to build something better. and of course, in the nature of infrastructure spending, it s not it s not a one-year spending program. you know, this kind of building goes on for many years. the building that will be authorized by the infrastructure bill. and then the economic benefits of that work go on for years after the construction itself is completed. yeah. that s exactly right. and it s such a great opportunity right now. a lot of this is being paid for. the president has proposed tax increases on high-income households and some rollback of the corporate rate reduction under president trump. but also, frankly, i think we can borrow. the federal government can borrow at a 1.3% rate right now. that s actually lower than the inflation rate. and so when you re making an investment, the question is, is that investment going to pay off
over time? is it going to create economic growth? is it worth the cost to that borrowing, and it s an awful lot of investments that pass that test. another thing built into the cost of this infrastructure bill is there hasn t been infrastructure bills for several years. so if you neglected the maintenance, if you ve neglected the upkeep, of course it s going to be more expensive than doing regular maintenance. that s exactly right. i mean, again, you look at the federal debt, the federal debt doesn t include deferred maintenance. it doesn t include the cost of not investing in children and children that don t go to preschool don t grow up and succeed and have the earnings they would otherwise have. we have a lot of costs out there and part of this is recognizing them, addressing them sooner, and that s a smarter, more cost-effective thing to do.
jobs, that s just a really high number. i then went and checked about 11 other numbers, the labor force participation rate, the black unemployment rate, the wage number, the number of people working part time. every one of those numbers improved in the month of july, all moving in the direction we want them to move. and we have unemployment go ahead. the unemployment number now, while we re still in the pandemic, it s just extraordinary. yeah. i mean, if you would have asked me a year ago, six months ago, i would have thought it would take a lot longer to where we are now. we re definitely not all the way there. we have a lot to go on the unemployment rate right now, 5.4%. prior to the pandemic it was 3.5%. there s no reason we can t get back there. hopefully we can get a lot of the way back there by the end of this year, but after the damage
the economy went through last year, it s healing more quickly than we ve seen in previous recessions, many of which weren t as bad as this recession was. there is more fuel coming to the economy and the infrastructure package gets through the congress in whole or in part. yeah, absolutely. the president says build back better for a reason. if we could return the economy to exactly where it was in february 2020, that would be pretty good. but it wouldn t be good enough. that was an economy that had a lot of inequality, that had not enough opportunities for, you know, people to work, too many children not in preschool and, of course, an economy that wasn t green enough. so all those things need to change. we don t just need to repair the damage. a lot of what s coming next is
infrastructure package, the $3.5 trillion one, unless and until they get first the bipartisan package, it would be very nice if they made a statement that really was against this kind of insurrection and said we re going to support legislation that improves america. pelosi s putting them on the spot by packaging these things together and saying you wanted to vote on your package? we re going to put it together with the other one and we ll see if they respond. john harmon, nancy pelosi has been so good at navigating these kinds of legislative courses in the past that it feels to me like there s an awful lot of confidence about, oh, nancy pelosi will put it all together next week in the house with the nine democrats who want a different procedure from all the rest of the democrats and make peace between them and the more