WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden and his team have offered a very inflated projection of how many jobs his infrastructure plan would create, his press secretary corrected on Tuesday. Biden has also gone beyond the facts in ruling out the possible disadvantages of the tax increases needed to pay for all these roads and bridges.
A look at the administration’s infrastructure offer in recent days:
CORPORATE TAXES
BIDEN, when asked if his proposed corporate income tax increase would lead U.S. companies abroad: “Not at all … because there is no evidence of that. .. this is strange”. – Observations to journalists on Monday.
THE FACTS: Hardly weird. The Biden administration is aware that lower tax rates abroad could tempt U.S. companies to move. Another question is whether the proposed tax increase would be large enough to have that effect.
On the same day that Biden made her comments, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen passed a global minimum corporate tax rate precisely to prevent countries from lowering rates to attract companies to move.
Yellen said it was time to end a 30-year “bottom-up race” of nations by lowering their corporate tax rates to gain an advantage. His approach suggests that the administration at least accepts the possibility that an increase in corporate tax in the U.S. could cause U.S. multinationals to move headquarters abroad.
Biden proposes an increase in the corporate tax rate in the US from 28% to 28%, to partially pay for its infrastructure proposal. President Donald Trump cut the rate by 35% in his 2017 tax law.
___
INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS
BIDEN, on its $ 2.3 trillion infrastructure plan: “Independent analysis shows that if we approve this plan, the economy will create 19 million jobs: good jobs, blue-collar jobs, jobs that they pay well “- The White House remarks on Friday.
BRIAN DEESE, director of the White House National Economic Council: “Look at just the analysis we’ve seen this week, Moody’s suggests it would create 19 million jobs.” – “Fox News Sunday”.
THE FACTS: Not what Moody’s Analytics said. The infrastructure plan is not expected to create anything from nearly 19 million jobs in less than a decade.
In contrast, the economic consultancy estimated that nearly 16 million jobs will be created in the United States by 2030 without Biden’s infrastructure plan or the $ 1.9 trillion rescue package approved last month. With 1.6 million a year, this would be a slow pace of job creation, below the roughly 2.2 million before the pandemic.
Moody’s says the rescue plan will create about 700,000 jobs over the next decade that otherwise would not have existed, and says the infrastructure plan will create approximately 2.6 million in the next decade. That would add up to about $ 19 million, but with only a small portion as a result of the infrastructure proposal.
Asked about the study on Tuesday, Biden press secretary Jen Psaki described it correctly:
“Moody’s did an analysis that showed that the economy would create 19 million jobs over the next decade if Congress approves the American Jobs Plan, nearly 3 million more than if it doesn’t,” he said. “So that’s what the impact of the U.S. employment plan would be: 2.7 million, to be totally clear.”
___
AUTOMATIC WORKS
TRANSPORT SECRETARY PETE BUTTIGIEG: “We will have car workers, union car workers, I hope, who make cars one way or another. Why don’t they head the electric vehicle revolution, which, by the way, has fierce competition with China and many other places? ”. – comments on Sunday on “This Week” on ABC
THE FACTS: This scenario disguises a likely effect of the transition to much more electric vehicle production: fewer jobs in car manufacturing.
It doesn’t take as many people to build an electric car as a gas one, and the jobs that would be created in these new factories may pay less.
Electric vehicles typically have 30% to 40% fewer parts than traditional cars and are easier to build. In addition, many of the jobs that build batteries used in electric cars are non-union jobs at companies that supply automakers, rather than unionized plants managed by the U.S. auto companies themselves.
___
Cal Woodward of the Associated Press must be written.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE: A look at the veracity of the statements of political figures.
___
Look for AP data checks at http://apnews.com/APFactCheck
Follow @APFactCheck on Twitter: https://twitter.com/APFactCheck