Biden: Bipartisan deal reached on infrastructure
Bipartisan group’s scaled-back plan overcomes rancor
President Joe Biden announced on Thursday a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pareddown infrastructure plan that would make a start on his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle. He openly acknowledged that Democrats will likely have to tackle much of the rest on their own. The bill’s price tag at $973 billion over five years, or $1.2 trillion over eight years, is a scaled-back but still significant piece of Biden’s broader proposals.
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced on Thursday a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pared-down infrastructure plan that would make a start on his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle. He openly acknowledged that Democrats will likely have to tackle much of the rest on their own.
The bill’s price tag at $973 billion over five years, or $1.2 trillion over eight years, is a scaled-back but still significant piece of Biden’s broader proposals.
It includes more than $500 billion in new spending and could open the door to the president’s more sweeping $4 trillion proposals later on.
“When we can find common ground, working across party lines, that is what I will seek to do,” said Biden, who deemed the deal “a true bipartisan effort, breaking the ice that too often has kept us frozen in place.”
The president stressed that “neither side got everything they wanted in this deal; that’s what it means to compromise,” and said that other White House priorities would be tackled separately in a congressional budget process known as reconciliation
He made clear that the two items would be done “in tandem” and that he would not sign the bipartisan deal without the other, bigger piece. Progressive members of Congress declared they would hold to the same approach.
“This reminds me of the days when we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress,” said Biden, a former Delaware senator, putting his hand on the shoulder of a stoic-looking Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, as the president made a surprise appearance with a bipartisan group of senators to announce the deal outside the White House.
The deal was struck after months of partisan rancor that has consumed Washington while Biden has insisted that something could be done despite skepticism from many in his own party. Led by Portman and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, the group included some of the more independent lawmakers in the Senate, some known for bucking their parties.
“You know there are many who say bipartisanship is dead in Washington,” said Sinema.
And Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said, “It sends an important message to the world as well that America can function, can get things done.”
The proposal includes both new and existing spending and highlights the struggle lawmakers faced in coming up with ways to pay for it.
The investments include $109 billion on roads and highways, $15 billion on electric vehicle infrastructure and transit systems and $65 billion toward broadband, among other expenditures on airports, drinking water systems and resiliency efforts to tackle climate change.
Rather than Biden’s proposed corporate tax hike that Republicans oppose or the gas tax increase that the president rejected, funds will be tapped from a range of sources — without a full tally yet, according to the White House document.
Money will come from COVID-19 relief funds approved in 2020 but not yet spent, as well as untapped unemployment insurance funds that Democrats have been hesitant to poach. Other revenue is expected by going harder after tax cheats by beefing up Internal Revenue Service enforcement.
The rest is a hodgepodge of asset sales and accounting tools, including funds coming from 5G telecommunication spectrum lease sales, strategic petroleum reserve and an expectation that the sweeping investment will generate economic growth.
“We’re going to keep working together—we’re not finished,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. “But America works, the Senate works.”
For Biden, the deal was a welcome result.
Though for far less than the approximately $2 trillion he originally sought, which is raising some ire on the left, Biden had bet his political capital that he could work with Republicans and showcase “that American democracy can deliver” and be a counter-example to rising autocracies across the globe.
Moreover, Biden and his aides believed that they needed a bipartisan deal on infrastructure to create a permission structure for more moderate Democrats — including Sinema and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — to then be willing to go for a party-line vote for the rest of the president’s agenda.
There is still some skepticism on the left. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the bipartisan agreement is “way too small — paltry, pathetic. I need a clear, ironclad assurance that there will be a really adequate robust package” that will follow the bipartisan agreement.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, like Biden, warned that it must be paired with the president’s bigger goals being prepared by Congress under a process that could push them through the Senate with only Democratic votes.
“There ain’t going to be a bipartisan bill without a reconciliation bill,” said Pelosi, D-Calif.
Thursday’s announcement leaves unclear the fate of Biden’s promises of massive investment to slow climate change.