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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Guardian staff and agencies

US Senate on track to give final approval to $1tn bipartisan infrastructure plan

Chuck Schumer said it’s ‘the first time the Senate has come together around such a package in decades’.
Chuck Schumer said it’s ‘the first time the Senate has come together around such a package in decades’. Photograph: J Scott Applewhite/AP

After weeks of fits, starts and delays, the US Senate is on track to give final approval to the $1tn bipartisan infrastructure plan, with a growing coalition of Democrats and Republicans prepared to lift the first phase of Joe Biden’s rebuilding agenda to passage.

Final Senate votes are expected around Tuesday mid-morning, and the bill would then go back to the House of Representatives for further consideration.

All told, about 70 senators appear poised to carry the bipartisan package to passage, a potentially robust tally of lawmakers eager to tap the billions in new spending for their states and to show voters back home they can deliver.

The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said it’s “the first time the Senate has come together around such a package in decades”.

After that, the Senate will immediately launch votes on the president’s next package – the $3.5tn plan that is a more strictly Democratic undertaking via the legislative reconciliation process that does not need to overcome the 60-vote filibuster hurdle in the upper chamber – beginning a debate that will extend into fall.

The larger bill would approve major investments in childcare, healthcare and climate-related initiatives to take action against the climate emergency.

For now, the increasingly elusive political center is holding steady on the bipartisan plan, a rare partnership with Biden’s White House.

In a 68-29 vote, the Senate had agreed to end debate on the legislation, setting up the final vote. If enacted, the bill would invest $550bn in new federal funds for roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure projects.

“This will be the most significant infrastructure funding we have done in my lifetime, and then some,” the transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told CNN on Tuesday morning.

Especially, he said, amid the “extremely alarming” consensus message from the world’s leading climate scientists via Monday’s International Panel on Climate Change report about inevitable and irreversible dangerous heating about “just how dire things are with climate change”.

The stark UN panel report is putting pressure on Biden and leaders around the world to not only acknowledge the looming catastrophe but to act decisively. There are measures in both infrastructure packages that deal with climate action, including in the $1.2tn bill with money for train systems and expansion of charging stations for electric vehicles.

“We’ve got to have a lot of solutions … this bill is going to do a lot for this country,” Buttigieg added.

On the left, the Democrats have withstood the complaints of liberals who say the proposal falls short of what’s needed to provide a down payment on one of Biden’s top priorities.

From the right, the Republicans are largely ignoring the criticism from their most conservative and far-flung voices, including a barrage of name-calling from Donald Trump as he tries to derail the package.

Together, a sizable number of business, farm and labor groups back the package, which proposes nearly $550bn in new spending on what are typically mainstays of federal spending – roads, bridges, broadband internet, water pipes and other public works systems that cities and states often cannot afford on their own.

The outline for the bigger $3.5tn package is on deck next in the Senate – a more liberal undertaking of childcare, elder care and other programs that expected to draw only Democratic support.

Senators are expected Tuesday to launch a lengthy session to consider amendments to the blueprint, the start of a months-long debate on the package.

Unlike Biden’s bigger $3.5tn package, which would be paid for by higher tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, the bipartisan package is to be funded by repurposing other money, and with other spending cuts and revenue streams.

The House is expected to consider both Biden infrastructure packages when it returns from recess in September.

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