Infrastructure on track as bipartisan coalition grows
WASHINGTON — After weeks of fits, starts and delays, the Senate is on track to give final approval to the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure plan, with a growing coalition of Democrats and Republicans prepared to lift the first phase of President Joe Biden’s rebuilding agenda to passage.
Final Senate votes are expected Tuesday, and the bill would then go to the House.
Some 70 senators appear poised to carry the bipartisan package to passage, a potentially robust tally of lawmakers eager to tap the billions in new spending for their states and to show voters they can deliver.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said it’s “the first time the Senate has come together around such a package in decades.”
The often elusive political center is holding steady, a rare partnership with Mr. Biden’s White House.
Democrats have withstood the complaints of liberals who say the proposal falls short of what’s needed to provide a down payment on one of the president’s top priorities. Republicans are largely ignoring the criticism from their most conservative and far-flung voices, including a barrage of namecalling from former President Donald Trump as he tries to derail the package.
A sizable number of business, farm and labor groups back the package, which proposes nearly $550 billion in new spending on what are typically mainstays of federal spending — roads, bridges, broadband internet, water pipes and other public works systems that cities and states often cannot afford on their own.
“This has been a different sort of process,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the lead Republican negotiator of the group of 10 senators who drafted the package.
Mr. Portman, a former White House budget director for George W. Bush, said the investments being made have been talked about for years, yet never seem to get done.
The top Democratic negotiator, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, said she was trying to follow the example of fellow Arizonan John McCain to “reach bipartisan agreements that try to bring the country together.”
Despite the momentum, action ground to a halt over the weekend when Sen. Bill Hagerty, a Tennessee Republican allied with Mr. Trump, refused to speed up the process.
Other Republican senators objected to the size, scope and financing of the package, particularly concerned after the Congressional Budget Office said it would add $256 billion to deficits over the decade.
Rather than pressure lawmakers, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, has stayed behind the scenes for much of the bipartisan work. He has cast his own votes repeatedly to allow the bill to progress, calling the bill a compromise.
The outline for the bigger $3.5 trillion package is on deck next in the Senate — a more liberal undertaking of child care, elder care and other programs that is much more partisan and expected to draw only Democratic support. That debate is expected to extend into the fall.