President Joe Biden was huddling with aides in the Oval Office in late April, preparing for a Zoom tour of Proterra, an electric bus and battery plant in Greenville, South Carolina. The company does the kind of eco-friendly manufacturing that Biden hopes will balloon if Congress passes his $2 trillion infrastructure proposal, which includes nearly $80 billion in federal investment in these types of clean energy jobs. Biden was blunt about the larger goal. “This is how we show people that the government has a role to play,” he said before getting on the call.

That vision of government has been at the heart of Biden’s first 100 days in office. He has pumped nearly $1.9 trillion into the economy, more than any other President at this point in a first term, through a stimulus bill that offers everything from unemployment insurance and rental assistance to vaccine distribution and healthcare subsidies. Biden has laid out plans for another $2 trillion to create millions of jobs by fixing the country’s sagging infrastructure, and invest in clean energy jobs like the ones at Proterra, and plans to lay out an estimated $1.8 trillion this week focusing on education and paid leave. In total, Biden’s multi-trillion dollar spending splurge would be the biggest federal investment in the middle and lower classes since President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society, with the potential to alter the country for generations.