Biden’s $2T spending plan, billed as infrastructure bill, spends less than half on infrastructure

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President Biden’s $2 trillion spending plan, which is being promoted largely as a bill to address infrastructure, directs well under half of its total money to things traditionally defined as infrastructure, according to a Fox News analysis.

The analysis, based on the 25-page summary of the president’s proposal for the “American Jobs Plan,” indicates less than $750 billion of the spending fits even a broad definition of infrastructure.

The White House is casting a very wide net about what constitutes infrastructure — for example, the American Jobs Plan references “care infrastructure” when talking about $25 billion to upgrade child care facilities and a $400 billion expenditure on care for the elderly and disabled. That’s quite different from repairing potholes and rebuilding bridges.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, in emphasizing that Biden’s plan largely does not address infrastructure, are often using a very restrictive definition of the word.

“This plan is not about rebuilding America’s backbone. Less than 6% of this massive proposal goes to roads and bridges,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said. “It would spend more money just on electric cars than on America’s roads, bridges, ports, airports, and waterways combined.”

Indeed, the White House summary of the American Jobs Plan says it will spend “$115 billion to modernize the bridges, highways, roads, and main streets that are in most critical need of repair” out of more than $2 trillion in the plan. That is slightly under 6%.

But what counts and does not count as infrastructure can be tricky to define, according to Cato Institute Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards. – READ MORE

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