PUSH BIG REBUILD
Help for working families ‘long overdue,’ Bern sez of $6T plan
Congress needs to go big on fixing infrastructure, helping working families and addressing climate change, Sen. Bernie Sanders said on Sunday.
Democrats are working on a $6 trillion infrastructure plan that includes numerous progressive priorities, from expanding Medicare benefits to giving legal immigration status to “Dreamers.”
The latest proposal goes well beyond the $1 trillion infrastructure package that a group of 10 Democratic senators and 11 Republicans has been negotiating.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sanders said President Biden has given Senate Dems a “blueprint as to where we want to go” with the bigger package.
The Vermont independent senator voiced frustration with objections to the steep price tags involved.
Earlier this year, Biden proposed a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan that he touted as a major job creator in the wake of economic devastation from the coronavirus pandemic. Republican senators have since gotten the White House to trim billions of dollars from that proposal.
“I sometimes think we get boggled down in numbers,” Sanders said. “But we’ve got to look at what the needs are of the American people, what’s going on right now.”
Without going into detail about the $6 trillion package, he said it will focus on helping working families.
“The time is long overdue that we address many of the long-neglected problems facing the middle class and working class of this country,” said Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
“Are there differences about this proposal, that proposal — the amount of money?” he said. “Yeah, there are. And that’s something we’re going to have to work together to hammer out.”
The $6 trillion proposal includes measures aimed at boosting what Democrats have taken to calling the country’s “human infrastructure.” Those range from lowering the Medicare eligibility age, to 60 from 65, to granting legal status to so-called Dreamers, immigrants brought to the U.S. as children who are now here illegally.
Republicans have howled over the big costs — and Democrats’ proposal for meeting them. Biden wants to fund about half of the $6 trillion package through tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy.
The outcome will determine the course of his presidency, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said on Sunday.
“I would just say to President Biden, you’ve got a party that’s divided. You’ve got a Republican Party that’s willing to meet you in the middle,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“You’ve got to decide what kind of president you are and what kind of presidency you want,” he added.
Last week, Biden rejected some lawmakers’ calls to raise the federal gas tax to help pay for Democrats’ proposals.
“After the extraordinarily hard times that ordinary Americans endured in 2020 — job losses, shrinking incomes, squeezed budgets — he is simply not going to allow Congress to raise taxes on those who suffered the most,” White House spokesman Andrew Bates said on Friday.