No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Infrastructure Week. But actually.

Episode Date: April 4, 2021

Joe Biden introduces the American Jobs Plan. Brian interviews Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, the Director of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, about this new package, how to stop Republicans from inevitably trying to take credit for it, calls from progressives who say it needs to be bigger, and whether we might actually see high speed rail become a reality.Written by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CAhttps://www.briantylercohen.com/podcast/See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the Biden administration's newly released American jobs plan and what's in it. And I interviewed Joe Biden's top economic advisor, the director of the National Economic Council, Brian Dease, where we talk about this new package, how to stop Republicans from inevitably trying to take credit for it, calls from progressives who say it needs to be bigger, and whether we might actually see high-speed rail become a reality. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie. So for a guy they dubbed Sleepy, Joe, I'm not sure I've seen a president move so fast. After passing the American Rescue Plan, what, 46 days into his presidency, Biden's now unveiled the American Jobs Plan. So the American Jobs Plan

is a lot. Brian Dease gives a really good summary in the interview coming up, but here's my attempt at conveying just some of what's included in the package. It'll fix roads, bridges, airports, mass transit, deliver clean drinking water, renew the electric grid, plug oil and gas wells and clean up abandoned mines, create a national network of electric vehicle chargers, get high-speed broadband to 100% of Americans, build or retrofit 2 million homes and buildings, modernize our schools, upgrade veterans' hospitals and federal buildings, create jobs and raise wages and benefits for home care workers, revitalize manufacturing, invest in R&D, strengthen unions, and prepare Americans for jobs of the future. Not a bad place to start as we kick off

these negotiations. But Republicans have already begun towing the party line and coming out a against infrastructure, despite the fact that during the last administration, after Trump himself coined what would be the never-ending infrastructure week, they actually supported it. And the reason they supported it is because it's popular. And because Trump was good at pretending to be a populist, he knew the appeal that an infrastructure package would have, even if he had no intention of actually following through with it, because let's face it, it doesn't unilaterally help rich people. But there's a tweet by Ezra Klein that I found so interesting.

And again, I don't mean to harp on Trump here. If you listen to this podcast, you'll know that I make a pretty good. concerted effort not to bring him up unless I have to. You know, he lost, he's out of office, I'm not here to continue giving him a platform that he doesn't deserve. But this tweet by Ezra Klein brings up a good point. It says, quote, it's become a punchline, but it really is remarkable that Trump didn't do an infrastructure plan in his four years in office. Particularly at the beginning, he could have peeled off scared Democrats. The whole country could have roads and bridges with his face on them. People who have absolutely no interest in the work of

governance don't govern well, even by their own measures. Trump said he wanted a massive rebuild of American infrastructure. He likes building things. I think he did want it. He just didn't want to do the work. And I thought that was so spot on because it shows the dichotomy between the policies that Republicans harp on

versus what they'll actually spend their political capital on. And so they, you know, wax poetic for years about how they would finally restore a crumbling infrastructure. But in actuality, an infrastructure package requires a government that at a bare minimum is functional,

but at best is hyper-effective. And if the whole MO over the Republican Party is to show that government doesn't work, so that they can turn around and use that as justification to shrink it even more, then that's clearly not a political party that's going to be well positioned to revamp the nation's infrastructure. That's not even a political party that could manage to tell people to take the bare minimum step during a global pandemic to wear a mask.

They couldn't do that. So of course their promises of getting infrastructure done was just empty rhetoric. The fact is that Republicans are there to do one thing without fail. Lower the highest marginal tax rate for businesses and individuals, that's all. And that eliminates tax revenue that would otherwise fund projects and services that we need to keep this country functioning. We would use that tax revenue for health care. We would use it for emergencies like this pandemic. And right now we need it for infrastructure.

That is why we have a government. It's not to make millionaires into multi-millionaires. It's to keep the country running for everyone else. Like, come on, if not to at least make sure that our roads and bridges are functional, then what in the world else would our government exist for? But Republicans decided that letting corporations skate by without paying a dime in taxes was preferable to restoring our infrastructure. And if you need proof of that, by the way, just look at where we are right now.

After four years of Republican control, the Amazon's of the world still don't pay taxes, and our infrastructure is still crumbling. That didn't occur in a vacuum. That was a choice. The GOP had to decide that Amazon wouldn't pay, and they had to decide that our roads and bridges would continue to crumble. It was a conscious decision that reflects their priorities. So Republicans will pull out whatever they can to complain about this bill.

