How are we going to pay for all this shit?

[royamcr]

Most infrastructure is government anyway, whether it be city or state. They might sub out to private contractors. Trump and his trumptards are stupid and misinformed.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by nevergaveitathought

trump's infrastructure proposal was like 200 billion

I think the dims criticized trumps as way too much, they weren't going to go for it no matter what

trump's had a public/private mix...I recall blackstone started an infrastructure fund in anticipation,

the total plan was something like 1 trillion with 200 billion from government and the rest from private investment

Here's an analysis from yesterday's WSJ explaining how the private-public partnerships would work.


Build Infrastructure With Private Cash

Instead of tax increases, why not finance some of the plan with public-private partnerships?

By Robert Poole
March 31, 2021 6:21 pm ET


President Biden unveiled his $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal on Wednesday, planning to fund it mostly via huge corporate tax increases, with the rest apparently from more federal borrowing. But if the White House and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg truly want a bipartisan bill, they should invite private capital to play a major role in paying for portions of the plan. That would reduce the extent of federal tax increases and borrowing.

Few people understand how much private capital is available and in use across the world to finance infrastructure. Last year alone, infrastructure investment funds raised a near-record $102 billion in equity. Despite the pandemic, they invested $54 billion in projects world-wide last year. Those who invest in these funds are institutional investors, such as insurance companies and public pension funds. They seek to invest equity in long-lived projects that generate revenue and are a good match for their long-term liabilities.

The large majority of this private investment goes to projects outside the U.S. Other countries have privatized airports, seaports and toll roads, so the funds can invest equity in either acquiring or modernizing them. But in this country, those assets are owned by government. The only way funds can invest equity is if the facilities are leased long-term as public-private partnerships. Most current public-private projects are brand-new facilities, like the express toll lanes added to freeways outside Washington and in Dallas. But there are a few examples of public-private partnerships improving existing facilities via long-term leases, including the Indiana Toll Road and the San Juan International Airport.

The administration’s Build Back Better program could encourage state and local governments to modernize aging and outdated highways, bridges and utilities via equity investments from infrastructure investment funds. Take the Interstate Highway System. A 2018 study by the Transportation Research Board found that most of the original pavement is wearing out. Some major bridges and interchanges need replacing, and truck-intensive corridors need more lanes. The estimated cost: $1 trillion over 20 years.

These would be ideal projects for public-pension fund investment. U.S. and Canadian pension funds are already investors in the public-private partnership companies of the Indiana Toll Road, Chicago Skyway and the Virginia express lanes, diversifying their portfolios in hopes of a higher return. Were Congress to permit tolling to finance reconstruction of individual corridors, provided states were willing, pension funds and other equity investors would jump at the chance to finance such megaprojects.

In recent years, Congress has taken a few steps in this direction. It authorized the issuance of tax-exempt private-activity bonds, to put public-private partnerships on a level cost-of-debt basis with government agencies. And it has loosened what used to be a ban on using tolls on the 95% of the interstate system originally developed with 90% federal funding.

But those provisions aren’t enough if the goal is to overhaul the interstates at a cost of $1 trillion. The current federal cap of $15 billion worth of private-activity bonds has recently been reached, and a bipartisan bill has been introduced to double that. But the law authorizing such bonds also referred exclusively to new public projects, when today’s need is mostly to rebuild existing infrastructure. That needs to be fixed. Also, states still aren’t generally permitted to finance interstate modernization with tolls. This option should be available to all states, with protections to ensure it is done in a customer-friendly way.

Several weeks ago the nonprofit Bipartisan Policy Center hosted a webinar on paying for the new infrastructure program. Much of the event dealt with the case for long-term public-private partnerships to finance such an effort. This is the path to a bipartisan bill: Don’t fund it exclusively via borrowing. Don’t risk economic recovery by enacting large federal tax increases. Open the door to hundreds of billions in private capital from investors like public pension funds. That will help build infrastructure back better.

