, reported that half of adults would need “a high level of personal assistance” at some point, typically for two years, at an average cost of $140,000. Today, some six million people need these sorts of services, a number the group expects to swell to 16 million in less than 50 years.In 2019, the National Academy of Social Insurance published a report suggesting statewide insurance programs, paid for by a dedicated tax, to cover a bundle of services, from early child care to family leave and long-term care and support for older adults and the disabled.This could be structured in a variety of ways. One option for seniors, a catastrophic insurance plan that would cover expenses up to $110 a day (in 2014 dollars) after a waiting period determined by the beneficiary’s income, could be funded by raising the Medicare tax one percentage point.Mr. Biden’s plan doesn’t include much detail. Mr. Gleckman of the Urban Institute notes that it has grown vaguer since Mr. Biden proposed it on the campaign trail — perhaps because he realized the tensions it would raise. In any event, a deeper overhaul of the system may eventually be needed.“This is a significant, historic investment,” Mr. Espinoza said. “But when you take into account the magnitude of the crisis in front of us, it’s clear that this is only a first step.” More

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    Voters Like Biden's Infrastructure Plan; Taxes Are an Issue

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    A Times poll shows large majorities back spending on roads, ports, broadband and more. But Republicans aim to make corporate tax increases the issue.President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan has yet to win over a single Republican in Congress, but it is broadly popular with voters nationwide, mirroring the dynamics of the $1.9 trillion economic aid bill that Mr. Biden signed into law last month.The infrastructure proposal garners support from two in three Americans, and from seven in 10 independent voters, in new polling for The New York Times by the online research firm SurveyMonkey. Three in 10 Republican respondents support the plan, which features spending on roads, water pipes, the electrical grid, care for older and disabled Americans and a range of efforts to shift to low-carbon energy sources.That support is essentially unchanged from a month ago, when SurveyMonkey polled voter opinions on a hypothetical $2 trillion Biden infrastructure package, despite Republican attacks since the president outlined his American Jobs Plan in Pittsburgh at the end of March. And there is near-unanimous support for the plan from Democrats, whose confidence in the nation’s economic recovery has surged in the first months of Mr. Biden’s administration.“What we’ve seen with all our polling so far this year is that these proposals that the Biden administration has been rolling out have met with widespread approval,” said Laura Wronski, a research scientist at SurveyMonkey.Republican leaders hope they can ultimately turn some voters, particularly independents, against the plan by attacking Mr. Biden’s proposal to fund it with tax increases on corporations. Those increases include raising the corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent and a variety of measures meant to force multinational corporations to pay more in tax to the United States on profits they earn or book abroad.Senior Republicans in Congress are eager to wage that fight, arguing that voters will sour on even popular spending provisions if they are offset by tax increases that could chill investment and economic growth. They have cast the corporate tax cuts that President Donald J. Trump signed into law in 2017 as a boon for the economy that would be catastrophic to reverse.“Infrastructure’s popular,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, told reporters this week. “We need to have an infrastructure bill as big as we’re willing to credibly pay for without going back and undoing the 2017 tax bill.”Mr. Biden’s aides are similarly convinced that turning voter attention to corporate taxes — and to the 2017 tax cuts, which have never polled as well as Mr. Biden’s spending ambitions — will only help them solidify their case to the public. They cast the tax increases in his plan as a necessary corrective to that law, which they say rewarded corporations without producing the investment boom Republicans promised, and as the right way to offset popular spending programs.The Republican case against corporate tax increases “doesn’t fit this economic moment,” said Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “People have learned that there’s only so low you can go. And if the tax system allows America’s most profitable companies to not have to pay their fair share, that’s not in the national interest, and it’s certainly not in the interest of American workers.”Public support for the infrastructure plan isn’t quite as overwhelming as it was for Mr. Biden’s first major piece of legislation, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that sent $1,400 checks to most Americans. That bill won the support of 72 percent of Americans, including 43 percent of Republicans, in a February poll, also conducted by SurveyMonkey.But support for the infrastructure plan is broad-based. The proposal draws majority approval from adults across virtually every social and demographic category: men and women, young and old, college-educated and not.Individual components of the plan are even more popular. Sixty-seven percent of respondents said they supported increased federal spending on mass transit; 78 percent supported spending on airports and waterways, and on improving broadband internet access; and 84 percent supported money for highways and bridges. The latter two categories won majority approval even from Republicans.“Republicans don’t support the American Jobs Plan over all, but there are some elements of it that they actually love,” Ms. Wronski said.The Times survey did not ask about other components of Mr. Biden’s plan, such as those focusing on the environment, health care and education. But other polls have generally found support for those proposals as well, although in some cases by narrower margins.Mr. Biden has said he will pay for the bulk of his plan by partly reversing the corporate tax cuts passed by his predecessor, and most polls routinely show that the public favors raising taxes on large corporations.But there may be room for the Republicans’ tax argument to win over some independents. According to the SurveyMonkey findings, among independents who don’t have a strong position on the infrastructure plan, 29 percent say the tax increases would make them less likely to support it. Just 16 percent of that group says the higher taxes would make them more likely to support the plan.A survey released Wednesday by Quinnipiac University found somewhat lower overall support for the infrastructure plan, but also found that the plan was more popular when it was funded by raising taxes on corporations.Joel Slemrod, a University of Michigan economist who studies tax policy, said it wasn’t clear whether other ways of paying for infrastructure spending — including not paying for it and instead adding to the deficit — would be more popular.