Power Up: How will Biden pay for infrastructure? That’s the big political question.

But one of the major political hurdles that vexed Trump is already proving a problem for Biden, too: achieving consensus on how exactly the president plans on paying for his “Build Back Better” agenda. 

Due to concerns that “the large gap between spending and revenue would widen the deficit by such a large degree that it could risk triggering a spike in interest rates, which could in turn cause federal debt payments to skyrocket,” the administration will unveil “as much as $4 trillion in new spending and more than $3 trillion in tax increases,” Jeff reports.  

The tax increases could represent the largest federal tax increase since World War II. 

• Political minefield: “The choice to limit the impact on the federal deficit may help the White House counter critics who say that the nation’s spending imbalance is out of control. But it also sets up the administration for an enormous political challenge in convincing Congress to pass a package of tax increases on wealthy Americans and companies that together would represent the largest tax hike in generations.” 
• “The tax component is expected to be the heaviest lift politically for the administration. The White House is studying a range of tax hikes on wealthy investors, corporations and rich people to pay for the package.” 

Fault lines: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that he doubts Republicans will support any tax increases to pay for Biden’s infrastructure plan, though he says he’d “love to do an infrastructure bill.” But it’s not only Republicans already voicing resistance to taxes on higher taxes – and absent Republican support, Democrats need to find total consensus in order to use budget reconciliation to approve a package with a narrow majority. 

What will be in the bill?: “One core tension is to what degree Democrats should emphasize investments in traditional physical infrastructure seen as more likely to garner GOP support — such as roads and bridges — rather than child care and other social spending that liberal economists increasingly have emphasized as critical to ensuring robust economic growth,” Jeff notes. “It is unclear to what extent Biden has the political capital to do both.”

• White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Sunday that Biden will break his infrastructure package into two separate pieces: one plan will be focused on traditional physical infrastructure investments and the second will include social infrastructure provisions relating to childcare and healthcare. 

• “Democratic lawmakers have promised for decades to raise taxes on companies and the wealthy… But they have struggled to muster the votes for large tax increases since President Bill Clinton signed a 1993 law that included a variety of hikes intended to help reduce the budget deficit. Business groups, conservative activists, lobbyists and donors across the ideological spectrum have largely blocked such attempts,” the New York Times’s Jim Tankersley and Emily Cochrane report.
• More on SALT: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer “signaled as recently as Friday that he plans to bring up the return of the full deduction when negotiations begin over reforming the tax code as a means to pay for Biden’s next initiatives, including rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure,” CNBC’s Brian Schwartz reports. 

The tax hike that wasn’t?: Secretary of State Pete Buttigieg on Monday backtracked on comments he made during an interview last week that a gas or mileage tax would be part of Biden’s infrastructure plan: “No, that’s not part of the conversation about this infrastructure bill,” Buttigieg told CNN’s Jake Tapper. 

But Democrats on Monday took steps on outlining more taxes: Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and other progressive Senate Democrats released a draft plan to tax unrealized capital gains at death – with a $1 million per-person exemption – as one way to flesh out an idea Biden backed during the 2020 campaign. 

• “Under current law, someone who dies with appreciated assets—including homes, businesses and stocks in taxable accounts—doesn’t have to pay capital-gains taxes on that increase. Instead, the heirs have to pay capital-gains taxes only after they sell and only on gains after the original owner’s death. That ‘stepped-up basis’ is a longstanding feature of the tax code, but it has come under increasing attacks from Democrats who see wealthy people’s profits escaping the income tax,” per the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin and Andrew Duehren. 

HAPPENING TODAY: “Biden plans to announce his first slate of judicial nominees, elevating U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the influential appeals court in Washington to succeed Merrick Garland as part of the largest and earliest batch of court picks by a new administration in decades,” our colleagues Ann E. Marimow and Matt Viser report.

• “Jackson is among Biden’s 11 nominations that include three Black women for appeals court vacancies and the first Muslim American to serve on a District Court.”
• “The group is designed to send a message about the administration’s desire for more diversity on the federal bench and how rapidly the president wants to put his mark on it.”

INSIDE THE LANDMARK MURDER TRIAL: “Derek Chauvin violated his oath as a police officer when he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes and ignored Floyd’s cries for help ‘until the very life was squeezed out of him,’ a prosecutor said Monday as testimony began in the landmark trial set to be a defining moment in the nation’s reckoning over race and policing,” our colleagues Holly Bailey and Kim Bellware report. 

