Joe’s $2.2T sidestep
Could push infrastructure plan without GOP
A top administration official said Sunday that President Biden is open to pushing his $2.2 trillion infrastructure plan through Congress without Republican support.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested that the White House may pursue passing the legislation through the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation, which requires a simple majority in the narrowly divided 50-50 Senate.
Senate Democrats used the measure to approve Biden’s $1.9 coronavirus stimulus plan last month.
“As he has said, he was sent to the presidency to do a job for America, and if the vast majority of Americans, Democrats and Republicans, across the country support spending on our country and not allowing us to lose the race globally, then he’s going to do that,” Granholm said of her boss on CNN’s “State of the Union,” although she added that the president would prefer bipartisan support.
“His sincere preference, his open hand, is to Republicans to come to the table and say: ‘If you don’t like this, how would you pay for it? If you don’t like this, what would you include?’
“So much of this though includes priorities that Republicans have supported,” Granholm said.
Meanwhile, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) urged the Biden White House to pare down parts of the package that don’t necessarily address the nation’s infrastructure needs if the administration wants bipartisan approval.
“I think there’s an easy win here for the White House if they would take that win, which is make this an infrastructure package,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Calling infrastructure the “great white whale” that former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump were unable to control, he said Democrats are aware of how much the American public supports the initiative.
“So they’re trying to take 70 percent of this bill and call it infrastructure in a new way than we’ve ever talked about infrastructure before,” Blunt said.
If Biden and the Democrats want the win, the senator argued they should “do this in a more traditional infrastructure way, and then if you want to force the rest of the package on Republicans in the Congress and the country, you can certainly do that.”
“You’d still have all the tools available for what is clearly going to turn out to be another purely partisan exercise,” Blunt said.
Republicans have criticized the plan that Biden unveiled last week because it would raise the corporate tax rate and hike other taxes to pay for it, while expanding the nation’s deficit with its massive price tag.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Biden wants Republican support for the plan but added that the version he is proposing is “fully paid for.”
“Across 15 years, it would raise all of the revenue needed for these once-ina-lifetime investments,” Buttigieg said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “So by year 16, you’d actually see this package working to reduce the deficit.”