After plowing ahead to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending plan without opposition support, the White House says it has already begun discussions with Republicans on their alternative infrastructure plan.
Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said officials saw their $568 billion counterproposal in a different light than attempts to negotiate the coronavirus package.
“This is a good start, and we look forward to having the conversation moving forward,” she said during the daily White House briefing.
A day earlier, a group of Republican senators unveiled a more modest plan to rebuild America’s crumbling infrastructure than Biden’s $2.3 trillion package.
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The two-page plan trimmed down the Biden administration’s broad definition of infrastructure to focus on roads, transit systems, and broadband internet for the next five years as the first step in finding a bipartisan compromise.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia said: “I think that we see this as an offer that is on the table and deserves a response. And I think we will get a response, and we look forward to that. And we’re ready to get to work.”
Earlier this year, Democrats relied on a procedural tool to pass the coronavirus package without Republican support in the Senate. Biden panned Republican alternatives that suggested more modest spending.
Psaki said the urgency of the pandemic and its economic effects meant there was little flexibility. This time around, she said, there was already overlap between Republican ideas and White House proposals.
Conversations, she added, had already begun at the staff level.
“So we do see it as different,” she said. “We do think the process will be different.”
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“There’s more time to move forward. There’s more time to discuss and negotiate, and we’ll take advantage of that, that time available.”
