Republican lawmakers will not meet President Joe Biden at the negotiating table to broker a bipartisan “human infrastructure” agreement despite explicit signaling from the White House on the issue, multiple Senate GOP offices tell the Washington Examiner.
The Washington Examiner previously reported on the Biden administration’s efforts to lobby support for Biden’s Families Plan proposals, specifically a long-term extension of the child tax credit, with nongovernment, conservative policy experts. Though a number of individuals involved say those conversations, led by senior advisers to the president Gene Sperling and Neera Tanden, left them with the distinct impression the administration was searching for a second cross-party infrastructure deal, White House officials maintained they aren’t negotiating another bipartisan bill and that any compromise would have to be first offered by members of Congress.
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Biden “wants the child tax credit extended and we’re pursuing that in the budget resolution,” one White House aide told the Washington Examiner. “The president knows the child tax credit would be a game-changer for millions of families and would welcome bipartisan support, but there is not a round of talks happening with Congress about a second bipartisan package.”
Still, the offices of two Republican senators key to advancing any bipartisan child allowance legislation (and several senior GOP aides interviewed for this story) indicate they’d rather see the Democrats pass the Families Plan through budget reconciliation, or fail trying to do so, than acknowledge the White House’s signaling and approach Democrats with their own proposal.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, introduced the “Parent Tax Credit” in April, legislation that his office says “rewards marriage and work,” but he is opposed to the current construction of Biden’s families plan.
“We are happy to work with others who share the same goal, but Democrat policies have long been about sending out no strings-attached-cash,” a Hawley spokesman told the Washington Examiner. “That’s what this White House has already done, and it seems what they are aiming to do in their social engineering ‘infrastructure’ plan.”
A spokesperson for Sen. Mitt Romney, who introduced his own conservative, families-focused bill in February, noted that the Utah Republican “repeatedly said he is open to working on a bipartisan basis to get things done for Utahns and the American people.”
The spokesperson added that Romney’s office has “not heard from the White House so can’t comment on any particular proposals.”
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Three GOP aides conceded to the Washington Examiner that child care and family proposals are viewed favorably by a sizable contingency of Republican voters but suggested that opposing Biden’s “socialist agenda” would help their bosses, and the party, significantly more during the 2022 midterm elections than reaching across the aisle this summer.
Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, voiced that perspective on Wednesday after secretly recorded comments he made in June about the “chaos” surrounding the infrastructure negotiations had been posted to social media.
“For the next 18 months, Republicans’ job is to do everything that we can to slow down and block the Democrats’ radical agenda, and then win the majority and lead,” he said in a statement.
Two other GOP aides suggested that, given funding concerns voiced by centrist Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Biden’s Families Plan might not even make it through budget reconciliation.
“That’s the best-case scenario,” one of the aides told the Washington Examiner. “It would force them to come back to us, so I don’t see anyone offering themselves up as a hostage with that possibility on the line.
“They’re already doing outreach to conservatives on the issue. They feel that pressure, too,” the aide said.
Biden’s schedule itself lends credence to that notion. His last three trips have been to Republican districts, where he touted the already hashed out bipartisan infrastructure plan (which would spend roughly $1 trillion modernizing the nation’s roads, bridges, broadband, water, and other physical infrastructure facilities) and the “human infrastructure” proposals included in the reconciliation plan.
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“This is going to be an American century,” the president told a crowd in McHenry County, Michigan, on Thursday. “My American Families Plan and the other elements of the Build Back Better agenda, experts on Wall Street and analysts have said will create millions of good-paying jobs for years and decades to come, not just in the near term. So, I’m going to be making the case to the American people until the job is done.”
