The White House insists there could still be a bipartisan infrastructure deal as a second group of senators overshadows West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito’s cadre with another counterproposal.
President Joe Biden and Capito will speak Tuesday afternoon, though Capito told reporters Tuesday morning she would not be presenting a compromise valued more than her standing offer of $928 billion, which she said last Friday she could increase by $50 billion. But her package has limited pay-for provisions and not the ones favored by the White House.
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Biden will also speak to “other senators who have been engaged in a discussion on bipartisan infrastructure plans,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
When needled on whether the administration had reached an infrastructure “impasse,” Psaki pushed back: “We certainly don’t see it that way.”
Psaki repeated Biden had “several viable paths forward,” including a $878 billion counter-framework from Sens. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican, and Kyrsten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat.
Psaki added that House Democrats had started drafting a transportation bill, which could be one vehicle for passing some of Biden’s ideas in a piecemeal manner. Democrats can also begin the fast-track budget process known as reconciliation, which does not require Republican senator support in the evenly-divided chamber.
Psaki touted, too, that initiatives from the president’s initial $2.3 trillion outline had already been incorporated into a Senate Democrats measure aimed at increasing the country’s competitiveness with China.
“This train is moving on several tracks,” Psaki said. “We’re encouraged by the variety of options.”
The White House originally set Memorial Day as a deadline for “progress” regarding an infrastructure-plus package. But the administration extended the deadline until this week, given the Senate was returning from a brief recess.
Liberal Democrats have expressed growing frustrations with the White House for entertaining less generous Republican entreaties motivated by the president’s desire to strike a bipartisan agreement.
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“These negotiations cannot go on and on and on,” Sen. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Budget Committee, told MSNBC this week. “In my own view, do I believe we will have 10 Republican votes to do something significant on physical infrastructure, for climate, for human infrastructure, for healthcare, for education? No, I don’t.”
