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The next step in President Biden’s large-scale economic plan is infrastructure, and he will unveil the first piece of a two-part package on Wednesday in Pittsburgh – where he launched his 2020 presidential campaign.
The proposal combines traditional forms of infrastructure with vital services. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday that Biden’s speech in Pennsylvania would focus on roads, railways and domestic manufacturing. Psaki added that Mr Biden will move on to part two – which includes healthcare, childcare and education – in April.
“The president has a plan to repair the infrastructure of our country,” Psaki said. “We’re currently 13th in the world. No one believes we should be there, and he has a plan to pay for it, which he will come up with.”
Psaki told reporters the administration was open to listening to members of Congress come up with their proposals on how to pay for the plan, which is believed to have reached $ 3 trillion. She hinted that tax code reform could generate income to pay for the plan.
“He believes, of course, that investing in our infrastructure, continuing to create well-paying union jobs is a central concern,” added Psaki. “But he also believes that we have an opportunity to rebalance to take, to correct our tax code which is outdated. And some might pay more in our country who are not currently.”
Getting Republican support in Congress will be difficult, especially after Democrats, passing the $ 1.9 trillion COVID stimulus package, used the budget reconciliation process to bypass the 60-vote threshold required for most Senate laws and instead passed the bill with a simple majority vote. Asked whether the White House is trying to split the economic recovery package into two parts to gain Republican support for infrastructure, Senate Minority Whip John Thune told reporters last week that Republicans in the Senate would not support this “ploy”.
“If they want to sit down with Republicans, which they should, Republicans would work with them on an infrastructure package,” Thune said Tuesday. He added, “But if they decide to do it as a ploy to get Republicans to vote for the easy stuff and then do all of these things, the controversial stuff through reconciliation, I don’t think our guys are going to. take the bait. on that. “
It’s not just Republicans that Mr. Biden needs to win. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia says he wants to see the Republicans’ contribution, so the Senate doesn’t have to rely on reconciliation to pass. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said last week that he believed the American people knew infrastructure needed to be built “in a new green way” and that he hoped Republicans would work on it. package. But Schumer added that if the parties could not work together, the Democrats would “move forward.” Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, has said he is ready to use reconciliation to push an infrastructure package through the Senate.
The reconciliation recourse is approved by the Senate parliamentarian, and Schumer’s political aides argue that a section of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 allows Democrats to use reconciliation again this exercise, but a Schumer’s assistant said legislative strategy did not. still been finalized.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told a press conference Monday that he did not want to see tax increases “at all levels in America.”
“My advice to the administration is if you want to make an infrastructure bill, let’s do an infrastructure bill,” McConnell said. “Let’s not turn it into a massive effort to raise taxes for businesses and individuals.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg introduced members of the House at a hearing last week on big investments in infrastructure, telling them it was “the best chance of our life to make a generational investment in infrastructure. infrastructure”. House Republicans, however, are still in favor of a smaller bill.
“A transport bill, I think, has to be a transport bill, not a Green New Deal,” Republican congressman Sam Graves, a leading committee member, told Buttigieg last week. House transport and infrastructure. “They have to be roads and bridges.”
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