Biden, Joseph R Jr

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    Biden’s Economic Agenda Faces Familiar Hurdle With Fight Over Financing

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    As Democrats pursue both bipartisan infrastructure negotiations and a catch-all economic package, old divisions persist on how to fund the spending.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s ambitions for a large-scale investment in the nation’s aging public works system along with other parts of his economic agenda hinge on what has always been the most difficult problem for lawmakers: agreeing on how to pay for the spending.That question has sent a group of centrist senators scrounging to find creative ways to cover nearly $600 billion in new spending that they want to include as part of a potential compromise plan to invest in roads, broadband internet, electric utilities and other federal infrastructure projects.The White House and Republicans have ruled out entire categories of potential ways to raise revenues. The impasse has become the subject of increasingly urgent talks between a large group of Senate Democrats, Republicans, White House officials and, at times, the president himself.Among the ideas that senators have discussed in recent days are repurposing unspent coronavirus relief funds, increasing enforcement by the I.R.S. and establishing user fees for drivers, including indexing the gas tax to inflation.Mr. Biden dispatched aides to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for discussions that his press secretary, Jen Psaki, said yielded progress but no agreement. Top White House officials are set to meet on Wednesday evening with Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California. Those discussions will center on infrastructure negotiations as well as a separate effort to move a large chunk of the president’s $4 trillion economic agenda through the Senate without any Republican votes using a procedural mechanism known as reconciliation.Among those expected to attend the meeting are Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council; Steve Ricchetti, a top adviser to Mr. Biden; Louisa Terrell, the director of the White House Office of Legislative Affairs; Shalanda Young, the acting director of the Office of Management and Budget, and Susan E. Rice, who leads the White House Domestic Policy Council, according to an official familiar with the plans.Democratic leaders in Congress are preparing to move a sweeping, multitrillion-dollar bill through the reconciliation process to avoid the need for Republican votes and approve spending on physical infrastructure, education, emissions reduction, child care, paid leave, antipoverty efforts and more. But centrist Democrats in the Senate — along with Mr. Biden — have said repeatedly that they want to strike a deal with Republicans on what would be a pared-down version of the president’s plan to rebuild roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects.The bipartisan group has not reached public agreement on how to finance the spending. Moderates in both parties insist that any deal be paid for with new revenues. Mr. Biden has offered $4 trillion in potential revenue sources, all concentrated on increasing the tax burden on businesses and high earners. Republicans have countered with hundreds of billions of their own, including increased taxes for drivers and repurposing previously borrowed money from the $1.9 trillion Covid relief bill that Mr. Biden signed into law this year.The senators who spearheaded the original framework spent much of Tuesday huddling with Mr. Deese, Mr. Ricchetti and Ms. Terrell to iron out the details of an outline to provide for $1.2 trillion over eight years, of which $579 billion is new funding, and how to finance it.“These things are always complicated and tough,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, as he left the Capitol on Tuesday. “We’re getting there. We’re moving in the right direction.”Both sides did not appear to have enough common ground to formally announce how they would fund the plan. Shuttling across the Capitol for hourslong meetings scheduled around votes, the five Democrats and five Republicans declined to offer specifics beyond their prevailing optimism and plans to continue discussions.