You know, they'll suddenly rediscover the deficit or pretend that it's just the Green New Deal repackaged or that only 5% of the bill goes to infrastructure and the rest goes to, I don't know, illegal immigrants. But amid all of that, here's what you should remember. This packages are only shot while we have unified control of government to deliver a once-in-a-generation upgrade to this country. And no, not just the libs, everyone.

Broadband for rural America and inner cities, roads across the country's veterans hospitals, it's got something for everyone from across the political spectrum. And the price to get it done is having corporations pay their fair share by raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, which is still below the 35% rate when Obama was president, along with creating a global minimum tax, ending subsidies to fossil fuels, cracking down on tax havens, all of which, by the way, is popular. In fact, taking these measures, which amounts to, you know, making the money, the rich pay their fair share, are as popular as the infrastructure reforms that they'll be funding.

So look, all of that is to say, you know how it's going to get paid for and you know what's in it. So when you encounter opposition to this bill from the right, think about who they're trying to protect at the same time that they're telling you that you don't deserve to drive on new roads and that rural Americans don't deserve broadband and that we don't deserve a power grid that won't fail like the one in Texas. Because you can serve the people or you can serve the ultra wealthy, but you can't serve both. This package puts that on full display. Next step is my interview with Brian Dees. Today we've got the White House National Economic Council Director Brian Dees. Thanks for coming on. Oh, thank you for having me.

So the administration has already passed the American Rescue Plan, which was a major victory, massively popular, enjoyed the support of three quarters of all Americans. Now we're on to infrastructure. Is it possible we're finally going to see Infrastructure Week? Look, our goal is to retire Infrastructure Week and actually have a bill enacted into law and change the shape of American infrastructure. So our hope is that the days of Infrastructure Week are numbered. Yeah, well, good, because I think we're actually 200 weeks into Infrastructure Week right now.

This is the longest week of my life since the week that Donald Trump got elected. So I'm glad to hear that. So this is the American Jobs Plan. what are the major elements that the American people should know about? Sure. So the first thing to know about the American Jobs Plan is it is the largest investment, capital investment in American jobs since the Second World War. It's big and bold, but it's also practical. You can think about it in four basic parts. The first is our transportation infrastructure, how we move around. So that's roads, bridges, ports, airports, but also mass transit and rail.

The second is the infrastructure of how we live. And this is increasingly important in the 21st century. We've got to broaden our definition of infrastructure. This is about water. We want to completely eliminate all lead service lines and pipes. There's 10 million Americans today who get their water through lead pipes, even though we know that the safe level of lead in water is zero. It's also about high-speed internet.

High-speed internet is the electricity of 21st century. 35% of households in rural areas don't have. have any access to the internet. We're going to change that. We're going to get internet to everybody. And it is about electricity too. We're still going to need a lot of electricity in the 21st century, rebuilding our power infrastructure, making it more resilient so that things like what we saw in Texas don't keep happening. And building more housing too, so more people actually can get into affordable housing. That's piece two. Piece three is the infrastructure of our care economy. For so many families, you can't go to work. You can't be an active participant in today's

economy. If you're also having to take care of an elderly parent, an adult child with disabilities, that care, the infrastructure of our care economy, and particularly the people who do that work caring for elderly people, caring for our parents, it's some of the hardest work that people do, principally women, women of color. We want to invest in those jobs, better paying jobs, more union opportunities. And then lastly is how we create our innovation economy, research and development and manufacturing, trying to address some of the supply chain vulnerabilities we've seen that have come to bear in COVID, whether it's for computer chips that go into anything from cars to computers and make the biggest investment in R&D since the 1960s since the space race. So those are the

four elements. It's a big capital investment in America, but all stuff that is long overdue. Yeah, totally agree. And it's not just me who says that. We've seen polling that two-thirds of Americans support an ambitious infrastructure package. Now, McConnell, and I'm glad you're sitting down for this, McConnell shockingly does not support it. We already know that there's going to be a parade of Republicans who's come to Jesus moment, happened on January 20th, and suddenly they're fiscally conservative again. So this is a $2.5 trillion plan. So to get out in front of this, and I don't mean to adopt the Republican framing here, but you know this is going to be their headlines, so I'd rather it be accurate. How do we pay for it? Sure. Well, so one thing I would say is, the,

