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(LR) US Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Jane Shaheen (D-NH), Susan Collins (Republic-Middle East) and Kirsten Sinema (D-Democrat) ) -AZ) He takes a break from an infrastructure meeting to go to the vote at the US Capitol on June 8, 2021 in Washington, DC.
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An infrastructure plan devised by a group of Senate Democrats and Republicans would cost nearly $1 trillion, a price that leaves senators with the work they have to do to win over members of both parties.
A source familiar with the plan told CNBC that the proposal, which aims to modernize physical infrastructure such as transportation and water systems, would cost $974 billion over five years or $1.2 trillion over eight years. It would include $579 billion in new spending above the baseline Congress has already set. Biden has requested about $600 billion in new money, according to Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of No.
Senators have not announced how they plan to pay for the investments. The 10 lawmakers who reached the agreement said in a statement Thursday that the proposal “will be paid for in full and will not include tax increases.”
The group drafted their proposal as a compromise to modernize American infrastructure with bipartisan support in Congress. Senators still need to win the support of President Joe Biden and congressional leaders for their lobbying plan.
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In a statement responding to the plan Thursday night, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that “questions need to be addressed, particularly about the specifics of both policy and payment of costs, among other things.”
“Senior White House and Cabinet staff will be working with the Senate group in the coming days to get answers to these questions, and we’re also consulting with other members of both the House and Senate on the way forward,” he said.
The White House has told senators it will not agree to pay a bill either by indexing the gas tax with inflation or implementing an electric car mileage tax, NBC News reported Thursday. These actions would violate Biden’s promise not to raise taxes on anyone who earns less than $400,000 a year.
Nor is it clear whether the spending will be broad enough to win over Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DNY, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., or progressives who are impatient with Biden’s efforts to strike a bipartisan agreement. While Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, has said he wants to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, he also noted that it aims to derail key parts of Biden’s economic agenda.
The offices of Schumer and Pelosi did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A McConnell spokesman did not immediately comment.
Democrats are working on more than one front to pass the infrastructure bill and implement the first part of Biden’s economic recovery agenda. As the White House considers the bipartisan proposal, Democrats are beginning to lay the groundwork for passing parts of the president’s $2.3 trillion US jobs plan by other means.
One tool is the five-year, $547 billion ground transportation funding bill that the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee submitted this week. Democrats could use the measure, which the House of Representatives could vote on as soon as the end of the month, to approve parts of Biden’s agenda.
Biden also urged Schumer and Pelosi to move forward with the budget resolution to begin the reconciliation process. By doing so, Democrats could pass an infrastructure bill without Republican support.
The path appears blocked at the moment. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, whose party needs a vote to approve legislation in the 50-50 Senate, has stressed that he wants to pass a bipartisan bill.
Manchin is one of the ten negotiators in the Senate group.
It’s unclear whether Democratic leaders will accept that the bipartisan plan not be spent on so-called human infrastructure, such as Biden’s plan to expand care for the elderly and Americans with disabilities. The party could weave these proposals into a separate bill based on the Biden American Families Plan. The proposal focuses on child care, education and health care.
Democrats argued that the country needed to improve welfare programs along with physical infrastructure because both would help Americans return to work.
Biden also called for raising the corporate tax rate to at least 25% to pay for the first part of his recovery plan. However, Republicans said they would not change the 2017 tax code, which lowered the corporate rate to 21% from 35%.
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