Mr. Poole is director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation and author of “Rethinking America’s Highways” (University of Chicago Press, 2018).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/build-i...sh-11617229279

[Tiny]

Originally Posted by bambino

Here’s a link to research government spending:


https://www.usaspending.gov/award/AS...087097202_7300

Interesting site. You can see where the money goes if you click through the spending explorer page,

https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer

[matchingmole]

Bill includes : - $200 billion for housing assistance - $620 billion for roads, bridges, rail, and transit - public transit spending would double under the proposal - universal broadband availability -childcare -manufacturing -








water/sewage pipes

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by royamcr

Most infrastructure is government anyway, whether it be city or state. They might sub out to private contractors. Trump and his trumptards are stupid and misinformed.

See my previous post #47. Far from being a "trumptard", Mr. Poole is a recognized non-partisan expert on transportation and infrastructure. You are a nobody. But go ahead and critique Mr. Poole's proposals, if you can. Tell us why raising taxes, slowing the economic recovery and adding yet more to the national debt is preferable to letting private capital play a role.

[Tiny]

I don't know if Congress would have cooperated, but public-private partnerships (PPP's) are something Trump would have been good at. Remember how he took over renovation of an ice skating rink that the city of New York gave up on after 6 or 7 seven years. He got it finished in four months and $750,000 under budget. The Trump organization has operated the rink from 1986 to present, donating profits to charity. This was a truly successful PPP, although Mayor DeBlasio is terminating it this year for political reasons.

A criticism of public-private partnerships, particularly in corrupt developing countries, is that the private sector makes out like a bandit sometimes. Well, if Trump had taken a hand in negotiating a trillion dollar PPP, it probably would have been the government making out like a bandit, given Trump's talent at squeezing vendors.

I've criticized Trump as much as anyone from the right on this board, but he did have his talents. In Tiny's Fantasy World, he would have made a great Infrastructure Czar, working under President Gary Johnson.

[bambino]

Originally Posted by Tiny

I don't know if Congress would have cooperated, but public-private partnerships (PPP's) are something Trump would have been good at. Remember how he took over renovation of an ice skating rink that the city of New York gave up on after 6 or 7 seven years. He got it finished in four months and $750,000 under budget. The Trump organization has operated the rink from 1986 to present, donating profits to charity. This was a truly successful PPP, although Mayor DeBlasio is terminating it this year for political reasons.

A criticism of public-private partnerships, particularly in corrupt developing countries, is that the private sector makes out like a bandit sometimes. Well, if Trump had taken a hand in negotiating a trillion dollar PPP, it probably would have been the government making out like a bandit, given Trump's talent at squeezing vendors.

I've criticized Trump as much as anyone from the right on this board, but he did have his talents. In Tiny's Fantasy World, he would have made a great Infrastructure Czar, working under President Gary Johnson.

Gary Johnson didn’t even know about Aleppo at the time. Which was a war torn city in Syria. Trump created 5 peace deals in the Middle East. Cmon man.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by Tiny

OK, The COVID relief bill just passed will cost 1.9 trillion. Biden has just proposed another 2.2 trillion for Democratic priorities and infrastructure, and reportedly will propose another 2 trillion spending bill in April for more Democratic Party priorities. That adds up to about 6 trillion in round numbers.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Joe Manchin believe the $2.2 trillion just announced is too low. AOC wants it upped to $10 trillion and Manchin wants $4 trillion.

And then there's the Green New Deal, beloved by all the progressive Democratic Politicians. The American Action Forum estimates that would take $51 trillion to $93 trillion over the next ten years.

So most of this money is supposed to come from people who make more than $1 million a year, and all of it from those who make over $400,000 per year. President Biden has promised people making less than $400,000 per year will not have their tax rates increased....

... There's a snowball's chance in hell these politicians can do what they want to do by just taxing the rich.

Tiny - excellent thread, you beat me to it!

Your thread title echoes my sentiments entirely. There is no limit, no restraining force or principle, no sense of fiscal responsibility whatsoever behind the latest Biden-Sanders-Warren dim-retard spending blowout proposals.

