A big push for renewable energy, cheaper medicines and a corporate tax: this is what Joe Biden’s great investment plan of more than 430,000 million dollars foresees, definitively approved by the US Congress on Friday.
The text, from which several Democratic amendments have however been withdrawn, should put the country on the right track to achieve its greenhouse gas reduction goals. It will be enacted by Joe Biden next week, the president said in a tweet.
The Republican camp, for its part, accuses the text of generating unnecessary public spending, and criticizes the use of US tax authorities to finance them. Former President Donald Trump made a call on his social network Truth Social for all Republicans to speak out against it.
370 billion for the climate
This is the largest investment ever seen in the United States in the fight against climate change: in this text, 370,000 million dollars are foreseen for the climate.
Instead of fines for polluters, the bill offers a series of financial incentives aimed at shifting the US economy toward non-fossil energy sources. A series of tax credits have been provided for producers and consumers of wind, solar and nuclear energy.
Under this reform, an American will receive up to $7,500 in tax credits for the purchase of an electric car. The installation of solar panels on your roof will be covered at 30%. Some 60 billion dollars are also planned for the construction of wind turbines, solar panels and electric vehicles in the United States.
The same amount goes to a series of programs to help the most modest households in their energy transition, in particular by renovating their homes. This reform also includes massive investments to strengthen the resilience of forests to the fires that devastate the country and to protect coastal areas from hurricanes.
This project should allow the United States to reduce its CO2 emissions by 40% by 2030 compared to 2005.
64 billion for health
The second part of this great investment plan aims to partially correct the enormous inequalities in access to care in the United States, in particular by reducing the price of medicines.
Medicare, a public health insurance for people over 65 and with lower incomes, will for the first time be able to negotiate the prices of certain drugs directly with pharmaceutical companies, and thus obtain more competitive rates. The plan will also force drug companies to offer consumer discounts for certain drugs whose prices are rising faster than inflation.
The bill also plans to extend until 2025 the protections of the “Affordable Care Act”, the emblematic health insurance better known as “Obamacare”, the flagship law of Barack Obama.
Companies taxed at 15%
Parallel to these massive investments, the “Inflation Reduction Law”, as it is called, aims to reduce the public deficit by adopting a minimum tax rate of 15% for all companies whose profits exceed one billion dollars.
This new tax aims to prevent certain large companies from taking advantage of the tax loopholes that have allowed them to pay a much lower rate than the theoretical one.
It is estimated that this measure could generate more than $258 billion in US federal revenue over the next 10 years.
Source: BFM TV
