Biden aims for bipartisanship but applies pressure
President Joe Biden has begun publicly courting Republicans to back his sweeping infrastructure plan, but his reach across the aisle is intended just as much to keep Democrats in line as it is a first step in an uphill climb to any bipartisan deal.
Biden’s high-profile Oval Office meeting with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday was just one piece of his effort to win over GOP lawmakers, White House aides said. But even if it doesn’t succeed, it could prove useful — boxing in Republicans while helping keep the widely disparate Democrats in line. Some moderate Democrats, notably Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have urged an effort at bipartisanship to pass the $2.3 trillion bill.
Bipartisan limits
And while Biden has made clear that he wants Republican support, the White House is also preparing to go it alone, if necessary, to get the bill passed. That would leave the GOP in the politically unpopular position of explaining why it objected to investments many Americans want.
“I’m prepared to negotiate as to the extent of my infrastructure project, as well as how we pay for it,” Biden said during Monday’s meeting with lawmakers. “Everyone acknowledges we need a significant increase in infrastructure.”
Biden dismissed the idea that his outreach to Republicans is just for show, saying, “I’m not big on window dressing, as you’ve observed.”
In fact, lawmakers left the White House meeting with the understanding that Biden was open to discussion, and the president’s team was headed to Capitol Hill to meet with them or other representatives as soon as Tuesday.
“Those are all the exact words that I wanted to hear going into the meeting,” Republican Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, a member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said in an interview with The Associated Press. “And so that was really encouraging.”
Sen. Alex Padilla, DCalif., offered, “Nobody stormed out yelling ‘no.’”
Drumming up support
The White House outreach has been significant, with Cabinet members and allies meeting with lawmakers and activists while fanning out across the country to sell the plan directly to voters. Officials said that Biden would hold more bipartisan gatherings this month and that top administration officials have meetings planned with congressional committees this week.
But most Republicans have made clear they have little interest, for now, in joining the effort, rejecting the idea of increasing the corporate tax rate to pay for it. And they have lambasted the proposal as big spending, preferring to leave Biden to pursue his priority legislation on his own.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday that Republicans have zero appetite for dismantling the GOP tax law to pay for it.
Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Commerce Committee, who was in Monday’s meeting, said afterward that “clearly there are parts of this program that are nonstarters for Republicans.”
Undoing the 2017 GOP tax breaks “would be an almost impossible sell,” Wicker told reporters on Capitol Hill.
But the White House has expressed confidence that voters won’t be sympathetic to any objections by corporations to their tax rates being raised from 21% to 28% at the expense of broadly popular funding for highways, subways, water pipes, broadband internet and more.