Top White House aides are set to meet with a group of senators trying come up with an infrastructure compromise as the effort moves closer to an agreement despite persistent differences on how to pay for the proposal.
Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, Steve Ricchetti, counselor to President Joe Biden, and Louisa Terrell, the White House legislative affairs director, will go to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet with senators in the group, a person familiar with the plans said.
The emissaries add urgency to the talks, which have been stuck, in part, on White House opposition to indexing the gasoline tax to inflation. The person familiar with the White House’s plans said Tuesday’s negotiations, should they go well, could spur an invitation from Biden to meet at the White House.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., a member of a wider bipartisan group of 21 senators supporting the effort, said Biden has an opportunity to help nudge the nascent agreement forward.
“He needs to lean into this package, this bipartisan framework that we’ve got,” Young said Tuesday on MSNBC. “He needs to bless it, and he needs to encourage fellow Democrats to support it. So, if he does that, I believe it’s going to pass in both the House and Senate, the American people will have their infrastructure without an increase in taxes.”
On Monday, Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, one of the leaders of the group, said the senators plan to draw up a “fleshed out” framework for a proposal this week.
One of the sticking points continues to be coming up with a way to pay for their $579 billion plan. Two of the negotiators, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the idea of indexing the motor fuels tax to inflation is all but dead.
The administration has been pushing Biden’s plan to bolster funding for Internal Revenue Service enforcement to collect from tax cheats. The group has proposed limited new revenue from bolstering IRS enforcement but far short of the amount the White House estimates could be recouped in unpaid taxes. Portman said they also are looking at raising revenue from airwaves sales and fees from major polluters.
There are disagreements about how much stricter tax collections would bring in. The U.S. Treasury Department estimated that wealthy taxpayers as a group are hiding billions of dollars of income. The administration estimates that giving the IRS $80 billion more in funding would raise $700 billion in additional revenue over a decade. But not all experts agree with that estimate and Republicans are balking at giving the agency $80 billion over 10 years.
The Congressional Budget Offices has estimated that giving the IRS $40 billion — as the bipartisan Senate group has proposed — would yield $103 billion in revenue for a net $63 billion
“There’s lots of conversation on the tax gap issue,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., a member of the bipartisan group. Tester said he thought a deal could come together among the group by Tuesday afternoon.
Mitt Romney, R-Utah, another member, said: “There are a number of pay-fors that we’ve been able to add to the list and I think we’re going to get there.”
Biden on Monday met separately at the White House with two Democratic moderates, Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., according to a White House official.
Biden and Manchin, the official said, discussed voting rights and how to advance a bill in the evenly divided Senate. They also talked about infrastructure. The meeting with Sinema also concerned infrastructure, the official added.