I can only shudder when I try to imagine how these bills are drafted. I visualize a bunch of aging, '60s hippie dipshits sitting around a conference table on Capitol Hill vying to insert the most humongous amounts for the most frivolous virtue-signaling spending purposes into each bill.

"I want $10 billion for SOCIAL EQUITY INFRASTRUCTURE!" screams one purple-haired woman from Liz Warren's staff.

"I'll see your $10 billion and raise you another $20 billion!" counters Maxine Watters' BLM advisor.

"Fuck that! Go big or go home! Let's spend $100 billion on 'social equity' - and no GAO tabs on where the money goes! I sure as hell don't want anyone to know when I funnel it back as campaign donations!" yells AOC's boyfriend Riley Roberts.

"Now let's move on to all the cool Greenie stuff masquerading as infrastructure!"

Do you think I'm kidding? I'll bet you dollars to donuts it's close to reality. The inmates are now running the asylum. The bulls are stampeding through the streets, trampling everyone in sight. The alcoholics have been given the keys to the liquor cabinet. Pick your metaphor, it ain't pretty. Never let a good pandemic go to waste!

It's enough to make me yearn for the days of odumbo and his misspent 2009 stimulus program. That one totaled a mere $828 billion, if my memory is correct. According to Larry Summers who helped put it together, the ARRA ("American Recovery and Reinvestment Act") was a mere one-sixth the size of the $1.9 trillion covid-19 "relief" package the dim-retards enacted last month, even before the latest faux-infrastructure blowout plan. All of this is an economic and fiscal disaster-in-the-making. The only thing that might save us now is a new reinvigorated Tea Party movement that is six times as strong and determined as the original one.

Here is the WSJ's initial reaction to the latest Biden fiasco plan. The dim-retards have completely perverted the meaning of the word "infrastructure" - just as they previously stretched beyond all logic and recognition the meaning of "covid relief".

Roads & bridges - $115 bn
Airports - $25 bn
Ports & Waterways - $17 bn

Bottom Line:
1. Total Infrastructure = 7%

2. Total for Dim-Retard Slush Fund Categories to Buy Votes and Reward Crooked Friends = $2.19 trillion or 93%!


Biden Defines Infrastructure Down

Now it’s mostly about green-energy subsidies and payments to social workers.

By The Editorial Board
Updated April 1, 2021 9:53 am ET

Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders lost the Democratic presidential nomination, but you wouldn’t know from President Biden’s first two months in office. First came $1.9 trillion in social spending under the cover of Covid-19, and now comes $2.3 trillion more for climate and political spending dressed as “infrastructure.”

Most Americans think of infrastructure as roads, highways, bridges and other traditional public works. That’s why it polls well, and every President has supported more of it.

Yet this accounts for a mere $115 billion of Mr. Biden’s proposal. There’s another $25 billion for airports and $17 billion for ports and waterways that also fill a public purpose. The rest of the $620 billion earmarked for “transportation” are subsidies for green energy and payouts to unions for the jobs his climate regulation will kill. This is really a plan to build government back bigger than it has ever been.

The magnitude of spending is something to behold. There’s $85 billion for mass transit plus $80 billion for Amtrak, which is on top of the $70 billion that Congress appropriated for mass transit in three Covid spending bills. The money is essentially a bailout for unions, whose generous pay and benefits have captured funds meant for subway and rail repairs.

Mr. Biden also proposes to build “broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas” by subsidizing government-owned and nonprofit networks. But the Trump Federal Communications Commission unleashed private broadband investment by liberating providers from Obama net neutrality rules, streamlining regulations and limiting how much cities could extort them to install 5G sites. In 2019 providers built over 46,000 cell sites, up from a mere 708 in 2016.

Then there’s $174 billion for electric vehicles, including money to build 500,000 charging stations and for consumer “incentives” on top of the current $7,500 federal tax credit to buy an EV. Electric cars are fine with us if they can compete on their own merits. But they are still too expensive for most Americans, and their limited battery range makes them impractical outside metropolitan areas.

