Congress faces tough road with infrastructure bills
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden unveiled a $2 trillion infrastructure package Wednesday to a small audience gathered at a Collier union training center, where carpenters learn how to assemble complex wooden structures using a large tool box, precise measurements and a keen attention to detail.
Mr. Biden’s point was to show how a once-in-a-century public investment will create local jobs and boost the economy following a global pandemic. But, back in Washington, the political skills required to legislate such a sweeping plan — and, to pay for it, push through the first major tax hike since 1993 — will resemble the organized chaos of a construction site.
“The president has laid down his marker today,” U.S. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Forest Hills, said in an interview a few hours before the announcement. “And our job — those of us who support this plan — is going to be to move as many pieces of this plan forward as we can, as quickly as we can.”
Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress find themselves in a similar position as they did two months ago when they decided to advance a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package with no support from Republicans. With slim majorities in both chambers, Democrats kept their members in line and passed Mr. Biden’s blueprint, shedding the $15 minimum wage piece and tweaking some benefit levels along the way.
Democrats are eyeing the same fast-track process for Mr. Biden’s infrastructure proposal, called the American Jobs Plan, that would
allow them to pass bills without GOP votes.
Unlike the previous COVID-19 bill, congressional committees will be tasked with building pieces of legislation, largely from scratch, and then stitching them together while simultaneously achieving increases in revenue through a proposed hike in the corporate tax rate.
The proposal touches on virtually every part of American life — including transportation, electricity, drinking water, internet, tech research and health care — requiring extraordinary effort by a range of congressional committees and party leadership just before the annual federal budget bills come up in the fall. Just four House Democrats could sink any House bill, and one Democrat could do the same in the Senate.
Republicans, who have previously called for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, slammed Mr. Biden’s proposal for seeking to partially undo the 2017 tax cuts they passed under former President Donald Trump. Those cuts lowered the corporate rate from 35% to 21%; Mr. Biden wants to raise it to 28%.
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, RButler, a top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee and one of the architects of the 2017 GOP tax cuts, said the plan “will take more money from workers, families and small businesses, leading to lower wages and more jobs being sent overseas.”
“America needs creative, bipartisan solutions to modernize America’s aging infrastructure that spur investment, not higher taxes on hard-working Americans,” Mr. Kelly said in a statement before the speech.
Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, characterized it as a “spend and tax binge.”
Mr. Toomey called for infrastructure spending to be funded through user fees that fill federal trust funds that pay for things like highways, waterways and aviation projects, as well as “reductions in wasteful, outdated and duplicative government spending.”
The 2017 tax bill “helped create the best American economy of my lifetime,” Mr. Toomey said. “We should be trying to get back to that economy, not making American workers and businesses less competitive globally.”
Rep. John Joyce, R-Blair, said Mr. Biden’s plan “prioritizes extreme policies that will crush our region’s robust manufacturing and energy industries over the needs of Pennsylvania workers and small businesses.”
Groups representing the oil and gas industry, mining companies, railroads and construction companies also criticized the tax hike and spending plan, stating they favored a plan that emphasized private industry investment rather than government spending funded through a tax increase on businesses.
Against the opposition in Washington, Democrats hope to lean on popular support for infrastructure to gain momentum.
Mr. Biden’s plan thrilled labor unions, environmental groups, mayors, farmers and a broad spectrum of business and trade groups that have called for an infrastructure investment for years only to watch it die in partisan debate in Congress.
Groups representing Pittsburgh-area interests tended to temper their responses, avoiding “dead-on-arrival” rhetoric.
The American Iron and Steel Institute praised requirements to source raw materials domestically, while also calling for a “bolstering” of user fees instead of a corporate tax hike.
“While this is not currently part of the president’s proposal, we look forward to continuing to work with the administration and Congress, to develop a bipartisan legislative package,” said Kevin Dempsey, the group’s president and CEO, that ensures “steel that is melted and poured in the U.S. is used to rebuild America’s roads, bridges, water systems and energy infrastructure.”
Matt Smith, president of the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, said his group was “ecstatic” over the president’s visit to Pittsburgh to announce the proposal, which he called a “really smart, strategic plan.”
“The robust vision he’s presenting is something that’s necessary; we’ve talked about it for a long time,” said Mr. Smith, a former Democratic state senator, who was named a few weeks ago to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf’s transportation funding commission. “We’re uniquely positioned to benefit from it, and we think this is a great opportunity to move something forward.”
Asked about how to pay for it, Mr. Smith said, “We don’t view the corporate tax rate as the way to do it — but, that said, we think there’s going to be plenty of time for discussion over how to pay for it.”
And Pittsburgh Works Together, a business-labor alliance, praised several key components of the proposal and refrained from criticizing the tax proposal.
Already in motion
For Mr. Doyle, as a top member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the legislative components are already in motion on Capitol Hill.
This month, the committee’s Democrats introduced the Leading Infrastructure for Tomorrow’s America Act, called the LIFT Act, a $312 billion bill that includes funding for broadband deployment, an energy storage investment tax credit, grants for upgrading drinking water systems, rebates for electric vehicle charging stations, and funding for research and development of clean energy resources.
The committee also reintroduced the Clean Future Act, a sweeping climate change bill that would establish a clean electricity standard to reach 100% clean energy by 2035 among a slew of other measures.
“I don’t think it’s going to move in one big, giant package; I don’t think that’s realistic,” Mr. Doyle said. “In Congress, when you try to do the one big giant bill, you just can’t get it done. So then nothing gets done. I think the approach this time is going to be to start to advance pieces of this bill that we can advance, and work towards collaboration on the things we can’t.”
With the return of earmarks, Mr. Doyle and others are currently receiving requests for project funding. A House Democratic aide said Wednesday it was “premature” to detail specific projects at this point.
The debate likely will amplify long-standing political divisions over the role of fossil fuels in the country’s energy future.
Mr. Biden has sought to link emissions reductions with job growth. His plan, for example, allocates $16 billion to “put the energy industry to work plugging orphan oil and gas wells and cleaning up abandoned mines.”
But progressives have pushed for more restrictive curbs on emissions and challenged new oil and gas infrastructure like pipelines and export terminals. They will run up against the likes of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who is likely the deciding vote in the Senate and chair of the Energy Committee.
Mr. Doyle — who greeted Mr. Biden Wednesday at Pittsburgh International Airport with Mr. Wolf, U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon, and Sen. Bob Casey, DPa. — said the early rhetoric from both sides was common when big plans are revealed. Around the time of Mr. Biden’s speech in Pittsburgh, senior White House officials conducted a briefing with members of the Democratic caucus, he said.
The president, Mr. Doyle said, wants to work with Republicans and pass a bipartisan bill. But Democrats are prepared to move forward using the budget reconciliation process on areas they can’t find agreement with the other party.
“Everybody says they want to do [infrastructure], and then we never seem to be able to pass a bill,” Mr. Doyle said. “The president is determined to get this done, one way or the other.”