Joe Biden's next big plan

A lot of great ideas — also some transportation infrastructure

(Photo by Oliver Contreras-Pool/Getty Images)

It’s infrastructure week at last!

Joe Biden has revealed the American Jobs Plan, which I would call the second of a proposed three-part legislative agenda. The White House, however, says the Rescue Plan was part one and now there is a part two — building back better — which itself comes in two parts, of which the Jobs Plan is part one. Got it? Well the logic is a bit tortured, and that’s kind of how I feel about this plan; it contains a lot of great ideas, but I’m nonetheless kind of skeptical of it in terms of its construction and prioritization.

The top line, as you’ve probably heard by now, is about $2 trillion in spending.

It’s also “paid for” in the congressional political sense by increases in taxes on the rich and corporations. In economic terms, though, what you really have here is $2 trillion in temporary spending that’s projected to go out over an eight-year time horizon. Then you have tax increases that are smaller in scale than …