WASHINGTON- A bipartisan infrastructure plan costing a little over $1 trillion, only about a fourth of what President Joe Biden initially proposed, has been gaining support in the US Senate, but disputes continued on Sunday over how it should be funded.
Biden told reporters last week that he will have a response to the plan as soon as Monday after reviewing it. Twenty-one of the 100 US senators – including 11 Republicans, nine Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats – are working on the framework to rebuild roads, bridges and other traditional infrastructure that sources said would cost $1.2 trillion over eight years.
“President Biden, if you want an infrastructure deal of a trillion dollars, it’s there for the taking. You just need to get involved and lead,” one of the 21 senators, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, said on Fox News Sunday.
Biden, seeking to fuel growth after the pandemic and address income inequality, had initially proposed about $4 trillion be spent on a broader definition of infrastructure, including fighting climate change and providing care for children and the elderly.
But the White House trimmed the offer to about $1.7 trillion in talks with senators in a bid to win Republican support which will be needed for any plan to get the 60 votes normally required to advance legislation in the Senate.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, who is working up a far more ambitious infrastructure blueprint of $6 trillion, panned as “bad ideas” some of the revenue-raising provisions the bipartisan group discussed, such as indexing the gas tax to inflation. On CNN’s “State of the Union” and NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Sanders was unclear about whether he could support the bipartisan plan if those were removed.
“If it is regressive taxation, you know, raising the gas tax or a fee on electric vehicles, or the privatization of infrastructure, no I wouldn’t support it. But we don’t have the details right now,” Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, told NBC.