the support for that set of investments, those infrastructure investments I just described, is really across the board. Governors, mayors, business, labor, Republicans, Democrats have for some significant time been pounding the table and saying now's the time to go big on exactly the kind of infrastructure we're talking about. So we really have broad agreement on the necessity to make this type of investment. So we get to the question then of how we pay for it. The president has a particular view. He thinks that we should make this capital investment in America over about eight years, and we should pay for it over 15 years by making our corporate tax system fairer and making it more conducive to actually investing in the United States. One of the big problems

we have with corporate taxes is that companies have an incentive to shift profits and also shift production outside of the United States to tax havens and other jurisdictions. We passed a law in 2017 that just made matters worse. The typical tax rate that a multinational corporation pays has been cut in half since that tax law. So we've reformed the corporate tax system, generate revenue over 15 years to pay for this. We think that's a fair way to do it. And the president was really clear. That's his idea. He believes we have to make this infrastructure investment. Let's see what other people have, but let's not get caught in the game of saying we can't do big things because we can't pay for them. We've just shown a very common sense way to do it.

Right. And I think something else to consider too is the cost of not moving forward with this. I think just this year alone, we spent something in the ballpark of $95 billion and damages from crumbling infrastructure because of, you know, extreme weather events and whatnot. So, you know, the cost for not updating our infrastructure is another element to this that's not just like, that goes beyond just the cost on paper. We've seen the number of billion dollar weather events, meaning a weather event that cost more than a billion dollars, more than double, 22 just this year alone. And as you say, we spent over us $100 billion. just in public money to deal with the increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events. That doesn't count the impact on people who lost their lives, lost their homes, lost their livelihoods because of power failures, because of flooding.

We're seeing it all over the country, whether it's fires in the West, flooding in the Midwest, hurricanes in the east. And this is the new normal. This is the normal of the climate crisis. And another big reason to invest in this infrastructure is, by the way, we're proposing in both the power sector in the transportation sector, the building blocks of what it's going to mean to transform our economy to the zero carbon economy of the future, that the market is already pushing, but we need to build the infrastructure, just like we built the interstate highway system, we need to build a national

network of electric vehicle charging stations so that our industry can actually build those electric vehicles here in the United States. Those can be built by American workers. We can capture the export markets when other countries are moving to electric vehicles. That's the kind of opportunity that we could capture if we make these infrastructure investments now. And by the way, a lot of that was kind of surrendered to China in the last administration by virtue of entrenching our alliance on fossil fuels and putting aside, you know, renewables like we saw for the last four years with an administration that didn't believe that they were necessary, that surrendered all of those good American jobs to the country

that they fearmonger about the most, which is China. And I think Chinese solar companies, for example, you know, completely outnumber those in the U.S. Look, if you look at what China's done over the last five years, they are strategically investing in their own infrastructure, high speed rail, batteries, advanced research. Their investment is going up like this, and the United States is one of the only advanced economies where research as a share of our economy has fallen over the last generation.

So we are, we're at a moment where, as the president said yesterday, he believes that this is actually going to be a moment where we face a profound question. Is it democracies or is it autocracies in authoritarian regimes that can deliver for their people? Now, he firmly believes we believe that democratic government is the answer and we can deliver for the American people. But we have to show them that that's the case. The rescue plan was a big step forward in that respect. But we have a generational opportunity to invest in infrastructure and really show people that these are things that will affect them in their lives. clean water, access to high-speed internet. We're not talking about, you know, complicated issues.

If you don't have high-speed internet in your home, you're sending your kid to a McDonald's parking lot to get on remote school right now. Those are the things we can fix. That's a big national project we could all get behind. Outside Washington, that's something that has really broad support. So that's kind of what we're talking about here. Yeah. So you had touched on this before. A number of companies have paid zero dollars in federal income taxes. Would this package rectify that? Yeah. So one of the big things that's driving that is this race to the bottom internationally, where you have low tax jurisdictions around the world. And when you have a tax system that has a bunch of holes and a bunch of leakiness to it, companies can generate profit

