Infrastructure. How To Pay For It: Maya MacGuineas

How Do We Fix It?

Stifle that yawn. Infrastructure just got exciting again.

President Biden announced a $2 trillion plan to rebuild roads and rails, repair bridges, modernize airports and seaports, create hundreds of thousands of union jobs in the solar and wind power industries, boost housing, expand broadband access to regions that are poorly served, and speed-up the transition to a climate-friendly economy. Total spending on his proposals could be as much as $4 trillion over the next decade.

We explain the President's ambitious plan, which amounts to the biggest spending initiatives in decades, and look at how to pay for it with one of the nation's top experts on the budget and taxes— Maya MacGuineas, President of the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Maya MacGuineas praises recent efforts to spend big on COVID relief, and also discusses ways to restore fiscal balance through reducing unproductive tax breaks, and reforming the tax code. "The bad news is that we had a mountain of debt before the crisis and we have a much larger mountain now."

In their conversation in the second half of this episode, Jim takes a deeply skeptical look at the Biden infrastructure proposals, while Richard applauds the President for going big and tackling a huge piece of public policy that was usually neglected by prior administrations.

Recommendations: Richard calls "Minari" and "The Father" two remarkable new films that are well-worth watching.

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