No matter. Democrats believe that if government subsidizes EVs enough, Americans will buy them. If not, they will eventually be forced to, as California has signaled it will do. The United Auto Workers has warned EVs will destroy jobs, but Mr. Biden promises that cars will be made by workers with “good”—i.e., union—jobs. Will non-unionized auto makers not qualify for subsidies?

Mr. Biden also wants to force-feed green energy onto the U.S. electric grid—especially after the embarrassment of the last year’s power outages in California and Texas due to their over-reliance on solar and wind. He wants $100 billion to “decarbonize” the grid by 2035—e.g., banish coal and natural gas.

This will require 20 gigawatts of “high-voltage capacity power lines” to transport solar power from California to Texas and wind power in reverse. Good luck getting the permits to build those lines, as environmental groups have blocked transmission lines to transport hydropower from Canada to the Northeast.

On that point, missing from the Biden plan is any mention of easing National Environmental Policy Act reviews. These have delayed and raised costs for countless public works over the years, and Donald Trump wanted Congress to streamline permitting. Democrats refused, and Mr. Biden doesn’t seem to care how long these projects will take.

Mr. Biden is also redefining infrastructure as social-justice policy and income redistribution. He promises to target 40% of “climate and clean” investments “to disadvantaged communities”—defined in part by race—and tie federal spending to union prevailing wages.

His plan also includes $213 billion for affordable housing, $100 billion for retrofitting public schools, $25 billion for child-care facilities and $400 billion for increasing home-health care. “We think that caregiving is an essential American infrastructure,” says Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry.

Note the political irony of all this. Mr. Biden says “public investment” has fallen as a share of the economy since the 1960s, and he has a point. But the main reason is that government spending on social welfare, entitlements and public unions have squeezed out public works. Now he’s redefining social welfare as public works to drive more social-welfare spending, which will further crowd out money for public works and government R&D to compete against China.

As usual, Mr. Biden professes to want to make this bill “bipartisan,” but also as usual he let Democrats on Capitol Hill write his plan. That explains its money-for-everybody-and-everything character. Along with his gigantic tax increases (see nearby), Mr. Biden has proven to be the perfect political front for the Warren-Sanders agenda.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-b...er-11617231190

[lustylad]

Ok, so the spending blowout is only one side of the coin. Raising your taxes is the other poison, as tiny noted.

Here's the WSJ again:


Here Come the Biden Taxes

The middle class will pay for the largest tax increase since 1968.

By The Editorial Board
March 31, 2021 6:53 pm ET

So much for the illusion of cost-free spending blowouts. The bill for President Biden’s agenda is coming due, starting with Wednesday’s proposal for the largest corporate tax increase in decades. Can we finally drop the pretense that any of this is moderate or unifying or bipartisan?

Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increase alone is more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with another $1.5 trillion coming soon on individual income and investment. That’s about $300 billion a year, or 1.36% of GDP each year, assuming U.S. GDP of $22 trillion. Dan Clifton of Strategas Research Partners compares that to Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase of 0.4% of GDP, making the Biden increase the largest since 1968.

Mr. Biden’s corporate increase amounts to the restoration of the Obama-era corporate tax burden, only much more so. The GOP tax reform of 2017 was designed to fix a corporate tax system that was uncompetitive and convoluted. Companies paid taxes in countries where they earned the income, but then again if they returned the money to the U.S. Trillions of dollars piled up overseas. Remember the string of corporate “inversions” when CEOs moved their headquarters overseas?

Those inversions all but ended after 2017 as reform lowered the top corporate rate to 21% from 35% and moved the U.S. closer to a territorial tax system in which income is taxed where it is earned. Mr. Clifton calculates that companies repatriated $1.6 trillion from overseas to the U.S. from 2018-2020, which they deployed for a variety of useful economic purposes. The repatriation total three years before reform: only $495 billion.

