More than a week after President Joe Biden unveiled the second of a two-part spending package that totals more than $4 trillion, Republicans signaled unanimous opposition.
“I don’t think there will be any Republican support,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Monday at a press conference in Louisville. “None. Zero.”
McConnell made the remarks as the White House geared up for more bipartisan talks with Congress this week.
A narrow window for action and huge differences between the parties about the size and cost of legislation may make a deal impossible, however.
McConnell called the Biden proposal a “$4.1 trillion grab bag, which has infrastructure in it but a whole lot of other stuff.”
The Biden two-part plan would tackle infrastructure, climate change, child care, healthcare, education, and much more.
Republicans say they are interested in infrastructure spending but are only willing to spend a fraction of what the Biden administration proposed last month in the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan.
Last week, Biden proposed a second measure, the American Families Plan, which would cost $1.8 trillion. No Republican has endorsed the measure, which would provide free universal child care, free community college, semi-permanent tax credits, and broader healthcare subsidies.
The Biden spending proposals come after the president signed a $2 trillion COVID-19 aid package earlier this year.
If the two latest spending proposals become law, it would bring total spending in his administration up to an unprecedented $6 billion less than one year into his term.
Republicans say Biden is on course to run up a spending tab that is far too high and have panned the president’s latest two proposals that total $4.1 trillion.
“That’s the amount of money we spent to win World War II,” Sen. Susan Collins, a centrist Republican from Maine, told CNN’s State of the Union.
Republicans are also opposed to Biden’s plan to pay partially for the proposals by raising corporate taxes from 21% to 28% and raise capital gains and estate taxes. The move would reverse much of the GOP’s 2017 tax cuts, which were a signature party accomplishment.
McConnell said raising taxes would hurt the rebounding economy.
“We are not going to revisit that,” McConnell said of the proposed tax increases.
Biden has met twice with bipartisan groups of House and Senate lawmakers to talk infrastructure, and more meetings are scheduled for the coming week, White House chief of staff Ron Klain told CBS on Sunday.
“We are going to work with Republicans to find common ground,” Klain said.
Biden praised the GOP in an April 28 joint address to Congress for proposing their own infrastructure framework, which is priced at less than $600 billion and is far more narrow than the Biden American Jobs Plan.
At the same time, Biden and congressional Democrats have signaled they are planning to go it alone unless a bipartisan accord quickly materializes. Biden wants Congress to act on a measure by Memorial Day, which is just a few weeks away.
Collins told CNN that the GOP has made its move with a $568 billion infrastructure proposal released last month.
“The Republicans have put forth a reasonable offer,” Collins told CNN. “It’s up to the president to do a counteroffer to us.”
Republicans and a few Democrats have pitched the idea of splitting off a narrower infrastructure bill centered on roads, bridges, waterways, and broadband projects.
On Monday, McConnell pointed out that even some Democrats are questioning the cost and scope of Biden’s proposal, which could make it impossible for Democrats to pass the measure even if they use a budgetary tactic called reconciliation, which would allow them to pass it with 51 votes instead of 60.
Democrats need every single lawmaker in their party to vote for the bill using reconciliation. But at least one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, said that infrastructure should be considered in a smaller and separate measure from the other Biden initiatives.
McConnell said that splitting off a smaller infrastructure measure “is worth talking about.”
This week, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican and a top negotiator with the Democrats, will meet with Biden to try to advance an agreement.
McConnell said Democrats need to drop the tax increases and talk about a plan that focuses on crumbling roads and bridges.
“Let’s talk about what we can agree is an infrastructure package,” McConnell said. “We’re ready to talk.”
