Only 7 Percent of Biden's Bill Goes to Infrastructure: Why Republicans Are Wary of President's Plan

The U.S. is starting to see signs of the post-COVID-19 economic boom many experts forecasted as the country starts to recover from the devastation of the pandemic lockdowns.

"America is on the move again," President Joe Biden said in his speech before a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night. 

Even with the economy on the up, in his first address to Congress, Biden asked lawmakers for trillions of more dollars to keep boosting it and to create more jobs through his infrastructure bill.

"Now, I know some of you at home are wondering whether these jobs are for you," he said. "The American Jobs Plan is a blue-collar blueprint to build America. That's what it is."   

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Biden also laid out plans for universal pre-kindergarten, paid family leave, and two years of free tuition at community colleges.

"We also need to make a once-in-a-generation investment in our families. In our children," Biden said. 

His plans come with a price tag of over $4 trillion in new spending the president claims corporations and America's wealthiest taxpayers will fund. 

"I will not impose any tax increase on people making less than $400,000," he said. "We're only going to affect 3 tenths of 1 percent of Americans by the action."

But Republicans are skeptical.

"I think the American people are going to need to rise up and say, 'This is not what we had in mind'," Russell Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, said during an interview on JustTheNews.com's The Water Cooler hosted by CBN News Chief Political Analyst David Brody.

Vought, a former Trump appointee, believes the debt from these plans will cost future generations.  

"So the government's either going to raise taxes to pay for it, and he has substantial increases in taxes to be able to pay for it," Vought noted. "Over time it could inflate away, and that's a tax on poor people or people who are on a fixed income."

Trump tried to pass an infrastructure bill, too. But Vought says Democrats wouldn't get on board unless it included a corporate tax increase.

"They have no desire to actually fix infrastructure," he said. "And while I would be supportive of a common-sense bill to do that, this bill they have put forward, this $2 trillion bill, is only about 7 percent infrastructure, real infrastructure.

With the Senate filibuster still in place, the fate of Biden's agenda depends on working with Senate Republicans or not much of his legislation will be passed.