President Joe Biden spent the afternoon in La Crosse, Wisconsin, touting the benefits of his American Jobs Plan.
Biden unveiled the plan in March with a $2.25 trillion price tag. Now, after months of negotiations, the plan sits at $973 billion.
While speaking at the La Crosse Municipal Transit Utility, Biden focused on the infrastructure benefits and the jobs he says it will bring.
“This deal will put American workers to work in good paying jobs, not minimum wage jobs, not $15 an hour jobs, good paying jobs, repairing our bridges and roads,” Biden said. He continued, calling this plan “a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.”
Ahead of Biden’s visit to Wisconsin, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) took to Facebook to speak out against the bill, writing, “A fiscally responsible infrastructure bill would use the $700 billion of ‘Covid relief’ spending that isn’t spent in this fiscal year and repurpose that amount for real infrastructure – not new entitlements.”
Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, said the plan looks for pay “for infrastructure with pixie dust.”
“If Congress wants to pay for a $1 trillion spending plan without raising the deficit, the only real ways to finance it are by raising taxes, cutting other spending, or both,” he said. “This agreement does very little of either. And while the White House fact sheet describing the agreement includes no revenue estimates with its brief descriptions of the pay-fors, they are certain to generate far less than the plan costs.”