Sen. Lindsey Graham said he is urging President Trump’s support for infrastructure spending, which the president has vociferously backed during the coronavirus pandemic, despite calls to pump the breaks from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“I want to do infrastructure. I told Trump, this is the time. We got it teed up. This is the time to go big,” the South Carolina Republican and close Trump ally told CNN Wednesday evening. “It really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give a facelift to the country.”
Other senior Republican senators have aired their support, a push that appears to rebuke McConnell. The Kentucky Republican suggested the need for slow, deliberate movement on the bill Wednesday, Politico reported.
On Sunday, he said that it might be several weeks before the next relief package is completed.
Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri and member of McConnell’s leadership team, said Wednesday he was in favor of moving on a new package.
“Personally, I’d like to see infrastructure,” said Blunt, who is chairman of the Republican Policy and Senate Rules Committees. “I’m probably closer to where the president is on that topic than where a number of my colleagues are.”
Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chairman Roger Wicker also wants to move forward with a relief bill. “I think June doesn’t need to come and go without a phase four,” said Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi.
Trump said Thursday as he prepared to leave the White House for a trip to Michigan that he had just wrapped up a meeting with McConnell.
“We’ve got a lot of good things going. We’ve just had a meeting with Mitch McConnell and the group, and we’re working on a package of very positive things,” Trump said.
The president has prodded Congress on infrastructure spending for months, which he promised in his campaign for president four years ago. He pressed for appropriations on Twitter in March, calling for a “VERY BIG & BOLD” jobs-focused package addressing roads, bridges, tunnels, and ports.
In a Fox News town hall this month, Trump again called for infrastructure spending in the next relief bill, along with a “very strong” payroll tax cut, which he said would be “so important to the success of our country.”
Congress has already approved nearly $3 trillion since the coronavirus pandemic began.
“The thing that everyone’s wondering is where infrastructure is going to land,” a senior business trade association lobbyist told the Washington Examiner, adding that while the White House likes the concept, it wasn’t clear that they would push the effort.
One former White House official said they believed the new bill would stay narrow, trading between money for states with liability protections.
According to one former senior administration official, the event forcing action for the next bill will be the expiration of the fuel tax, which funds highway building. “That has to be replenished somehow, either by redirecting spending or by increasing taxes,” this source said, explaining how infrastructure could end up in the next relief bill. “So that’s a difficult thing. It’s squarely in infrastructure. And that precipitates a larger conversation on infrastructure.”
McConnell does not want to talk about infrastructure “because that means that you have to address the Green New Deal and a whole bunch of other things that [Republicans] don’t want to litigate now,” this former official said. “They will certainly be litigated during the presidential campaign.”
In spite of Trump’s rebuke of the Green New Deal, elements will likely enter negotiations in the next relief package.
“If traditional energy gets included, which I just can’t imagine it won’t — there’s obviously great demand from the industry, and the president has gone on to say that he’s sympathetic to that — Democrats are not going to let that opportunity go by, and so I think they will start sharing some conversations around aspects of the Green New Deal,” this former official said of potential trades.
While many Republicans have said they are inclined to hold off on further spending until the federal aid that has already been appropriated has been spent and evaluated, others, including Sens. Cory Gardner of Colorado and Susan Collins of Maine, who each face reelection this year, have called for quicker action.
Collins, along with Republican Sens. Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, has joined a bipartisan bill to allocate $500 billion in emergency aid to states, cities, and counties.
“I would like to see us start negotiating with the House,” Collins said. “If we don’t provide additional aid, the consequences are going to be massive layoffs and huge reductions in services.”