in one place like the United States and shift that profit overseas. So this plan is really aimed at trying to lock that down and make sure that when companies are giving incentives, they're given incentives to invest here in the United States. So the first thing we would do is we would set the corporate rate at 28%. Just to be clear, that rate would be lower, a lower corporate tax rate than any year since World War II, other than the four years since the Trump tax cut. So we're not talking about, you know, we're not talking about doing something unprecedented here. But it would also set a 21% global minimum tax rate so that companies no longer have that incentive to shift profits overseas. Now, the last thing people say as well, if we do that, then we'll give companies the incentive

to just leave the United States altogether, to change their headquarters. This is called a corporate inversion in tax speak. But the other thing we're going to do is we're going to commit to working with our counterparts around the world this year to actually get other countries to adopt minimum tax rates as well. And if they don't, we would penalize the companies who go overseas into those foreign jurisdictions and then try to take tax deductions. So we're to tighten up those elements.

And the good news is if you do that, you also generate revenue that can pay for these types of investment. So we've heard from some progressives like AOC and others that while this package would be unprecedented, that if this is our once-in-a-generation shot to upgrade our infrastructure, that it doesn't go far enough. So what's the plan to reconcile that moving forward? Well, if you look at the components of the plan, it is bold and it is historic. We recognize that we're going to hear some people are going to say, it's not enough.

we're going to say it's way too much. What we're really looking at is what do we really need? What are the most important capital investments? And then what will they cost? And we don't want to spend any more than it's going to cost to do these things. So we've looked across the power sector, the transportation sector, water, broadband, schools, housing, our care infrastructure. This is our sense of what we think we need to really change the game here. But we're also really open. I mean, what we want to be clear, this is different from the rescue plan. in the sense that we want to have, we want this to the beginning, the beginning of a conversation with Congress. We want to sit down. We want to learn and listen from people who have looked at these

issues closely. And we want to craft a piece of legislation together that will really meet the moment. The one thing the president is uncompromising on is we don't have a lot of time. And so we've talked about trying to get something done by this summer. And part of that is motivated by the fact that, as you mentioned, as we come out of this crisis and start to move toward recovery, our competitors have a significant leg up on us. For the last several years, we have ignored these problems. And so if we don't act now, we may miss our moment. But, you know, we're open to ideas. That's for the process. It's going to be a sausage making process. It'll feel, it'll get hard. And lots of people have ideas. We'll get batted all around. But we're, you know,

eyes on the prize. At the end of the day, we really want to deliver something important for the American people. That answers my next question, too, which was the other side of the aisle, what we do about the Joe Mansions of the party. So, so yeah, I mean, you know, like you said, it's going to be a, it's going to be a process and everyone's going to have input. So I would say to that point, you really, it is important that we, that I would note the breadth of the support to do something really big on infrastructure. You know, I, you look at the, the left in the center of the Democratic Party, at least the center of the Republican Party, you look at the business community, you look at labor. There really is a lot of focus on how to do something big on

infrastructure. But it goes back to your point about infrastructure week, right? You've seen that kind of support for some time. Yeah. So we have to stop just talking about it and lionizing how great it would be to upgrade America's infrastructure. Right. Well, let's do it. Yeah. Perfectly put. But at the end of the day, when this does pass, I'm sure we'll heal Republicans congratulating themselves for this bill, just like they're taking credit for the American Rescue Plan. Just a few days ago, we had Congressman Madison Cawthorne tweet about the ARP's benefits in his own district, despite the fact that he literally voted against the bill. So do you have any advice for Republicans like Cawthorne who will inevitably do the same

when this bill is passed? You know, look, we want as many Americans as possible to understand just how the American Rescue Plan is delivering benefits for them. So, you know, look, joking aside, the American Rescue Plan, I think, has resonated with the American people because it is actually focused on them. It's not focused on what's going on in Washington. It's not focused on scoring points. It is really focused on delivering relief, whether that's money in their pocket through a, you know, a direct check, whether it's reducing child poverty. These are direct benefits in people's lives. And I think that, you know, I hope that everybody can step back and say that's the kind of thing that governing is trying to do

is to deliver for people in ways that they can feel it in their lives. And we welcome anyone who wants to come along, we're happy for them, happy for them to come along. Yeah, maybe next time they'll even vote for it. Who knows? Well, it would be great to, it would be great to have consistency between what support and what you vote for. Well, yeah, it's a lot to ask for in 2021 with certain people. But moving forward, will the $15 minimum wage be included in this package? And if so, and this package get passed through reconciliation, we're going to run into the same issue that we did before when the parliamentarian says that it doesn't qualify for reconciliation. So what's the plan to overcome that? Yeah. So on the $15 minimum wage, here's where we are. The president is firmly committed

