The Biden-Harris administration has announced the American Jobs Plan, via a speech muttered by Joe Biden in Pittsburgh. Lamenting that “Public domestic investment as a share of the economy has fallen by more than 40% since the 1960s,” the plan calls to “invest in America in a way we have not invested since we built the interstate highways and won the Space Race,” although it falls far short and goes the wrong way on “green” technologies. Here is a rough outline of the plan, which would unfold over more than a decade:
• $621 billion in transportation infrastructure and “resilience,” including modernizing 20,000 miles of roadways, 10,000 small bridges, and $20 billion for road safety.
• $85 billion in investment in modernizing and expanding transit
• $80 billion for Amtrak’s repair backlog, including the Northeast Corridor
• Throwing away a whopping $174 billion — more than the amount earmarked for mass transit and rail combined — to support electric vehicles.
• $25 billion for airports, $17 billion for waterways, ports and ferries, $20 billion to reconnect neighborhoods isolated by freeway projects
• $111 billion to replace 100% of lead pipes and service lines, and other water system improvements
• $100 billion for broadband across the country