“A pretty good majority of people think that corporations and also rich people don’t pay their fair share,” he said.The polling helps to underscore the emerging political challenge for Republicans, who have roundly praised infrastructure spending in the abstract but opposed the scope of Mr. Biden’s proposal and the tax increases that would fund it.“It’s how we define it, how we pay for it, that gets everybody all twisted sideways,” said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska. “But I think we must present an alternative if you think this is too big. How would we pare it down? How would we define it? How will we pay for it?”Some Republicans are floating the possibility of putting forward a counterproposal that addresses more traditional infrastructure needs and removes the corporate tax increases. Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia suggested that such a proposal could be between $600 billion and $800 billion.“I think the best way for us to do this is hit the sweet spot of where we agree, and I think we can agree on a lot of the measures moving forward,” Ms. Capito said on CNBC on Wednesday. She suggested that Democrats save proposals with less bipartisan support for the fast-track budget reconciliation process, which would allow the legislation to pass with a simple majority.“If there are other things they want to do — they being the Democrats or the president — want to do in a more dramatic fashion that can’t attract at least 10 Republicans, that’s, I think, their reconciliation vehicle,” Ms. Capito added.But several liberals have signaled a reluctance to whittle down Mr. Biden’s plan, with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, telling reporters that the tentative price range “is nowhere near what we need.”The Biden administration is rolling out its infrastructure plans from a position of relative strength. Voters generally give Mr. Biden high marks for his performance in office, at least in comparison with Mr. Trump’s consistently low approval ratings, and Americans are becoming more optimistic about the economy in particular. Measures of consumer sentiment have been rising in recent months; SurveyMonkey’s consumer confidence index, which is based on five questions about people’s personal finances and economic outlook, rose in April to its highest level in six months.But views of the economy remain starkly divided along partisan lines. Confidence among Democrats jumped when Mr. Biden was elected and has continued to rise since. Republicans, who had a rosier view of the economy than Democrats throughout Mr. Trump’s time in office, have turned pessimistic since the election.About the survey: The data in this article came from an online survey of 2,640 adults conducted by the polling firm SurveyMonkey from April 5 to 11. The company selected respondents at random from the nearly three million people who take surveys on its platform each day. Responses were weighted to match the demographic profile of the population of the United States. The survey has a modeled error estimate (similar to a margin of error in a standard telephone poll) of plus or minus three percentage points, so differences of less than that amount are statistically insignificant. More

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    Biden’s Tax Plan Aims to Raise $2.5 Trillion and End Profit-Shifting

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    The plan detailed by the Treasury Department would make it harder for companies to avoid paying taxes on both U.S. income and profits stashed abroad.WASHINGTON — Large companies like Apple and Bristol Myers Squibb have long employed complicated maneuvers to reduce or eliminate their tax bills by shifting income on paper between countries. The strategy has enriched accountants and shareholders, while driving down corporate tax receipts for the federal government.President Biden sees ending that practice as central to his $2 trillion infrastructure package, pushing changes to the tax code that his administration says will ensure American companies are contributing tax dollars to help invest in the country’s roads, bridges, water pipes and in other parts of his economic agenda.On Wednesday, the Treasury Department released the details of Mr. Biden’s tax plan, which aims to raise as much as $2.5 trillion over 15 years to help finance the infrastructure proposal. That includes bumping the corporate tax rate to 28 percent from 21 percent, imposing a strict new minimum tax on global profits and cracking down on companies that try to move profits offshore.The plan also aims to stop big companies that are profitable but have no federal income tax liability from paying no taxes to the Treasury Department by imposing a 15 percent tax on the profits they report to investors. Such a change would affect about 45 corporations, according to the Biden administration’s estimates, because it would be limited to companies earning $2 billion or more per year.“Companies aren’t going to be able to hide their income in places like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda in tax havens,” Mr. Biden said on Wednesday during remarks at the White House. He defended the tax increases as necessary to pay for infrastructure investments that America needs and to help reduce the federal deficit over the long term.Still, his 15 percent tax is a narrower version of the one he proposed in the 2020 campaign that would have applied to companies with $100 million or more in profits per year.Mr. Biden’s proposals are a repudiation of Washington’s last big tax overhaul — President Donald J. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. Biden administration officials say that law increased the incentives for companies to shift profits to lower-tax countries, while reducing corporate tax receipts in the United States to match their lowest levels as a share of the economy since World War II.Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen, in rolling out the plan, said it would end a global “race to the bottom” of corporate taxation that has been destructive for the American economy and its workers.