The White House faces a conundrum: President Joe Biden has bold infrastructure plans but how the heck will he pay for them?
Biden has repeatedly promised to spend $2tn or so to upgrade (and green) America’s crumbling infrastructure. This is likely to be popular with voters and business leaders: last week Dow’s Jim Fitterling called on Biden to use the electricity crisis in Texas as a catalyst for overhauling the national grid.
Yet the Congressional Budget Office recently warned that America’s debt will hit 102 per cent of gross domestic product this year — even before new infrastructure spending or Biden’s $1.9tn Covid relief package. And corporate lobbying groups are expressing horror at the idea of raising taxes to fund infrastructure spending.