<\/p>\n
The document shows the Biden team is focusing on long-term economic policy at a time when conservatives have ramped up criticism of the president over slowing job growth and accelerating inflation.<\/span>Credit:<\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n The document provides a deeper economic backbone for arguments that Biden has made publicly and privately to sell his plans to lawmakers, including his expected comments to a group of Republican senators he has invited to the White House on Thursday to negotiate over an infrastructure package.<\/p>\n It also reflects the administration\u2019s longer-term thinking on economic policy at a time when conservatives have ramped up criticism of the president over slowing job growth and accelerating inflation. Republicans continue to insist that tax cuts, particularly for business, are the key to economic competitiveness and middle-class prosperity. They have refused to negotiate any changes to their party\u2019s signature 2017 tax law as part of an infrastructure agreement, even as they concede some need for a limited version of the new public investments Biden is calling for.<\/p>\n Administration officials express confidence that recent price surges in used cars, airfare and other sectors of the economy will prove temporary and that job growth will speed up again as more working-age Americans are vaccinated against COVID-19 and regain access to child care during work hours. They say Biden\u2019s $US1.9 trillion economic aid package, the \u201cAmerican Rescue Plan,\u201d which he signed in March, will lift job growth in the months to come \u2014 and that it is appropriate for the president to look past the current crisis and push efforts to strengthen the economy long-term.<\/p>\n The two halves of Biden\u2019s $US4 trillion agenda, the \u201cAmerican Jobs Plan\u201d and the \u201cAmerican Families Plan,\u201d are premised on the economy returning to a low rate of unemployment where essentially every American who wants to work is able to find a job, Cecilia Rouse, who leads the Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview.<\/p>\n \u201cThe American Rescue Plan was rescue,\u201d Rouse said. \u201cIt was meant as stimulus as we work through this, you know, hopefully once-in-a-century, if not longer, pandemic. The American Jobs Plan, American Families Plan are saying, look, that\u2019s behind us, but we knew going into the pandemic that there were structural problems in our country and in our economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Biden\u2019s plans would raise taxes on high earners and corporations in order to fund new federal spending on physical infrastructure, care for children and older Americans, expanded access to education, an accelerated transition to low-carbon energy and more.<\/p>\n Those efforts \u201creflect the empirical evidence that a strong economy depends on a solid foundation of public investment, and that investments in workers, families, and communities can pay off for decades to come,\u201d Biden\u2019s advisers wrote. \u201cThese plans are not emergency legislation, they address long-standing challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n The five-page brief focuses on arguments about what drives productivity, wage growth, innovation and equity in the economy. All are issues that predate the coronavirus recession and recovery \u2014 and which Democrats in particular have pledged for years to address.<\/p>\n The US economic recovery is showing signs of slowing. <\/span>Credit:<\/span>AP<\/cite><\/p>\n It also recounts what it calls the federal government\u2019s underinvestment in policies that help educate children and adults, facilitate the development of new technologies and industries and support parents so that they are able to work and earn more. It singles out the wave of fast-developed COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna, which grew out of publicly funded research, as an example of public investments yielding private-sector innovation.<\/p>\n \u201cThose started with ideas that were funded by the public sector decades ago,\u201d Rouse said. \u201cAnd then the private sector built on top of that, so it\u2019s really the private sector needs to work with the public sector. We are all very grateful that the public sector was willing to take that risk, and it didn\u2019t pay off right away.<\/p>\n \u201cIn many ways, the federal government should be patient,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are a kind of entity; we should be patient. So I\u2019m not saying we have to wait a million years for something to pay off, but we don\u2019t need to have the kind of immediate payoff that a private company might need to see.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n