“Our tax revenues are already at their lowest level in generations,” Ms. Yellen said. “If they continue to drop lower, we will have less money to invest in roads, bridges, broadband and R&D.”The plan, while ambitious, will not be easy to enact.Some of the proposals, like certain changes to how a global minimum tax is applied to corporate income, could possibly be put in place by the Treasury Department via regulation. But most will need the approval of Congress, including increasing the corporate tax rate. Given Democrats’ narrow majorities in the Senate and the House, that proposed rate could drop. Already, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a crucial swing vote, has said he would prefer a 25 percent corporate rate.Mr. Biden indicated he was willing to negotiate, saying: “Debate is welcome. Compromise is inevitable. Changes are certain.” But he added that “inaction is not an option.”At the core of the tax proposal is an attempt to rewrite decades of tax-code provisions that have encouraged and rewarded companies who stash profits overseas.It would increase the rate of what is essentially a minimum tax on money American companies earn abroad, and it would apply that tax to a much broader selection of income. It would also eliminate lucrative tax deductions for foreign-owned companies that are based in low-tax countries — like Bermuda or Ireland — but have operations in the United States.“We are being quite explicit: We don’t think profit-shifting is advantageous from a U.S. perspective,” David Kamin, the deputy director of the National Economic Council, said in an interview. “It is a major problem,” he said, adding that with the proposed changes, “We have the opportunity to lead the world.”Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said that the plan would end a global “race to the bottom” of corporate taxation that has been destructive for the American economy and its workers.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe corporate income tax rate in the United States is currently 21 percent, but many large American companies pay effective tax rates that are much lower than that. Corporations that have operations in multiple countries often shift assets or income — sometimes in physical form, but other times, simply in their accountants’ books — between countries in search of the lowest possible tax bill.Companies also shift jobs and investments between countries, but often for different reasons. In many cases, they are following lower labor costs or seeking customers in new markets to expand their businesses. The Biden plan would create tax incentives for companies to invest in production and research in the United States.Previous administrations have tried to curb the offshoring of jobs and profits. Mr. Trump’s tax cuts reduced the corporate rate to 21 percent from 35 percent in the hopes of encouraging more domestic investment. It established a global minimum tax for corporations based in the United States and a related effort meant to reduce profit-shifting by foreign companies with operations in the country, though both provisions were weakened by subsequent regulations issued by Mr. Trump’s Treasury Department.Conservative tax experts, including several involved in writing the 2017 law, say they have seen no evidence of the law enticing companies to move jobs overseas. Mr. Biden has assembled a team of tax officials who contend the provisions have given companies new incentives to move investment and profits offshore.Mr. Biden’s plan would raise the rate of Mr. Trump’s minimum tax and apply it more broadly to income that American companies earn overseas. Those efforts would try to make it less appealing for companies to book profits in lower-tax companies.That includes discouraging American companies from moving their headquarters abroad for tax purposes, particularly through the practice known as “inversions,” where companies from different countries merge, creating a new foreign-located firm.Under current law, companies with headquarters in low-tax countries can move some of their profits earned by subsidiaries in the United States and send them back to headquarters as payments for things like the use of intellectual property, then deduct those payments from their American income taxes. The Biden plan would disallow those deductions for companies based in low-tax countries.Treasury Department officials estimate the proposed changes to offshore taxation would raise about $700 billion over 10 years.Companies defend their decisions to locate profits and operations offshore, saying they do so for a variety of reasons, including so that they can compete globally.Business groups blasted the proposal on Wednesday, saying that while they agreed that the United States needed to invest in infrastructure, the tax plan would put American firms at a significant competitive disadvantage.Neil Bradley, an executive vice president and the chief policy officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement on Wednesday that the proposal would “hurt American businesses and cost American jobs” and that it would hinder their ability to compete in a global economy.And members of the Business Roundtable, which represents corporate chief executives in Washington, said this week that Mr. Biden’s plan for a global minimum tax “threatens to subject the U.S. to a major competitive disadvantage.”Republican lawmakers also denounced the plan as bad for business, with some on the House Ways and Means Committee saying that “their massive tax hikes will be shouldered by American workers and small businesses.”Still, some companies expressed an openness to certain tax hikes.John Zimmer, the president and a founder of Lyft, told CNN on Wednesday that he supported Mr. Biden’s proposed 28 percent corporate tax rate.“I think it’s important to make investments again in the country and the economy,” Mr. Zimmer said. “And as the economy grows, so too does jobs and so too does people’s needs to get around.”Mr. Biden’s team hopes the proposals will ultimately spur a worldwide change in how and where companies are taxed, which could resolve some of the global competitiveness concerns.The administration is supporting an effort through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to broker an agreement on developing a new global minimum tax. Ms. Yellen threw her support behind that effort on Monday, and the Biden plan includes measures meant to force other countries to go along with that new tax. Global negotiators are aiming to come to an agreement by July. More