Mr. Biden wants to raise the corporate rate back up to 28%, but that’s the least of his proposals. He also wants to add penalties that would make inversions punitive, and he’d impose a global minimum corporate tax of 21%. This would shoot the tax burden on U.S. companies back toward the top of the developed world list. At least nine major countries have cut their corporate tax rate since 2017, including France, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The larger Biden goal is to end global tax competition, much as its ban on state tax cutting seeks to end income-tax competition among the 50 states. “The United States can lead the world to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates,” says the White House fact sheet. Mr. Biden says he wants “other countries to adopt strong minimum taxes on corporations” so nations like Ireland can no longer compete for capital with lower tax rates.

This has long been the dream of the French and Germans, working through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But even the OECD has been discussing a global minimum tax of about 12%, while Mr. Biden wants 21%. Only in Washington would the left punish American employers in the hope that the rest of the world will be as self-destructive.

All of this is in addition to the looming Biden tax increases on dividends, capital gains and other investment income. The lower 2017 corporate rate was intended to reduce the double taxation of corporate income that is built into the U.S. code. Mr. Clifton calculates that if the Biden plan becomes law the U.S. would have the highest overall tax burden on corporate income—62.7%—in the OECD.

The great political fakery here is that corporate taxes merely fall on CEOs and rich shareholders. But as everyone knows, corporations don’t really pay taxes. They are vehicles for collecting taxes that are ultimately paid by some combination of customers in higher prices, workers in lower wages, and shareholders in lower returns on investment.

The economic literature is clear on this point. Kevin Hassett, Aparna Mathur, Laurence Kotlikoff and other economists have done extensive work showing how lower corporate tax rates result in higher wages. Higher after-tax profits mean more corporate investment, which means more productive workers, whom companies can afford to pay more.

In other words, Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increases will hit the middle class hard—in the value of their 401(k)s, the size of their pay packets, and what they pay for goods and services. This damage won’t show up immediately, especially as the economy booms as Covid eases this year, but the corrosive impact will compound in the coming years.

How much of this will pass Congress? The tax increases are so extreme that they seem intended to give Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema room to demand changes and then claim victory before voting for increases that would still be enormous. Note that the White House increased the magnitude of the increases at the insistence of the Congressional left, and with no input from Republicans.

Once again the plan is to use budget reconciliation to jam $4 trillion more in spending and $3 trillion in tax increases through Congress on a partisan vote. And to do so with the narrowest majorities in decades.

Joe Biden wants to pass an FDR agenda on a Donald Trump mandate. We hope he gets the furious resistance he’s inviting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/here-co...es-11617231225

[bambino]

Originally Posted by lustylad

Ok, so the spending blowout is only one side of the coin. Raising your taxes is the other poison, as tiny noted.

Here's the WSJ again:


Here Come the Biden Taxes

The middle class will pay for the largest tax increase since 1968.

By The Editorial Board
March 31, 2021 6:53 pm ET

So much for the illusion of cost-free spending blowouts. The bill for President Biden’s agenda is coming due, starting with Wednesday’s proposal for the largest corporate tax increase in decades. Can we finally drop the pretense that any of this is moderate or unifying or bipartisan?

Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increase alone is more than $1.5 trillion over 10 years, with another $1.5 trillion coming soon on individual income and investment. That’s about $300 billion a year, or 1.36% of GDP each year, assuming U.S. GDP of $22 trillion. Dan Clifton of Strategas Research Partners compares that to Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax increase of 0.4% of GDP, making the Biden increase the largest since 1968.

Mr. Biden’s corporate increase amounts to the restoration of the Obama-era corporate tax burden, only much more so. The GOP tax reform of 2017 was designed to fix a corporate tax system that was uncompetitive and convoluted. Companies paid taxes in countries where they earned the income, but then again if they returned the money to the U.S. Trillions of dollars piled up overseas. Remember the string of corporate “inversions” when CEOs moved their headquarters overseas?

Those inversions all but ended after 2017 as reform lowered the top corporate rate to 21% from 35% and moved the U.S. closer to a territorial tax system in which income is taxed where it is earned. Mr. Clifton calculates that companies repatriated $1.6 trillion from overseas to the U.S. from 2018-2020, which they deployed for a variety of useful economic purposes. The repatriation total three years before reform: only $495 billion.

