How many jobs will be lost to Biden ‘infrastructure’?

The Wharton crew doesn’t think the results would get all that much better in succeeding years, with one significant exception. The Eanalysis does see a benign impact on the federal budget after 2031 because the plan’s spending is scheduled to end while the new taxes are intended to last forever. But how often do massive Washington subsidy schemes fail to get renewed by Congress?

Whether or not one expects Washington to suddenly embrace spending discipline in 2031, the private economy will continue to suffer, according to the Wharton projection. The authors note that the tax provisions discourage investment, and therefore they offer the following forecast:

The decline in capital makes workers less productive despite the increase in productivity due to more infrastructure, dragging hourly wages down by 0.7 percent in 2031 and 0.8 percent in 2050. Overall, GDP is 0.9 percent lower in 2031 and 0.8 percent lower in 2050.

This may be the end of the brief and bizarre argument that the Biden spending splurge would be a job creator. The trouble seems to have started last week with a suspect claim from the president:

Independent analysis shows that if we pass this plan, the economy will create 19 million jobs — good jobs, blue-collar jobs, jobs that pay well.

The boast was highly misleading because even if one buys the analysis from the source cited by the White House—a report from government-friendly economist Mark Zandi and a colleague at Moody’s Analytics—their report also forecast that more than 16 million jobs would be created if the plan did not pass and Mr. Biden just left the economy alone.

Some voters may be inclined to cut the president some slack since he is still just a few months into the first executive job of his career and may need time to learn how to manage his economic team.

But a much more seasoned executive, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor and now Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, took the Biden obfuscation and turned it into a full-blown falsehood. Mr. Buttigieg told this whopper on Sunday’s edition of NBC’s “Meet the Press":

The American Jobs Plan is about a generational investment. It’s going to create 19 million jobs. And we’re talking about economic growth that’s going to go on for years and years.

Mr. Buttigieg then repeated the 19 million claim in his discussion with NBC’s hard-nosed interrogator Chuck Todd, who naturally realized that the forecast was wildly unrealistic and demanded that viewers receive an explanation.

Just kidding. Mr. Todd didn’t raise any objections, but instead invited Mr. Buttigieg to share his “vision" of America’s future.

Other administration officials, like Biden economic adviser Brian Deese, have also been slinging the 19 million claim around Beltway media circles. The tall tales got so out of hand that at Wednesday’s White House press briefing Press Secretary Jen Psaki had to clarify:

...Moody’s ran an analysis that showed that the economy would create 19 million jobs over the next decade if Congress passes the American Jobs Plan — almost 3 million more than if it doesn’t. So that is the — that is what the impact would be of the American Jobs Plan: 2.7 million, to be totally clear.

To be totally clear, last weekend’s Team Biden claims on job creation were seven times the amount forecast by their chosen analyst. How close will the actual number be to zero if the plan is enacted? In the short term, the number could even be negative—at least according to the key source of the Biden claims.

Robert Farley of FactCheck.org writes:

“Employment is 23,000 jobs lower in calendar year 2022 as a result of the plan, as the higher corporate taxes take effect at the start of the year, and the infrastructure spending doesn’t kick-in until later in the year," Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics, told us via email.

As for the long term, the new Wharton report should certainly give lawmakers pause, given all the economic destruction it projects.

Mr. Buttigieg has already made it clear that he is not a car guy. The tax hikes to cover some of the planned spending explosion make it clear that he and Mr. Biden are not jobs guys, either.

James Freeman is the co-author of “The Cost: Trump, China and American Revival."

This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text.