President Joe Biden’s decision on how to enact his infrastructure plan is coming down to the wire as he continues talks with Senate Republicans this week to see if there’s still room for a bipartisan deal ahead of another fast-approaching deadline.
Biden met with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the lead GOP negotiator on infrastructure, for about an hour on Wednesday afternoon to discuss Republicans’ latest $928 billion offer and the path forward. But the president didn’t provide his own counteroffer at the meeting, despite an eagerness to wrap up negotiations soon. White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters “it’d be more of a discussion” than “an exchange of paper.”
The White House is grappling with the next steps in the process: whether to keep pursuing an elusive bipartisan agreement on the types of infrastructure reforms and how to pay for them or to go it alone through a special budgetary process called reconciliation. If they ultimately go with the latter, like they did to pass COVID-19 relief in March, Democrats would effectively remove Republicans from the negotiating table since they could pass legislation without any GOP votes.
But after blowing through the first deadline of Memorial Day, the administration has set a new deadline to try to cobble together a deal – at least in principle – by next week when Congress returns from the holiday recess. Over the weekend, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN “we need a clear direction” on infrastructure talks by June 7.
“Patience is not unending and he wants to make progress,” Psaki said before Biden’s meeting. “His only line in the sand is inaction. He wants to sign a bill into law this summer.”
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While no big developments were made public after Wednesday’s Oval Office meeting, the White House sent a statement describing it as a “constructive and frank” conversation and announced Biden and Capito will talk again on Friday with no additional details on the nature of their follow-up. Capito’s office released a similar statement about the meeting, saying she’s “encouraged that negotiations have continued.”
Biden is under immense pressure from both parties. He campaigned and entered office with the promise of restoring bipartisanship on Capitol Hill and including Republicans in top priorities. But he also set an ambitious economic agenda, and progressives especially are holding him to his word and fear that bipartisan negotiations will either delay or dilute his vision.
Republicans and the White House have been negotiating for weeks and both sides have made concessions in recent days. Biden lowered his initial $2.3 trillion proposal to $1.7 billion, while Republicans bumped up theirs from $568 billion to nearly $1 trillion.
But a large gulf remains, especially since the GOP’s most recent proposal only includes $257 billion in new spending. And when it comes to paying for an infrastructure package, Republicans have been resistant to raising taxes on the wealthy by reforming the 2017 tax reform law. Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, though he’s signaled openness to a lower increase.
Republicans, meanwhile, have eyed user fees as a potential source of cash, and their latest proposal relies on what they argue are unused COVID-19 funds based on Congressional Budget Office projections – two potential funding mechanisms that appear to be red lines for Democrats.
Republicans maintain that they’re hopeful for a bipartisan outcome, though Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has publicly said that the GOP’s top priority is blocking Biden’s agenda. Democrats have pointed to those comments and have been wary that consensus even on a more bipartisan issue like infrastructure is still possible.
Progressives like Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders of Vermont are growing impatient with the ongoing push for a bipartisan deal. Some are urging Biden to quickly move to reconciliation – the tool that lowers the threshold to advance legislation in the Senate from 60 to 51 votes in very limited circumstances relating to spending measures – to get the bill signed into law.
But McConnell told reporters back in his home state that he spoke with Capito before the White House meeting and reiterated the GOP’s preference for “repurposing” pandemic relief funds to pay for rebuilding the country’s infrastructure.
“I’m hoping for the best, that we can actually reach a bipartisan agreement on infrastructure,” McConnell said Wednesday from Kentucky.
Any bipartisan deal will need to garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. In a divided 50-50 Senate narrowly controlled by Democrats, that means the party will need to sway at least 10 GOP senators to vote with them.
But with Republicans and the White House still far apart on price tag and a funding mechanism, a bipartisan agreement is still a ways off and increases the chances Democrats go back to reconciliation.
That tool, though, will require the party to stick together in the event Democrats get no GOP support. But even getting all 50 Democrats on board will be a challenge since some moderates want to stick with figuring out infrastructure through regular order with Republicans.
Plus, relying on reconciliation could be a bit trickier for Democrats, especially since they’ll likely need to use the budget vehicle to pass as much of their agenda as they can before the 2022 midterm elections.
A few months ago, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said that a ruling from Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough gave his party more flexibility in implementing Biden’s agenda and would give them multiple chances at reconciliation. But, according to multiple outlets, MacDonough ruled last Friday that Democrats will likely only be able to use the process once more this year, placing limits on what they can pass using this vehicle.
Democrats wanted to use budget reconciliation as a last-resort option for infrastructure but also envisioned pursuing it for Biden’s $1.8 trillion families plan and potentially for other big issues like immigration or health care.
Now, the party will likely have to reimagine how to implement Biden’s $4 trillion economic plan, which has been broken up into the American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan. If there’s only one more shot at reconciliation this year, Democrats may need to reconsider combining them into one larger package.
