Oh, how nice. The White House kindly cut down the infrastructure bill to only $1.7 trillion from $2.3 trillion.
President Joe Biden kept much of the spending and tax provisions in the bill that the Republicans do not like.
The White House needs support from Senate Republicans to pass a bill.
The Democrats can pass legislation in the House and Senate without the Republicans. The White House, though, wants to achieve infrastructure spending with bipartisan support.
From The Wall Street Journal:
In a memo to Senate Republicans, the White House proposed lowering President Biden’s funding request for broadband internet to $65 billion from $100 billion, and for roads, bridges and infrastructure projects to $120 billion from $159 billion. The White House said those numbers more closely align with Senate Republicans’ proposals.It also proposed shifting $480 billion in funding for research, development and manufacturing initiatives into other legislation. But the White House showed no signs of budging on its plan to raise corporate taxes to pay for the program, which Republicans have called a nonstarter.
Press Secretary Jen Psaki said, “In our view, this is the art of seeking common ground.”
However, the Republicans involved did not comment on Biden’s new deal. One aide contradicted Psaki:
Republicans involved in the negotiations didn’t immediately comment on the new White House offer, though one Republican aide familiar with the talks said the new offer didn’t bring the two sides closer to a deal.With only days until Memorial Day, which the White House has set as a target for making progress on infrastructure negotiations, Republicans and the White House remain deeply divided on the scope of an infrastructure package and how to pay for it after weeks of meetings and negotiations. Even if the two sides manage to further narrow the gap between their two proposals, aides in both parties expect the disagreements over financing the package to be very difficult to overcome.
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