WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of senators agreed on a nearly $1 trillion infrastructure framework Thursday, the culmination of months of negotiation over a proposal to fortify the nation’s roads, bridges and broadband internet access.
“We have a deal,” Biden said, standing with the 10 senators in the West Wing driveway after their 30-minute Oval Office meeting. “They’ve given me their word,” he said of the senators, a group of five Republicans and five Democrats. “Where I come from that’s good enough for me.”
It’s a big step forward, and validation for the Senate negotiators and a president determined to show that working across the political aisle is still possible in such a partisan era. But, given the deep divide in Washington and Democrats’ thin congressional majorities, securing the votes to pass even a bipartisan package won’t be easy.
The meeting came after the group of senators reached a tentative agreement with White House aides Wednesday evening after two days of meetings on Capitol Hill.
“We made serious compromises on both ends,” Biden said, acknowledging that Republicans weren’t going to back the investments in “human infrastructure” he’s called for, suggesting that he hopes to push those in a separate package that would require support from every Democratic senator. “We’ll see what happens in the reconciliation bill and the budget process.”
The plan calls for nearly $600 billion in new spending, with the rest of the funds coming from existing pots of money.
The deal, if enacted, would mark the first major bipartisan legislative accomplishment for Biden, who campaigned on his ability to work across the aisle with Republicans. This agreement would cover only a fraction of what Biden originally called for in his $4 trillion proposal to invest in “hard” infrastructure of roads and bridges, alongside “human” infrastructure, such as child care and elder care programs.
Neither senators nor the White House released other details on what would be funded by the plan — or how it would be paid for, the primary sticking point throughout weeks of talks.
Both sides have said in recent weeks the other’s proposed funding plans crossed a red line for them. Republicans refused to consider Biden’s proposal to raise the corporate tax rate, which the GOP lowered to 21% in 2017.
And the White House has hammered Republicans for suggesting new infrastructure investments be funded by raising the gas tax and imposing new fees on drivers of electric vehicles, even dubbing it a “Ford F-150 tax” in reference to the company’s new heavy-duty truck model that runs on electric power.
At the White House Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden would meet with the group of senators only if talks progressed between them and the senior administration officials who spent the day on the Hill. Hours later, after both sides agreed on the framework of a proposal, Biden invited lawmakers to meet with him at the White House Thursday morning.
Significant hurdles remain, and the clock is ticking. Progressive Democrats long ago grew tired of the protracted negotiations, warning the White House that Republicans were merely trying to eat up precious legislative time. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., threw down the gauntlet Thursday morning before the particulars of the Senate compromise were known, indicating that the House wouldn’t vote on it until the Senate passes the more progressive bill that is likely to address issues such as immigration, climate and health care.
“We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and the reconciliation bill,” said Pelosi, who said bipartisan legislation was “important” for symbolic reasons while asserting that legislation focused mainly on traditional infrastructure doesn’t meet the needs of the moment. “There ain’t going to be an infrastructure bill unless we have the reconciliation bill passed by the United States Senate.”
Following the announcement of the tentative deal, Sen. Alex Padilla echoed Pelosi’s comments, saying that without yet seeing the details, the bipartisan plan “is not enough, it doesn’t meet the moment.” But he left the door open to supporting the plan if the partisan reconciliation bill comes along with it. “These two tracks have to move together in parallel. We must meet the moment and deliver for the American people,” said Padilla, D-Calif.
The second bill would have to be approved through the reconciliation process, which circumvents the Senate filibuster and would require the backing of all 48 Democrats and two independents who caucus with them, in the evenly divided chamber.
The pledge addresses the concern held by progressive Democrats that their party’s moderates — Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — after helping negotiate the smaller, bipartisan package on infrastructure, could opt not to support the larger, more progressive bill.
The challenge facing Biden now will be gathering enough Republican and Democratic support to get the deal through the Senate, where he is starting with about two dozen votes. The strategy behind the bipartisan agreement is to get votes from the middle of the Senate; progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans would be the hardest to convince to support a plan.
White House officials and congressional Democratic leaders will have a short time frame to gather support for the agreement and get it enacted, especially if they try to advance both bills simultaneously.
“We’re all on the same page: Both tracks, the bipartisan track and the budget reconciliation track, are proceeding at pace, and we hope to have votes on both of them in the House — in the Senate and the House in July,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said late Wednesday after a meeting with Pelosi and White House officials.
The dual tracks will require some heavy legislative maneuvering, but it has been done before. In 2010, House Democrats made a similar demand of Senate Democrats as they enacted the Affordable Care Act through two pieces of legislation — one approved in normal legislative procedure and a second bill enacted through the reconciliation process.