• But Chauvin’s attorney, Eric Nelson, “disputed the prosecution claim that Chauvin was to blame for Floyd’s death, saying the autopsy presented ‘no telltale signs’ of asphyxiation from the officer’s knee.”
• Will he take the stand? “Prosecutors have so far relied heavily on the video that captured Floyd’s death to prove their case. The defense’s best tool to minimize the impact of that video may be calling on Chauvin to testify,” the New York Times’s Andrés R. Martínez and Tim Arango write.

• “Please, this is not politics,” Biden said during an update on the government’s response to the pandemic. “Reinstate the mandate if you let it down. A failure to take this virus seriously — precisely what got us into this mess in the first place — risks more cases and more deaths.”
• “I’m going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at a White House news briefing. “We have so much to look forward to, so much promise and potential of where we are and so much reason for hope. But right now, I’m scared.”
• “The back-to-back appeals reflect a growing sense of urgency among top White House officials and government scientists that the chance to conquer the pandemic, now in its second year, may slip through their grasp,” the New York Times’s Sharon LaFraniere and Sheryl Gay Stolberg report.

Pandemic response: Biden “promised that his administration would double the number of retail pharmacies offering coronavirus vaccines within the next three weeks, by which time 90 percent of adults in the United States will be eligible for the shots,” per our colleagues.

• “With additional locations established by April 19, virtually all residents will live within five miles of a vaccination site.” 
• “The pace of vaccinations [currently stands at] about a million and a half shots per day,” our Post colleagues report.

Meanwhile, McConnell encouraged all Republican men to get vaccinated.

EXPANDING OFFSHORE WIND POWER: “The White House on Monday detailed an ambitious plan to expand wind farms along the East Coast and jump-start the country’s nascent offshore wind industry, saying it hoped to trigger a massive clean-energy effort in the fight against climate change,” our colleagues Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis report.

• “The initiative represents a major stretch for the United States. The country has only one offshore wind project online at this time, generating 30 megawatts, off Rhode Island.”

GOOD FOR SOME, GRIM FOR MANY: “By many accounts, the economy is projected to grow at its fastest pace in four decades this year, bolstered by Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package and more widespread vaccinations. The rosier picture has economists debating whether such a forceful turnaround will overheat the economy and trigger cycles of inflation unseen for decades,” our colleague Rachel Siegel reports. But “the Fed isn’t worried.”

• Why? “Despite the headline numbers, the economy is still in bad shape for millions of Americans. And for many workers, jobs may not come back even if the economy booms again.”

• “New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s relatives and other well-connected New Yorkers were among those given preferential treatment at state coronavirus testing centers. State troopers were on standby to rush their samples to a lab to be expedited. And those with priority status got results within hours or a day compared to a wait of up to a week that other New Yorkers faced at the time.
• While state officials strongly disputed that people were given special treatment because of ties to Cuomo, “during the early frenetic weeks in March 2020, officials working at testing sites rapidly assembled a system that gave special treatment to people described by staff as ‘priorities,’ ‘specials,’ ‘inner circle’ or ‘criticals,’ according to five people, including three nurses, who described how resources were redirected to serve those close to the governor and other cases that were fast-tracked.” 
• More: “At one of the first pandemic operations hubs in the state, the testing priority status of more than 100 individuals were logged in an electronic data sheet that was kept separate from a database for the general public, according to a person with direct knowledge of the practice.”

Another accuser steps forward: “Cuomo was accused by another woman Monday of inappropriately putting his hand on her face and kissing her cheeks during a 2017 tour of her flood-ravaged house in Upstate New York,” our colleague Michael Scherer reports.

• “Sherry Vill, 55, said Cuomo kissed her on the cheek in two separate exchanges in front of her family and other onlookers during a visit to tour flood damage along Lake Ontario.”
• “I know the difference between an innocent gesture and a sexual one. I never felt as uncomfortable as I did the day that Gov. Cuomo came to my home,” Vill said at a news conference arranged by the attorney Gloria Allred. “His actions were very overly sexual, highly inappropriate and disrespectful to me and my family.”

LISA MURKOWSKI GETS A REPUBLICAN CHALLENGER: “Kelly Tshibaka, who leads the Alaska Department of Administration, announced Monday that she would try to unseat her fellow Republican, Sen. Lisa Murkowski, in next year’s Senate race in Alaska,” our colleague John Wagner reports. 

• “Murkowski voted to convict former president Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, a move that prompted him to vow to campaign against her next year and drew a censure from the Alaska Republican Party.”
• But “Murkowski, who has held her seat since 2002, has demonstrated a knack for getting elected even when rebuffed by others in her party.”

Nike files a lawsuit against the maker of Lil Nas X’s “Satan shoes.” His response?