$1T bill clears key bar in Senate

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Saturday cleared a final procedural vote to advance legislation that pledges to spend nearly $1 trillion over five years to rebuild the nation’s roads, bridges, waterways, airports and power grid while expanding affordable broadband and building electric vehicle charging stations.

The upper chamber of Congress voted 67-27 to proceed to a final vote — with 18 Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — joining members of the Democratic caucus in moving it forward. Sen.

Bob Casey, DPa., voted to advance to a final vote, while Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., voted against it.

The vote count was enough to override the Senate’s filibuster rule, which requires at least 60 votes to advance legislation. The movement of the sprawling 2,702-page bill, called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, was a major bipartisan victory forged over weeks of talks by a core group of GOP senators, Democratic leaders and President Joe Biden.

Yet just as lawmakers overcame one Senate hurdle,

another one popped up Saturday.

The bill’s final passage was delayed, likely until at least Monday, by Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., who expressed concern about the bill’s impact on the budget deficit and Democrats’ intentions of passing a second, much larger spending package. In the Senate, where the minority voices are given power, just one senator can object to accelerating a process.

Supporters of the bill had hoped to pass the bill shortly after Saturday’s vote, held during a rare weekend session ahead of a lengthy summer recess.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed to press ahead.

“We can get this done the easy way or the hard way,” Mr. Schumer said on the Senate floor prior to the vote. “In either case, the Senate will stay in session until we finish our work. It’s up to my Republican colleagues how long it takes.”

Mr. Hagerty joined a group of Republicans in railing against the bill in recent days after the Congressional Budget Office found it would add $256 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade. Negotiators of the bill, led in part by Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, had promised it would be fully paid for.

“There’s absolutely no reason for rushing this process and attempting to eliminate scrutiny of this bill other than Democrats’ completely artificial, self-imposed and politically driven timeline,” Mr. Hagerty said in a floor speech. He told reporters afterward that he was “not inclined to expedite this process whatsoever.”

Other lawmakers, like Mr. Toomey, raised concerns about a provision estimated to raise $28 billion in revenue from new cryptocurrency tax-reporting requirements.

Mr. Toomey proposed an amendment to limit the potential scope of those requirements, and he pressed colleagues on the Senate floor on Friday for a vote on the proposed changes. Cryptocurrency supporters pushed the issue to the forefront of social media on Saturday, spurring the trending Twitter hashtag #DontKillCypto.

But supporters of the infrastructure bill in both parties held firm.

They argued the bill would, in fact, eventually be paid for by broad economic growth. The infrastructure fixes are sorely needed, they said, and widely popular, with 80% to 90% of Americans saying they support federal funding to bring the country’s physical assets into the 21st century.

“The United States Senate is not broken,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., one of the key negotiators of the deal, said in a floor speech.

“Not one senator got everything they wanted, but we all got what we needed,” Mr. Manchin said. “This is how compromise works. This is what this body was made for.”

In many spending categories, the level of funding is historic.

The bill allocates $550 billion in new spending over five years. The rest of the plan — some $400 billion over five years — would be baseline spending that Congress already authorized, but would require periodic congressional approval.

Lawmakers provided $55 billion for clean drinking water, including a program that seeks to replace every lead pipe in the country. An additional $65 billion would expand affordable broadband access to every American, provide $25 billion to upgrade the nation’s airports, and dole out $66 billion to bolster rail service — including the largest investment in passenger rail since the creation of Amtrak 50 years ago.

In addition, the bill includes $73 billion to modernize the nation’s energy grid and $21 billion to respond to environmental concerns, girding the country’s electric grid against extreme weather events and lowering carbon emissions from power producers.

A $7.5 billion initiative establishes the first national network of electric vehicle charging stations.

Pennsylvania stands to receive tens of billions of dollars of investment.

On Wednesday, the White House estimated the state would receive an additional $11.3 billion in federal highway funding, $1.6 billion for bridge replacement, and $2.8 billion for public transit over five years, based on funding formulas the government uses to allocate federal dollars to states.

In addition, Pennsylvania would receive at least $100 million to expand broadband coverage across the state, an amount that would provide access to at least 394,000 Pennsylvanians who currently lack service. The state would also likely receive $171 million to build electric vehicle chargers. There’s still a long road ahead.

Late Saturday afternoon, the Senate moved on to business unrelated to infrastructure while talks continued behind the scenes to set up a final vote.

If passed by the Senate, the bill would head to the House, which must also pass the bill. If the lower chamber amends it — as some House members have threatened — those changes then must be passed by the Senate.