If a bipartisan infrastructure deal holds, Midwesterners can expect upgrades to roads, bridges and broadband networks, President Biden said on Tuesday in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. “There is no gas tax (increase),” he said. “Working families have already paid enough.”
Biden and a group of senators agreed on a $1.2 trillion package, including $579 billion in new spending, last Thursday. New spending would include $312 billion on transportation, such as road and bridges, waterways and airports. Broadband would get $65 billion, one of the largest items in a list of $266 billion for “other infrastructure,” including water lines and the electrical grid.
To pay for the work, the agreement calls for better enforcement of tax laws, tapping left-over federal funds, selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and public-private partnerships to finance improvements. Absent from the list was a proposal, raised in March, to eliminate the “stepped-up basis” tax break that eases the burden on heirs. Farm groups say the tax break eases passing land from generation to generation to keep family farms running, though the White House insisted nearly every farm would have been exempt from any change.
“Instead, we’re going to pay for these investments , in part, by giving the Internal Revenue Service the resources it needs to collect taxes on the wealthiest Americans who owe but are currently not paying under the existing tax rules,” said Biden, after a tour of the bus shed used by LaCrosse’s Municipal Transit Utility. The city has two electric buses on order. Biden said he opposed an increase in the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gasoline tax so the middle class would not pay higher taxes.
“This deal will also help high-speed internet and make sure it’s available to every American home, including 35 percent of rural families currently going without it,” said the president. “No farmer here in Wisconsin should lose business because they don’t have a reliable connection to the internet – know when to buy, know when to sell and know what’s going on.”
Wisconsin was chosen for Biden’s plug for the infrastructure package because “the people of the state would hugely benefit” if it is enacted, said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. More than 82,000 school children don’t have access to reliable internet service and 600 bridges are too weak for truck traffic, meaning longer routes for deliveries.
Biden carried Wisconsin by roughly 21,000 votes, less than 1 percent, in 2020. A city of 52,000 people, LaCrosse is on the banks of the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, near the border of Minnesota and Iowa.
The text of Biden’s speech is available here.
To watch a C-SPAN video of Biden’s speech, click here.