“Pay-fors,” Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, one of the Republicans negotiating the agreement, said when asked what the remaining stumbling blocks were. “Anytime you’re coming up with $579 billion, you’ve got to figure out how to do it.”Mr. Biden has pledged to not raise taxes on the middle class, including at the gasoline pump. Senate Republicans refuse to increase tax rates for businesses and high earners. Both sides have dug in, to the surprise of some business leaders and other lobbyists in Washington.White House officials have shifted in recent weeks to pressing Republicans to support one of Mr. Biden’s proposals that would not amount to an increase in tax rates: a plan to spend tens of billions of dollars on increased enforcement by the I.R.S. The administration says such a plan would collect hundreds of billions of dollars from high earners and corporations that owe, but do not pay, their fair share of taxes. Republicans say they are concerned about the scope of the provision, but they have continued to discuss it in private meetings.“I would say we’ve put a lot of different options on pay-fors on the table,” Ms. Psaki told reporters on Tuesday. “And our view is: There’s a fundamental question right now. Are Republicans, members of Congress, do they believe that rich people should have to pay the taxes they owe, or should we increase the cost of travelers who are just trying to make it to work? That’s the basic question here. So we’ll see if they can make progress on that exact point.”Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, is among the group of centrists that reached a tentative agreement on a framework for an infrastructure plan this month.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesLawmakers expressed optimism that a deal could be reached this week, but they acknowledged the division over raising revenues. “It’s always the hard part of an infrastructure package,” said Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, who unsuccessfully tried to negotiate an even narrower package with Mr. Biden.“There’s a pretty good dividing line sometimes between Republicans and Democrats — certainly is on taxes,” she added. “But the president’s taken any kind of user fee off the table — which is traditionally where you pay for these things — so that just makes it extra hard.”Neil Bradley, the executive vice president and chief policy officer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said on Tuesday that he expected any final deal to include some money from Mr. Biden’s plans to increase I.R.S. enforcement.He said he expected a final deal to have some pay-for surprises. “I suspect they’re going to have some creative ones that we don’t know about yet,” Mr. Bradley said.The debate over how to finance Mr. Biden’s economic agenda will also extend to any package that lawmakers seek to push through using reconciliation, which could be as much as $6 trillion. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, has asked Democrats on the panel to outline their priorities for the package as he aims to pass a budget blueprint to start the process by July.“I think the priorities that the president has established, that we have established, are solid,” Mr. Sanders said in an interview as he described his strategy. “But, you know, we’re going to have to make sure that we end up with numbers that 50 members can agree on.”He added that his intention was to pay for new initiatives — like child care subsidies and health care expansion — through “progressive taxation,” including raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. But he did not extend that to one-off spending like road or bridge repairs or improving water systems, saying, “it is not necessary to pay for, in my view, one-time capital improvements in the infrastructure.”In an early indication of what Mr. Sanders called an effort to “soothe the edges,” he said he was open to relaxing a $10,000 cap on how much taxpayers can deduct in state and local taxes.Several Democrats, particularly lawmakers representing New York and California, have warned that they might not support any changes to the tax code that do not address that provision. A draft budget document circulated by staff on Capitol Hill and obtained by The New York Times appeared to include funds for a partial repeal of the state and local tax deduction, which could mean eliminating the cap for all but the highest earners, or raising the level of the cap. There were few details about how those funds would be distributed, and lawmakers and aides cautioned that the plan was in flux.“I have a problem with extremely wealthy people being able to get the complete deduction,” Mr. Sanders said. “I think that’s an issue we’ll have to work on.”Cecilia Kang More

