House and Senate leaders in both parties met with President Joe Biden for more than an hour Wednesday for “productive” talks that have not yet yielded a critical deal on infrastructure.
Biden told reporters at the start of the meeting he will “try to reach some consensus” on an infrastructure accord, but the two parties remain starkly divided on the size, cost, and offsets for the massive plan put forward by Biden.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, described the meeting as productive but said Biden’s plan to pay for the deal with higher taxes remains “our red line,” for the GOP.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said after the meeting that the group decided that “as a first step … we would explore the places we could agree on and come to a bipartisan agreement on that.”
Republican senators last month proposed a $568 billion package that sticks to traditional infrastructure projects. It was to serve as a counterproposal to Biden, who has pitched a two-part package costing more than $4 trillion that would provide not only new roads and bridges but free child care, free community college, more healthcare subsidies, and billions for “green energy” projects.
Biden wants to hike the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, which would reverse much of the GOP’s signature tax cuts that passed in 2017.
McConnell has repeatedly warned the Republican Party will not vote to undo those cuts and did so again outside the White House after the meeting with Biden.
Biden has conducted a handful of bipartisan meetings with lawmakers to discuss a deal on infrastructure.
