The alarm bells ring for President Joe Biden’s ambitious project American employment plan, which aims to rebuild the country’s aging infrastructure while preparing it for the demands of the 21st century. After weeks of seemingly endless bipartisan negotiations, it’s time for Biden to give up and move forward with his plan on a party line vote.

At the start of Biden’s presidency, I a lot wanted bipartisanship, but was based on my expectation that the GOP would repudiate former President Donald Trump, defeated and dishonored after his botched handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and January 6 insurgency. Instead, the handful of Republicans who voted to impeach him for his role in the insurgency were censorship by their own States Parties and / or are faced Trump loyalist primaries next year.

Too many Republican leaders would rather tear the country apart than admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. These deeply cynical leaders seem to believe that their overriding economic goal – to enrich the wealthiest Americans who are their biggest donors – cannot succeed that by tacitly supporting Trump’s lies and drafting laws suppress liberal voters.

While Biden is a true believer in collegiality and compromise, he has to face the truth – the Republican Party has not committed to reaching a bipartisan deal. Of course, when Biden presented his American jobs plan, Republicans called for bipartisanship. But their counter-offer to the president’s plan is a sham – based on three flawed premises.

First, their offer is simply a continuation of the status quo under a false title. Republicans announced they would spend $ 928 billion on infrastructure over eight years. Again only $ 257 billion of this offer will go to the financing of new public works projects, the remainder being already budgeted in basic transport expenditure.

This $ 257 billion is a pittance compared to the needs of the American people. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that the 10-year funding gap for surface transportation, water and wastewater, airports and seaports amounts to $ 2.6 trillion, and that this amount does not include digital infrastructure , building upgrades and other capital improvements in the Biden infrastructure plan. The Republicans’ proposal therefore represents less than a tenth of the estimated infrastructure needs of our country.

Second, Republicans want to tax average Americans rather than richer Americans to pay for the infrastructure plan. They have the audacity criticize Biden’s plan to tax wealthier businesses and Americans while saying their plan would be paid for by “cost of using“, such as gasoline taxes, tolls, and other charges, that would hit working-class Americans the hardest. So while Biden tries to protect average Americans, Republicans try to protect them. press.

Third, the Republicans Claim that Biden’s infrastructure plan is too expensive, would create a “massive tax hike” and lead to generational debt. This is utter nonsense, backed by people who can’t do basic math or, more likely, don’t want average Americans to do it.

The Biden plan, detailed in the Budget for fiscal year 2022, would spend about $ 2.2 trillion over 10 years. (Although, as part of the negotiations, Biden also offered a more limited package at $ 1.7 trillionThe $ 2.2 trillion plan sounds like a lot when expressed in single digits, but it’s actually quite moderate and easily affordable.

The gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the country’s domestic production and income, is currently around $ 21.7 trillion. With economic growth and inflation, GDP will mean approximately $ 28.2 trillion per year for fiscal years 2022 to 2031, or $ 282 trillion in total. The $ 2.2 trillion U.S. Jobs Plan therefore only represents about 0.8% of GDP over 10 years.

Suppose you are a family earning $ 100,000 per year. Would it be outrageous to spend 0.8% more of your income, or $ 800 per year, on upgrades to your property’s fixed assets, including your electrical system, automobile, cable connection, and home repairs? ? Clearly no.

This is even more reasonable since Biden proposes that it be the wealthy CEO living in the mansion behind the high gates at the end of the street who should pay for major repairs to the neighborhood, given that the corporate sector has received tax breaks. massive over the years, culminating with the Trump tax giveaway in 2017, when your take home pay barely kept up with inflation.

Corporate taxes as a percentage of GDP have been 4.0% in 1960. After rounds of tax cuts they were a tiny 1.2% of GDP in 2020. Biden’s plan calls for a partial reversal of the 2017 tax cuts and a minimum corporate tax to prevent companies from using tax havens and other tricks to avoid paying taxes altogether.

And the leaders of America’s biggest corporations certainly have a lot to spare. Professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, specialists in income inequalities, recently written in the Washington Post that the richest 400 Americans have a combined wealth equal to 18% of US GDP. According to the Economic Policy Institute, CEO compensation, which averaged 15 times the average salary of workers in 1965, was 320 times the average salary in 2019.

So we have come to the heart of the problem. The Republican Party aims to serve a small coterie of the wealthiest Americans in the country. The public understands this. An overwhelming majority believe that the political system unfairly favors powerful interests. And, as recent polls show, the majority of Americans support taxation businesses to pay for infrastructure needs.

The United States must move forward, and the President and Congressional Democrats must lead. Now is the time to adopt the United States Jobs Plan. A new generation of Republican politicians, no longer beholden to the wealthiest Americans, will eventually follow – if they hope to win back popular support.