the $15 minimum wage. He believes in the economics of it, which is why he put it forward right in the middle of the depths of this economic crisis and made the case, the entire economic team made the case that actually this is a good time to raise the minimum wage because it would deliver benefits directly to many of those essential workers who are out there doing the hard work of the country while working full time and still living in poverty. He believes that we have to find to path forward on it. But we recognize that we didn't get it done in the rescue plan for the reasons that we all know. So now we have to find a way to get this done. So what we're doing on the minimum wage is we're having conversations with congressional leadership, with Democrats

in the middle center and left of the party, and with some Republicans outside of Washington, too, to figure out how can we do this? What's the right path forward? We're going to have to do this together. There's no easy path. There's no immediate path. If we're easy, it would already get done. But we're committed to doing that, committed to find that path forward, even as we progress on this jobs plan. The last thing I would say about the minimum wage, and again, it gets you out of Washington is if you just looked at the debate over the last couple of months on the minimum wage, you would think that this was really quite a partisan issue. But across the country, you're seeing movement toward passing a $15 minimum wage. Florida.

defies convention. Florida, right? And what we're also seeing is that, you know, it doesn't cause, when the minimum wage goes to $15, we have a bunch of natural experiments around the country. We're not seeing, you know, we're not, we're not seeing economic cataclysm or anything like that. So I think that the, um, the economics and the politics are on our side, but we've got to find a path forward. Yeah. So we've been hearing a lot about high speed rail. If you look at European countries, their high-speed rail systems are greener, cleaner, faster, more convenient. Would the American Jobs plan lend itself to the possibility of high-speed rail here? Look, it's definitely an opportunity. There's the largest investment in rail in modern history

embedded in this plan. We'd be in trouble if there wasn't because President Biden is a railroad's guy. But the focus here is to try to identify where are going to be the highest value investments in rail in this country to actually get to really efficient, low-carbon ways of connecting people to the places they need to go. Some of that, I think, will be fixing existing corridors to increase the speed. Some of that may be building new corridors that would look like a high-speed rail. But if you look at the northeast corridor, for example, the most trafficked rail corridor, there are some common sense investments we could make improving the corridor that could dramatically increase the speeds on existing rail lines.

As the president says, you know, there's three turns. He knows exactly where they are because he's traveled it so much, but there's three turns in the route between New York and D.C. That if you fix those three turns, you could double the speed and cut in half the amount of time just on the existing rail. So there's a lot of opportunity. there was a lot of opportunity in rail to figure out how do we get to that efficient, fast, clean, rail corridor. And this is a plan that would, you know, that would chart out

a path to do that over a course of multiple years. Well, to piggy back off that, the cost for infrastructure in the U.S. is considerably higher than everywhere else in the world. I think the five most expensive subway lines in the world are all in New York. American infrastructure could be between two and eight times more expensive than comparable projects in Europe. So aside from the money allocated once this bill is actually passed. How is the White House making sure that the money is being spent efficiently? Well, some of that is through program design. And so, for example, you know, trying to use competitive funding allocation so that you can create a sort of race to the top of people who've got better ideas for design and more efficient, more efficient

design. Some of it is, is frankly, though, looking at. how we can use our procurement, not only to squeeze out the last marginal dollar, but also to achieve the best economic benefit for America. So, for example, one of the things that there's a real opportunity to do now is to look at when we are doing procurements for infrastructure investments, are we looking at the carbon content of the materials that are going to go into that project? And if we're going to make a big forward investment in concrete and steel. Could we do it in a way that was purchasing lighter weight, lower carbon materials? If you do that, you can do that in a way that's economically sensible. You can actually

create demand for these lower carbon materials. And you can save a lot of money down the line because we're building more resilient lower carbon footprint transportation. So there's also the element of thinking about the climate element of this as we think about what is going to be cost efficient. Yeah, totally. And I'm glad, especially with your background that we have you in this position and that the whole idea of climate and the environment is really weaved throughout this entire package. So with that said, Brian, thanks so much for taking the time to talk. I really appreciate it. Thank you. It's fun. Thanks again to Brian Dees. That's it for this episode. Talk to to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber,

music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook. by Nicholas Nicotera and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review and check out Brian Tyler Cohen.com for links to all of my other channels.