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    U.S. and Europe Look for Tariff Cease-Fire as Biden Heads Overseas

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    The Biden administration is trying to ease trade tension with allies, in part to help counter China.WASHINGTON — The United States and the European Union are working toward an agreement that would settle long-running disputes over aircraft subsidies and metals tariffs that set off a trade war during the Trump administration as President Biden looks to re-engage with traditional American allies.The two sides are hoping to reach an agreement by mid-July with a goal of lifting tariffs that both governments have placed on each other’s goods by Dec. 1, according to a joint statement that is being drafted before the U.S.-E.U. summit that Mr. Biden will attend in Brussels next week.Resolving trade tensions with Europe and other allies is a key goal of the Biden administration, which is trying to repair relationships that fractured under President Donald J. Trump, whose provocative approach to trade policy included punishing tariffs. Mr. Biden and other administration officials have said they want to rebuild those relationships, in part so that the United States can work with allies to counter China and Russia.The joint statement suggested an eagerness on both sides of the Atlantic to end a trade fight that has resulted in tariffs on a wide range of goods — including American peanut butter, orange juice and whiskey as well as levies on European wine and cheese.“We commit to make every effort possible to find comprehensive and durable solutions to our trade disputes and to avoid further retaliatory measures burdening trans-Atlantic trade,” the document said.The draft was reported earlier by Bloomberg News.The desire to reach an agreement came as Mr. Biden departed on Wednesday for a summit meeting in Britain with the leaders of the Group of 7 nations, his first international trip as president.As he boarded Air Force One, he indicated that his priority was to mend relations with his counterparts.“Strengthening the alliance and make it clear to Putin and to China that Europe and the United States are tight, and the G7 is going to move,” Mr. Biden said of his goals for the trip.Discussions about easing tariffs come at a critical time for the global economy as countries emerge from the pandemic. Widespread shortages of commodities because of supply chain bottlenecks and growing consumer demand have been pushing up prices and causing concern among policymakers.In March, the United States and European Union agreed to temporarily suspend tariffs on billions of dollars of each other’s aircraft, wine, food and other products as both sides try to find a negotiated settlement to a dispute over the two leading airplane manufacturers.The World Trade Organization had authorized both the United States and Europe to impose tariffs on each other as part of two parallel disputes, which began almost two decades ago, over subsidies the governments have given to Airbus and Boeing. The European Union had imposed tariffs on about $4 billion of American products, while the United States levied tariffs on $7.5 billion of European goods.The two governments are also trying to resolve a fight over the steel and aluminum tariffs that Mr. Trump imposed in 2018. The 25 percent tariffs on imports of European steel and 10 percent on aluminum spurred retaliation from Europe, which imposed similar duties on American products like bourbon, orange juice, jeans and motorcycles.The negotiations come as the United States is broadly reviewing its trade policy with a new focus on multilateralism.Last week, the Biden administration suspended retaliatory tariffs on European countries in response to digital services taxes that they have imposed as negotiations over a broader tax agreement play out.As part of the effort to deepen ties, the United States and European Union plan to establish a trade and technology council to help expand investment and prevent new disputes from emerging. It will also focus on strengthening supply chains for critical technology such as semiconductors, which have been in short supply in the last year.The alliance represents another tool the administration intends to use to push back against China’s growing economic influence, which Mr. Biden has repeatedly referred to as a threat to the United States. While the president has so far steered clear of hitting China with new tariffs, he has yet to remove the levies Mr. Trump imposed on $360 billion worth of Chinese goods. Last week, the administration barred Americans from investing in Chinese companies linked to the country’s military or engaged in selling surveillance technology used to repress dissent or religious minorities.The draft document says, “We intend to closely consult and cooperate on the full range of issues in the framework of our respective similar multifaceted approaches to China.”The U.S.-E.U. summit will take place next Tuesday.Matina Stevis-Gridneff More

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    Senate Passes Bill to Bolster Competitiveness With China

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    The wide margin of support reflected a sense of urgency among lawmakers in both parties about shoring up the technological and industrial capacity of the United States to counter Beijing.WASHINGTON — The Senate overwhelmingly passed legislation on Tuesday that would pour nearly a quarter-trillion dollars over the next five years into scientific research and development to bolster competitiveness against China. More

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    Biden Administration Moves to Unkink Supply Chain Bottlenecks

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    A swath of recommendations calls for more investments, new supply chains and less reliance on other countries for crucial goods.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Tuesday planned to issue a swath of actions and recommendations meant to address supply chain disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic and decrease reliance on other countries for crucial goods by increasing domestic production capacity. More

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    Biden Says Enhanced Unemployment Benefits Will Expire Soon

