AP FACT CHECK: Biden distorts bipartisan infrastructure deal
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden overstated the expected employment gains Tuesday in making his pitch for a bipartisan infrastructure proposal that he said would create “millions” of new jobs. That might or might not have resulted from his initial plan, but there's a smaller one on the table now.
He also suggested that the package to boost roads, bridges and airports could be a solution for flight delays, glossing over recent and bigger problems of labor shortages and bad weather during the busy summer season.
A look at his claims in La Crosse, Wisconsin:
BIDEN: “After months of careful negotiation, of listening, of compromising together ... a bipartisan group of senators got together and they forged an agreement to move forward on the key priorities of my American Jobs Plan. ... As a result this is a generational investment — a generational investment to modernize our infrastructure, creating millions of good paying jobs. And that’s not coming from me, it’s coming from Wall Street.”
THE FACTS: The bipartisan proposal is not forecast to create “millions” of new jobs, according to Wall Street, but only a fraction of that.
That plan would provide $579 billion in new infrastructure spending and create new jobs by fixing and updating the nation's crumbling roads, bridges and ports, expanding public transit and building half a million electric charging stations. But it is significantly scaled back from Biden’s initial proposal for $2.3 trillion in new spending, which Moody’s Analytics estimated would create roughly 2.6 million jobs over the next decade.
Peter Williams, an analyst at investment bank Evercore ISI, estimates the bipartisan compromise package would create 450,000 to 775,000 jobs, and mostly not until 2025-2026, because infrastructure projects can take...
