Biden is best for Long Island on ...

One of the great broken promises of the Donald Trump presidency is the little interest he had in building America up. There is bipartisan support for a major federal infrastructure package, yet time and again Trump has failed to get the deal done.

His construction failures have consequences for projects of all sizes. New York megajobs such as fixing crumbling Hudson River rail tunnels and expanding the Second Avenue Subway are key connectors for Long Islanders and the regional economy. They’re stalled. Mass transit does not appear to be a Trump priority, even as protecting and improving the Long Island Rail Road is key to the Island’s growth.

Joe Biden offers a different future, speaking at last month's debate about electric vehicles and charging stations. That future also includes "the highways of tomorrow," according to his 2017 book, with "dedicated lanes for self-driving cars." He envisions bullet trains capable of traveling more than 220 mph and jets going coast to coast "in an hour or two."

The 2017 Republican tax law included a dagger to the heart of Long Island: capping the deductibility of state and local taxes at $10,000.

The changes meant that a wide swathe of Long Islanders, got modest tax cuts. But the SALT cap affected New York more than almost any other state, and, overall, it resulted in an even deeper transfer of tax payments from New York to other states.

Biden has supported repealing the cap, and that’s good. His tax plan in general is much fairer. He has promised not to ask those making under $400,000 per year to pay more in taxes, but he has smart proposals to raise more money from those who can afford it. That includes raising the top individual income rate back to 39.6% and working to ensure that those making more than $1 million pay the same rate on investment income as they do on wages. Those are much better paths to increasing tax revenue than on the backs of New York and other blue states.

Long Island has been a home for immigrants and the descendants of immigrants achieving the American dream. American Community Survey figures from 2019 show that more than 23% of Nassau County and more than 15% of Suffolk County residents are foreign born. Immigrants represent some 20% of the economic output of Long Islanders, according to a 2015 Fiscal Policy Institute study, and they are crucial to our East End agriculture, our technology corridors and medical and scientific research clusters.

Biden understands that America must be a beacon for newcomers and that those who have lived productive lives and raised families here need support. That’s why he would protect recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and Temporary Protected Status programs, who for years have built Long Island lives. He will secure American borders and points of entry with tactics and technology and foreign aid, not rhetoric or boasting about a wall, which isn’t an effective means against the likes of MS-13. Most of all, Biden will work to attract the immigrants of the 21st century who will grant Long Island and the rest of the country an innovative future.

Long Islanders know the value of organized labor in fighting for working people and bolstering families into the middle class. The sometime excesses of powerful union officials and eye-bulging public-sector contracts are well-known, but under Trump, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. The president and his allies have worked to undermine unions and failed to stand up for workers, from overtime rules to economic development. He hasn’t been able to turn back time on American manufacturing jobs.

Biden, on the other hand, proposes measures that would make it easier for workers to organize and collectively bargain. He envisions a role for labor in the future by requiring labor protections for future infrastructure and clean-energy investments. And he wants to raise the minimum wage, while Trump has left it at $7.25, where it has been for more than a decade. A stronger union ecosystem is the right and overdue path toward reducing inequality on Long Island and beyond.

The threat from extreme weather stirred up by climate change is a clear threat on Long Island, hit hard already by the likes of superstorm Sandy and Tropical Storm Isaias.

Yet Trump has been lost at sea. Apart from inane comments — "It will start getting cooler," he said recently — he has done his best to roll back protections of clean air and clean water and reasonable fuel efficiency standards, all while leading the country out of the landmark Paris climate accord.

The stakes are high. Abandoning international efforts to reduce emissions threatens our coastlines. Superfund cleanups in the region are moving slow. So are the federal government's plans for wind development in the New York Bight. And consider that we depend on a sole source aquifer for our drinking water, and groundwater that is recharged and partially filtered by wetlands, which also help to reduce floods. Trump has worked to reduce protections on smaller wetlands and streams.

Biden grasps the gravity of the moment, from his introduction decades ago of early climate legislation in Congress, to his idea for a Civilian Climate Corps to put people to work while improving resiliency and conserving public lands. His $2 trillion clean energy transformation plan is an acknowledgement of the nation’s challenges, eminently obvious here.