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    As Republicans blame enhanced unemployment insurance for slower-than-expected job gains, the White House stresses that the benefit will expire in September as planned.With fresh data showing that American employers added jobs at a decent but unexceptional pace in May, President Biden on Friday emphasized that his administration would not try to extend enhanced unemployment benefits that Republicans have criticized as a key factor in fueling a labor shortage.The extent to which the extra $300 in weekly jobless benefits may be keeping workers sidelined is unclear. Some economists say insufficient child care and health concerns may be the main drivers behind Americans not seeking jobs, while unemployment insurance and other pandemic-era policies are giving people the financial flexibility to choose to remain out of work.But the pace of hiring has been somewhat disappointing in recent months, and business complaints about worker shortages abound. The U.S. added 559,000 jobs in May, a solid number but one that fell short of analyst expectations of 675,000 jobs. The prior month was a more significant miss: Just 278,000 jobs were added at a time when analysts were expecting a million.The Biden administration on Friday celebrated the May job gains as a sign that the labor market is healing from the pandemic downturn and that its policies are working. But White House officials indicated they would not try to renew the enhanced jobless benefits, which expire in September, saying they were meant to be temporary.“It’s going to expire in 90 days,” Mr. Biden said, speaking in Rehoboth Beach, Del. “That makes sense.”At least 25 states have already moved to end the extra $300 beginning this month, a decision that Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Friday was completely within their purview. While the administration views the benefit as an “extra helping hand” for workers, some governors disagree and “that’s OK,” she said.“Every governor is going to make their own decision,” she said.The White House’s move to de-emphasize the benefit, which Democrats included in the $1.9 trillion economic relief bill that passed in March, risks angering progressives. But it could also help to shift the narrative toward the broader set of priorities the Biden administration hopes to pass in the months ahead, including a huge infrastructure plan.“This is progress — historic progress,” Mr. Biden said. “Progress that’s pulling our economy out of the worst crisis it’s been in in 100 years.”He added that the recovery was not going to be smooth — “we’re going to hit some bumps along the way” — and that further support that bolsters the economy for the longer term was needed.“Now’s the time to build on the foundation we’ve laid,” Mr. Biden said.Payrolls are still 7.6 million jobs below their prepandemic level. Economic officials, including those at the Federal Reserve, had been hoping for a series of strong labor market reports this spring as vaccinations spread and the economy reopens more fully from state and local lockdowns that were meant to contain the pandemic. In April, Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, pointed approvingly to the March jobs report, which had shown payrolls picking up by nearly a million positions.“We want to see a string of months like that,” he said.Instead, gains have proceeded unevenly. Job openings are high and wages are rising, suggesting that at least part of the disconnect comes from labor shortages. That is surprising at a time when the unemployment rate is officially 5.8 percent, and even higher after accounting for people who have dropped out of the labor market during the pandemic.Economists say many things could be driving the worker shortage — it takes time to reopen a large economy, and there is still a pandemic — but the trend has opened a line of attack for Republicans. They blame the enhanced unemployment benefits for discouraging people from returning to work and holding back what could be a faster recovery.“Long-term unemployment is higher than when the pandemic started, and labor force participation mirrors the stagnant 1970s,” Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a news release. “It’s time for President Biden to abandon his attack on American jobs, his tax increases, his anti-growth regulations and his obsession with more emergency spending and endless government checks.”Republican governors across the country have in recent weeks moved to end the supplemental unemployment benefits that began under President Donald J. Trump. The idea is that doing so will prod would-be workers back into jobs.A gas station near Rehoboth Beach offers incentives for new hires. Critics of the Biden administration say enhanced unemployment benefits are discouraging people from returning to work.Alyssa Schukar for The New York TimesMany progressives disagree with that assessment. Democratic leaders in Congress cited the latest employment report as a sign that lawmakers should move to enact the rest of Mr. Biden’s plans to invest in roads, water pipes, low-emission energy deployment, home health care, paid leave and a variety of other infrastructure and social programs — but also that the government should continue to support workers who remain on the sidelines.“The American people need all the support they can get, especially Black and Hispanic communities that were among the hardest hit by the pandemic,” Representative Donald S. Beyer Jr., Democrat of Virginia and the chairman of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee, said in a news release, urging lawmakers to “step up.”Fed officials, who are in charge of setting the stage for full employment and stable prices by guiding the cost of borrowing money, are likely to interpret the May report cautiously. The acceleration in job growth was good news, but the report also offered clear evidence that the labor market remains far from healed.“I view it as a solid employment report,” Loretta J. Mester, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, said on CNBC following the release. “But I’d like to see further progress.”The central bank is buying $120 billion in bonds each month and holding its main policy interest rate at near-zero, policies that keep borrowing cheap and help to stoke demand. Fed officials have said they would need to see “substantial” further progress toward their two goals — maximum employment and stable inflation — before beginning to remove monetary support by scaling down their bond buying program.Ms. Mester made clear that the May report did not reach that standard.“I would like to see a little bit more on the labor market to really see that we’re on track,” she said.Officials have an even higher hurdle for lifting interest rates: They want to see a return to full employment and signs that inflation is likely to stay above 2 percent for some time.Inflation has been moving higher this year, but Fed officials have said they expect much of the pop in prices to be temporary, caused by data quirks and a temporary mismatch as the economy reopens and demand outpaces supply.While the Fed is primarily in charge of controlling inflation, the Biden administration has also been reviewing supply chain issues and hoping to address some of them.Brian Deese, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said the administration had identified concrete steps and a long-term strategy to make supply chains for things like semiconductors more resilient. In other areas, like housing materials, the solution may involve convening private-sector actors to figure out a possible strategy.Ms. Psaki said the White House would talk about their plans “when we have more details to share, and hopefully that will be next week.” More

