- White House fact sheet argues that President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill creates several opportunities for small businesses
- Benefits range from better financing options to increased government contracting opportunities
- Republicans and Democrats continue to spar over scope and cost of infrastructure initiatives
Summary by Dirk Langeveld
The White House has released a fact sheet touting the benefits it says small benefits will receive if its proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal becomes a reality. The Biden administration has periodically been releasing such breakdowns, including fact sheets on how the proposal could benefit individual states, support racial equity, and benefit rural communities.
The Biden administration says the proposal includes $110 billion in direct support through financing and technical assistance programs. The fact sheet outlines how eight-year infrastructure overhaul would increase federal contracting opportunities for small businesses, create a national network of small business incubators and innovation hubs, create initiatives to encourage small businesses to participate in federal research and development efforts, assist minority-owned firms in accessing capital, provide more funding for federal lending programs as well as new financing opportunities (including one for small manufacturers), and strengthen supply chains.
The overview argues that improved roads and bridges will assist small businesses with deliveries, while better broadband access will help them reach more customers digitally – a key consideration as e-commerce became more prevalent after the COVID-19 pandemic. The fact sheet concludes by saying its tax policy proposals also aim to “level the playing field between small businesses and large, multinational corporations” and ensure that small businesses don’t pay a higher tax rate than smaller ones.
Republicans have criticized the administration’s proposal as pursuing unrelated policy goals and have been cool to the idea of raising the corporate tax rate to fund the initiatives. Some members of the party are pursuing a counterproposal to fund traditional infrastructure projects, including roads, bridges, ports, airports, and broadband.
Following claims that a Moody’s analysis shows that the infrastructure proposal would create 19 million jobs, the Biden administration has clarified that it would directly create just 2.7 million jobs while the remaining 16.3 million are expected to materialize with or without the plan in place. A separate report from Georgetown University suggests that the Biden proposal would create or retain 15 million jobs, primarily in transportation and warehousing.
