Republicans and Democrats appear to be far apart on President Joe Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, with GOP lawmakers criticizing the size and scope of the plan as well as the tax increases that would pay for it. On Thursday, however, comments from a senator close to the White House pointed toward a path forward on the effort, though one that would result in a much smaller spending package to win bipartisan support.
Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) laid out for reporters a fairly simple strategy for Democrats to break what could become a stalemate on infrastructure: pass a bipartisan bill containing everything both parties can agree on, totaling somewhere between $600 billion and $800 billion, and then a second bill containing everything else via budget reconciliation, with only Democratic support.
“We are trying to get $2 trillion worth of infrastructure and jobs investments,” Coons said, according to Politico. “Why wouldn’t you do 800 billion of it in a bipartisan way? And then do the other 1.2 trillion, Dems-only, through reconciliation?”
The numbers could work out, at least for the bipartisan bill. On Wednesday, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said that Republicans were considering a narrower, more targeted infrastructure bill worth somewhere between $600 billion and $800 billion. According to Politico, total spending in the Biden plan on the kind of infrastructure Republicans are willing to support, mostly basics such as roads, bridges and airports, comes to $621 billion – indicating that there is plenty of room for agreement on at least that part of the infrastructure plan.
But plenty of hurdles ahead: Republicans may be less enthusiastic for such an approach knowing that by providing bipartisan support for a quite substantial infrastructure package, they will be clearing the way for passage of a much larger spending bill that contains all kinds of things they don’t support, including billions of dollars for things like electric cars, elder care and paid leave. Democrats may have their own concerns, including worries that the second, larger bill either fails to pass or gets severely stripped down to appease moderates within their own caucus.
And then there’s the problem of revenues. Even if the parties can agree on what to spend, they remain far apart over how to pay for it. Republicans show no signs of deviating from their apparently immovable opposition to tax increases, while Democrats are unlikely to accept a plan that covers the costs entirely with user fees.
As Sen. Mitt Romney put it Thursday, “We’ll be able to come to agreement on what needs to be done. How to pay for it will be where we find the greatest challenge.”
