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AFP
AFP
World
Elodie CUZIN

US senators poised to pass massive infrastructure plan

The infrastructure package is expected to pass with a comfortable margin in the 100-member Senate, where more than a third of Republicans have joined the 50 Democrats in the push to pass it. ©AFP

Washington (AFP) - The US Senate was set to approve President Joe Biden's historic $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan Tuesday, delivering him what will be a major victory if it passes a final vote in the lower chamber.

Some seven weeks after the Democratic leader stood with senators from both parties hailing a preliminary agreement to fix the nation's roads, bridges, ports and internet connections, the deal will need a simple majority to pass the upper chamber of Congress.

A vote is expected around 11:00 am (1500 GMT) and the package would then be put to a make-or-break vote in the House of Representatives in the coming weeks. 

The result of a rare consensus between Republican and Democratic senators, the ambitious plan provides for $550 billion in new federal spending on transport infrastructure, but also for high-speed internet and efforts to fight climate change.

The spending total of $1.2 trillion -- the equivalent of Spain's 2020 gross domestic product -- takes into account other public funds that have already been appropriated. 

It is expected to pass with a comfortable margin in the 100-member Senate, where more than a third of Republicans have joined the 50 Democrats in the push to pass the deal.

Its passage looks less certain in the House of Representatives, however, where rifts have emerged within the narrow Democratic majority between the left wing and the centrists. 

Negotiations are likely to be drawn out, and a final vote in Congress may not come until the fall.

The bill's passage would mark a resounding victory in a deeply divided Washington for Biden, a former senator who touts his ability to reach across the aisle. 

Sweeping domestic agenda

The package is a primary element of Biden's sweeping domestic agenda aimed at transforming the United States with more than $4 trillion in federal spending.

Democrats have announced they will move on the bulk of that plan with a go-it-alone, $3.5 trillion budget framework that includes major investments in health, education, tackling climate change and expanding social welfare programs.

The budget resolution "will be the most consequential piece of legislation for working people, the elderly, the children, the sick and the poor since (president Franklin Delano Roosevelt) and the New Deal of the 1930s," said independent Senator Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Budget Committee. 

Democratic leaders intend to use a fast-track process known as reconciliation that allows budget-related legislation to pass by simple majority.

With Republicans united against the broader budget bill, every Senate Democrat would need to support the package -- no guarantee in a caucus that includes progressives and moderates.

Biden himself has pressed Congress to deliver on his priorities, saying in July that "we can't afford not to make these investments."

Making a last-minute plea for passage of the bipartisan bill at the weekend, the president tweeted that it represented a "historic, once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure."

Former Republican president Donald Trump however has called it a "disgrace," noting the victory it would hand Biden, and threatened political reprisals against Republicans who voted for it. 

Since then, three Republican senators who participated in the negotiations have announced that they will not vote for the plan. 

But their influential leader, Mitch McConnell, has signaled his support, aware of the program's huge popularity among voters tired of historic neglect of the nation's highways. 

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