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    Biden Narrows Infrastructure Proposal to Win Republican Support

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    The president offered new concessions this week, including dropping his plan to reverse some of the 2017 tax cuts, as he tries to win support from Senate Republicans.WASHINGTON — President Biden offered a series of concessions to try to secure a $1 trillion infrastructure deal with Senate Republicans in an Oval Office meeting this week, narrowing both his spending and tax proposals as negotiations barreled into the final days of what could be an improbable agreement or a blame game that escalates quickly. More

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    Biden’s Budget Has Racial Equity Efforts Baked In

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    The budget, which was released on Friday, includes tens of billions of dollars worth of programs intended to bolster the fortunes of people of color and other historically underserved groups.WASHINGTON — Six days after his inauguration, President Biden vowed that his administration would see everything through the lens of racial equality, making it “the business of the whole of government.”On Friday, his $6 trillion budget began to make good on that promise.Sprinkled throughout the president’s enormous spending plan are scores of programs amounting to tens of billions of dollars intended to specifically bolster the fortunes of Black people, Asian people, tribal communities and other historically underserved groups in the United States.Mr. Biden is not the first president to spend money on such programs. And civil rights advocates said the budget released on Friday fell short in some critical areas like student loans, where they say even more money is needed to rectify a longstanding lack of fairness and a lopsided burden being carried by minorities.“It’s going in the right direction, but it’s not a perfect document,” said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., who said he was disappointed that the president’s budget did not call for canceling student loan debt, which falls disproportionately on Black Americans.But he added that his organization was pleased that the president was “continuing to make one of his priorities equity” via the budget.That idea — of focusing special attention on the distribution of taxpayer money across racial groups — has never been approached as methodically as it has this year by Mr. Biden, advocates say. Asked about the president’s equity agenda on Friday, Shalanda Young, the president’s acting budget director, said her department had “built that in” to the overall spending plan by giving “clear directions to our agencies that they are to use that lens as they implement these programs.”“This is not something we should have to call out,” she said. “This is something that should be pervasive in how the government does its business.”Much of the president’s vast budget directs spending that is not explicitly distributed based on race: health care, education, the military, transportation, agriculture, retirement programs and foreign policy, among other areas.But within all of those programs, Mr. Biden’s team has proposed increased spending with the goal of ensuring that people of color and others who are often left behind get a bigger share of the overall pie.Among the budget items, big and small, that are driven by equity:$3 billion to reduce maternal mortality and to end race-based disparities in maternal mortality.$15 billion for “Highways to Neighborhoods,” a program that would reconnect neighborhoods cut off by infrastructure projects developed decades ago.$900 million to fund Tribal efforts to expand affordable housing.$936 million for an Accelerating Environmental and Economic Justice initiative at the Environmental Protection Agency.$110 million for a Thriving Communities initiative, to foster transportation equity through grants to underserved communities.$39 billion for tuition subsidies to low- and middle-income students attending historically Black colleges and universities and those serving other minority groups.Mr. Biden foreshadowed that kind of budgetary decision-making in his first days in office. In a speech announcing his “equity agenda,” the president said he was committed to going further than his predecessors when it came to considering groups that had, in his words, been too often left behind.“We need to open the promise of America to every American,” he said during the speech on Jan. 26. “And that means we need to make the issue of racial equity not just an issue for any one department of government.”That approach has incited anger from conservatives, who accuse the president and his advisers of pursuing a racist agenda against white Americans. Fox News ran a headline accusing Mr. Biden of trying to “Stoke Nationwide Division With ‘Racial Equity’ Push.” And The New York Post published an editorial, titled “In Push for Woke ‘Equity,’ Biden Abandons Equality,” that accused the president of being “un-American.”The budget contains “Highways to Neighborhoods,” which reconnects neighborhoods cut off by historic infrastructure projects, such as Claiborne Avenue in New Orleans.Abdul Aziz for The New York TimesA group called America First Legal, which is run by Stephen Miller and Mark Meadows, two top aides to former President Donald J. Trump, won a preliminary injunction this week from a Texas judge against an effort by Mr. Biden’s Small Business Administration to prioritize grants from its $28.6 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund to businesses owned by minorities or underserved groups.“This order is another powerful strike against the Biden administration’s unconstitutional decision to pick winners and losers based on the color of their skin,” the group said in a statement.The president appears unlikely to back down. In a speech days after his inauguration, he vowed that “every White House component, and every agency will be involved in this work because advancing equity has to be everyone’s job.”Still, for all of Mr. Biden’s forceful rhetoric — he once pledged to no longer allow “a narrow, cramped view of the promise of this nation to fester” — his administration made little effort on Friday to focus attention on that principle or to highlight details about how an equity-driven approach would change the way the government spends its money..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 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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;}During a news conference to introduce the budget on Friday, Ms. Young and Cecilia Rouse, the chairwoman of the White House’s National Economic Council — both of whom are Black women — did not mention the president’s equity agenda until a reporter asked about it toward the end.And the budget itself does not try to quantify the effect of following the president’s guidance to make decisions based on a sense of racial equity. There is no “equity” section of the budget. Aides did not send out fact sheets to reporters on Friday promoting the “equity spending” in the president’s inaugural budget.That left some of the public relations work to civil rights groups and other advocates, who quickly pointed to examples of spending that would benefit communities who had traditionally been left behind by previous presidents.Sara Chieffo, the chief lobbyist for the League of Conservation Voters, an pro-environment group, pointed to the $936 million Accelerating Environmental and Economic Justice initiative at the Environmental Protection Agency, which is aimed at cleaning up the environment in underserved communities.“The importance of this administration’s proposal to make the largest-ever investment in communities of color and low-income communities who have been subjected to environmental racism for decades cannot be overstated,” Ms. Chieffo said.Marcela Howell, the president of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women’s Reproductive Justice Agenda, praised the president for investing in programs that specifically benefit Black women.“Kudos also go to President Biden for funding important programs to address racial equity and economic security,” she said in a statement, adding that “we applaud the proposed investments in infrastructure and job creation, affordable child care and work force training, education” and more.The Planned Parenthood Federation of America issued a statement thanking Mr. Biden for what the group called “important investments” that it said would help to “address the maternal mortality crisis and its devastating impact in communities of color.” More

