Biden jobs plan seeks $400 billion to expand caretaking services as U.S. faces surge in aging population

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White House, lawmakers remain at odds over broader spending package.

President Biden’s jobs plan proposes a massive investment in home care for the elderly and people with disabilities, as America’s caretaking system faces strain from the nation’s looming demographic challenges.

The White House’s American Jobs Plan calls for spending about $400 billion over eight years on “home- or community-based care” for the elderly and people with disabilities. That amounts to roughly a fifth of the overall price tag of Biden’s plan, the first of two related economic proposals expected from the White House.

The push to substantially expand in-home health-care services was one of the last major provisions added to the jobs plan, according to two people with knowledge of internal White House deliberations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters they were not authorized to disclose. Continue reading.

White House hopes to see infrastructure bill passed by summer

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President Biden hopes to see Congress pass his infrastructure and climate proposal by this summer, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday, setting a slightly longer timeline than his recently enacted coronavirus relief package.

Psaki told reporters at an afternoon briefing that the extra time will allow for more White House negotiations with congressional Republicans and Democrats, particularly since the legislation does not carry the same level of urgency as the American Rescue Plan that was signed into law last month.

Still, she said Biden would like to see “progress” by the end of May. Continue reading.

Nobel Prize-winning economist: Biden’s spending plan could help US break out of a ‘bad equilibrium trap’

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A Nobel Prize-winning economist is lauding President Joe Biden’s proposed $4 trillion infrastructure spending plan as he believes the plan could revitalize the United States economy. 

During an exclusive interview with Axios, Columbia University Professor Joseph Stiglitz offered his take on Biden’s plan. Not only is he endorsing the president’s plan but also looking forward to the positive effects and how it could help the country break out of its “bad equilibrium trap.”

“We’ve been for the last two decades in an abnormal environment, we’ve been in a bad equilibrium trap,” he said. “The inequality means people don’t have demand, a lack of demand means we don’t invest, so we’ve been in a very bad, vicious circle and I’m optimistic that this may break us out into a new period of strong growth, which is more egalitarian.” Continue reading.

Biden’s Big Bet: Tackling Climate Change Will Create Jobs, Not Kill Them

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WASHINGTON — In 2017, as Donald J. Trump was announcing the United States’ withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, the largest global effort to attack planetary warming, he declared, “I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris.”

On Wednesday, President Biden traveled to Pittsburgh to try to make the opposite case: that the workers Mr. Trump was appealing to have more to gain from combating climate change than to lose.

It is going to be a tough bet. To Mr. Biden, a $2 trillion infrastructure plan is about creating union jobs, hundreds of thousands of them, in wind and solar power, electric cars and road- and bridge-building. Even those more basic infrastructure projects would have a climate angle: the new roads and bridges would be built to withstand the high waters and brutal storms of a changing climate.

“I am a union guy. I support unions, unions built the middle class. It is about time you start to get a piece of the action,” Mr. Biden said in Pittsburgh. Continue reading.

White House unveils $2 trillion infrastructure and climate plan, setting up giant battle over size and cost of government

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Ahead of speech in Pittsburgh, Biden administration releases sprawling effort to revamp U.S. transit, broadband, housing and more

The White House’s unveiling of a $2 trillion jobs, infrastructure and green energy proposal to reshape the U.S. economy met a chorus of opposition late Wednesday, with Republicans panning it as a partisan wish-list, some liberals challenging it as not sufficient to combat climate change and business groups rejecting its proposed tax hikes.

Under what the administration calls the American Jobs Plan, President Biden aims to tackle some of the nation’s most pressing problems — from climate change to decaying water systems to the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

In a speech Wednesday afternoon at the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America Pittsburgh Training Center, Biden pitched his plan as a transformative effort to overhaul the nation’s economy. He called it the most significant federal jobs investment since World War II, saying it would put hundreds of thousands of electricians and laborers to work laying miles of electrical grid and capping hundreds of oil wells. He said the plan’s research funding would make America the global leader in emerging sectors such as battery technology, biotechnology and clean energy. Continue reading.