Mr. Biden wants to raise the corporate rate back up to 28%, but that’s the least of his proposals. He also wants to add penalties that would make inversions punitive, and he’d impose a global minimum corporate tax of 21%. This would shoot the tax burden on U.S. companies back toward the top of the developed world list. At least nine major countries have cut their corporate tax rate since 2017, including France, Sweden and the Netherlands.

The larger Biden goal is to end global tax competition, much as its ban on state tax cutting seeks to end income-tax competition among the 50 states. “The United States can lead the world to end the race to the bottom on corporate tax rates,” says the White House fact sheet. Mr. Biden says he wants “other countries to adopt strong minimum taxes on corporations” so nations like Ireland can no longer compete for capital with lower tax rates.

This has long been the dream of the French and Germans, working through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But even the OECD has been discussing a global minimum tax of about 12%, while Mr. Biden wants 21%. Only in Washington would the left punish American employers in the hope that the rest of the world will be as self-destructive.

All of this is in addition to the looming Biden tax increases on dividends, capital gains and other investment income. The lower 2017 corporate rate was intended to reduce the double taxation of corporate income that is built into the U.S. code. Mr. Clifton calculates that if the Biden plan becomes law the U.S. would have the highest overall tax burden on corporate income—62.7%—in the OECD.

The great political fakery here is that corporate taxes merely fall on CEOs and rich shareholders. But as everyone knows, corporations don’t really pay taxes. They are vehicles for collecting taxes that are ultimately paid by some combination of customers in higher prices, workers in lower wages, and shareholders in lower returns on investment.

The economic literature is clear on this point. Kevin Hassett, Aparna Mathur, Laurence Kotlikoff and other economists have done extensive work showing how lower corporate tax rates result in higher wages. Higher after-tax profits mean more corporate investment, which means more productive workers, whom companies can afford to pay more.

In other words, Mr. Biden’s corporate tax increases will hit the middle class hard—in the value of their 401(k)s, the size of their pay packets, and what they pay for goods and services. This damage won’t show up immediately, especially as the economy booms as Covid eases this year, but the corrosive impact will compound in the coming years.

How much of this will pass Congress? The tax increases are so extreme that they seem intended to give Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema room to demand changes and then claim victory before voting for increases that would still be enormous. Note that the White House increased the magnitude of the increases at the insistence of the Congressional left, and with no input from Republicans.

Once again the plan is to use budget reconciliation to jam $4 trillion more in spending and $3 trillion in tax increases through Congress on a partisan vote. And to do so with the narrowest majorities in decades.

Joe Biden wants to pass an FDR agenda on a Donald Trump mandate. We hope he gets the furious resistance he’s inviting.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/here-co...es-11617231225

I seriously doubt there’s a handful of Dems that will push back. Whoever’s running the show, Biden isn’t, doesn’t care about what the public thinks. The border fiasco and the Covid bill proves this.

[lustylad]

Today is Good Friday. We are all sinners. Jesus died for our sins.

When it comes to fiscal sins, committed by using/abusing other people's money, Joe Biden is the biggest sinner of us all.

Pray for Joe Biden.

[bambino]

Originally Posted by lustylad

Today is Good Friday. We are all sinners. Jesus died for our sins.

When it comes to fiscal sins, committed by using/abusing other people's money, Joe Biden is the biggest sinner of us all.

Pray for Joe Biden.

Nope

[winn dixie]

Originally Posted by bambino

Nope

My sentiment too

[royamcr]

Originally Posted by Jacuzzme

That’d be a good start.

That would be fucking stupid.

No guarantee trump would even make it through the primaries. There are much better Republican choices. Hell with over 30 lawsuits pending trump may not even be able to. That can't be cheap to defend. He isn't as rich as some people think.

[lustylad]

Originally Posted by lustylad

Pray for Joe Biden.

Originally Posted by bambino

Nope

Originally Posted by winn dixie

My sentiment too

Just for Good Friday. I know the fact that he pretends to be a good Catholic makes it harder for us. But if our prayers work, he may repent of his sinful ways.

If not, we can go back to trashing him after Easter.