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    Here's One Thing Missing from President Biden's Budget: Booming Growth

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    For all the administration’s focus on transformational policies, it’s not forecasting an outburst of economic potential.President Biden’s budget proposal includes billions of dollars for clean energy, education and child care — ideas being sold for their potential to increase America’s economic potential. One thing it does not include: an outright economic boom.In the assumptions that underpin the administration’s budget, economic growth is strong in 2021 and 2022 — but strong enough only to return the economy to its prepandemic trend line, not to surge above the trajectory it was on throughout the 2010s.Then in 2023, the administration expects gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, to rise at a slower 2 percent rate, then 1.8 percent a year through the mid-2020s. That is lower than the 2.3 percent average annual growth rate experienced from 2010 to 2019.The administration’s outlook is consistent with projections by other forecasters, including at the Congressional Budget Office and in the private sector. But it means that the Biden White House is not — at least not formally — expecting the kind of rip-roaring growth that characterized periods like 1983 to 1989 (with an average annual G.D.P. growth of 4.4 percent) and 1994 to 2000 (4 percent).Those two episodes coincided with much more favorable demographic trends. They also helped propel two presidents to comfortable re-elections.If the new projections were to prove accurate, it would imply two years of strong growth paired with moderate inflation as the nation recovered from the pandemic heading into the 2022 midterm elections, but then comparatively low growth in the run-up to the 2024 election.The sober estimate contrasts with the approach Mr. Biden has taken to selling his agenda publicly. The framing of his signature plans for infrastructure and family support has been that they will enable the economy to become more vibrant and productive.“There’s a broad consensus of economists left, right and center, and they agree what I’m proposing will help create millions of jobs and generate historic economic growth,” Mr. Biden said in an address to Congress in April.It is a striking contrast with the approach taken by the Trump administration — a gap between presidential styles buried on Table S-9 of the two presidents’ budgets. The Trump administration’s final prepandemic budget proposal, published in February 2020, forecast that the economy would grow around 3 percent per year throughout the 2020s.If the Trump projections materialized, by 2030 the economy would be more than 11 percent bigger than what the Biden projections envision. However, the Trump administration persistently underdelivered on growth. G.D.P. rose an average of 2.5 percent in the three nonpandemic years of his presidency. The results are weaker still if you include the contraction of the economy in 2020.A wind farm in Carbon County, Wyo. The Biden administration says investment in clean energy will help America fulfill more of its long-term potential.Benjamin Rasmussen for The New York TimesCasey B. Mulligan, a University of Chicago economist who worked in the Trump White House, said in an email that the reduced growth forecasts were similar to those that career economic staff recommended in the Trump years. “They perennially overestimated Obama-era growth and underestimated Trump nonpandemic growth,” but you couldn’t see it in the published documents in the Trump years “because normally the political appointees such as me have a say in what is published.”The Biden administration has been inclined more broadly to a strategy of underpromising and overdelivering, most notably with the rollout of vaccines.Even before the budget’s official release, its growth projections became a subject of Republican attacks. “The Obama-Biden administration famously accepted slow growth as America’s ‘new normal’ while pursuing policies that sent jobs overseas,” House Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee said in a blog post. “President Biden appears to be lowering the bar even further.”Political volleys aside, it can be easy both to overestimate the ability of government policy to move the dial on overall growth — and to underestimate how much even small gains in productivity can mean when they compound over many years.In the 1980s boom, for example, the labor force was growing much more rapidly than it is now, helped by demographic trends and a rise in women entering work. In the 1990s boom, a surge in productivity resulted in large part from innovations in information technology, unconnected to government spending.“We are a really big economy where really big forces are shaping what happens to G.D.P. growth,” said Wendy Edelberg, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and a former C.B.O. chief economist.Even these moderate projections by the Biden administration imply that its policies will lift growth in economic activity by a few tenths of a percent each year over a decade. This is significant when comparing it with the growth that would be expected by simply looking at demographic factors and historical averages of productivity growth. The forecast is more inherently optimistic about Mr. Biden’s policies — and their potential to increase productivity and the size of the work force — than it might seem at first glance..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 (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (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;}“Making the claim that your fiscal policies will boost growth by four-tenths of a point seems optimistic, but I can see how they could get there,” she said.Jason Furman, the Obama administration’s former top economist, said: “I think there’s a problem that people have in their head — more extravagant ideas about what economic policy can do and how quickly it can do it. When you’re talking about productivity enhancement, you’re talking about compounding that becomes a big deal for a long time.”In other words, the difference of a few tenths of a percent of G.D.P. growth might not mean much for a single year, but a gap of that size that persists for many years has a big impact on living standards.Some of the administration’s policies, by design, would focus on the very long-term impact on the nation’s economic potential. For example, additional money for community colleges might actually depress the size of the labor force, and thus G.D.P., in the short run if more adults go back to school. But it would then increase those workers’ productive potential, and thus contribution to growth, for the decades that follow.Conservatives, for their part, view the Biden agenda as likely to restrain growth, particularly once tax increases and new regulatory action go into effect. Mr. Mulligan, the Trump adviser, said he believed the Biden agenda would reduce the nation’s growth path by around 0.8 percentage points a year compared with its Trump-era trajectory. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, said he thought Mr. Biden’s policies could create faster growth in the short term but slower growth in the long run because of taxes and spending.The Biden White House is more optimistic about what is possible for American workers. After the post-pandemic recovery, it projects a 3.8 percent unemployment rate from 2023 on, which is a bit lower than the levels forecast by the C.B.O. (an average of 4.2 percent from 2023 to 2031) or the Fed (4 percent is the median longer-run unemployment forecast of its leaders). It’s also lower than the 4 percent post-2023 jobless rate included in the Trump budget.The administration is optimistic about the post-pandemic recovery in the job market, projecting a 3.8 percent unemployment rate from 2023 on.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesThis reflects the lessons of 2019, when the jobless rate was consistently below 4 percent without causing excessive inflation or other problems. It’s a welcome sign for anyone who thinks that running a tight labor market — a high-pressure economy, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen calls it — is a good thing.Forecasts, on their own, aren’t worth more than the paper on which they are printed. A bold prediction of the boom that’s coming wouldn’t mean much if it didn’t materialize. And the world described in the Biden team’s forecasts is hardly a gloomy one: Low unemployment, low inflation and steady growth is a nice combination, and one that could describe much of the period from 2016 to 2019.The question for Mr. Biden is whether that will be enough to qualify as building back better. More