Biden: Infrastructure deal reached

President praises ‘a true bipartisan effort’

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday announced a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pared-down infrastructure plan that would make a start on his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to reach across the political aisle. But he openly acknowledged that Democrats will probably have to tackle much of the rest on their own.

“We have a deal,” Biden said, standing with the 10 senators in the West Wing driveway after a 30-minute Oval Office meeting. “They’ve given me their word,” he said of the group of five Republicans and five Democrats. “Where I come from, that’s good enough for me.”

The bill’s price tag of $973 billion over five years, or $1.2 trillion over eight years, is a scaled-back but still significant piece of Biden’s broader proposals.

It includes more than a half-trillion dollars in new spending and could open the door to the president’s more sweeping $4 trillion proposals for child care and what the White House calls human infrastructure later on.

“When we can find common ground, working across party lines, that is what I will seek to do,” said Biden, who deemed the deal “a true bipartisan effort, breaking the ice that too often has kept us frozen in place.”

The president stressed that “neither side got everything they wanted in this deal; that’s what it means to compromise,” and said other White House priorities would be taken on separately in a congressional budget process known as reconciliation, which allows for majority passage without the need

for Republican votes.

He insisted the two items would be done “in tandem” and that he would not sign the bipartisan deal without the bigger piece. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and progressive members of Congress declared they would hold to the same approach.

“There ain’t going to be a bipartisan bill without a reconciliation bill,” Pelosi said.

She called bipartisanship “important” for symbolic reasons, but said legislation focused mainly on traditional infrastructure doesn’t meet the needs of the moment.

It’s still a long haul to a bill signing at the White House. The Senate expects to consider the bipartisan package in July, but Biden’s bigger proposal is not expected to see final votes until fall.

The dual tracks will require some heavy legislative maneuvering, but it has been done before. In 2010, House Democrats made a similar demand of Senate Democrats as they enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act through two pieces of legislation — one approved in normal legislative procedure and a second bill enacted through the reconciliation process.

Pelosi called the changes in their totality “transformative, if not revolutionary.” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., the majority leader, predicted the pair of bills would be “the boldest, strongest legislation that this country has seen in decades.”

LAWMAKERS WEIGH PLAN

Claiming a major victory five months into his presidency, Biden said, “This reminds me of the days when we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress.” The longtime Delaware senator put his hand on the shoulder of a stoic-looking Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, as the president made a surprise appearance with the bipartisan group of senators to announce the deal outside the White House.

But the next steps are not likely to be nearly so smooth.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky complained that Biden was “caving” to Pelosi and Schumer’s plan to “hold the bipartisan agreement hostage” for the president’s bigger package of what he called “wasteful” spending.

“That’s not the way to show you’re serious about getting a bipartisan outcome,” McConnell said.

And there is plenty of skepticism on Biden’s left flank. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said the bipartisan agreement is “way too small — paltry, pathetic. I need a clear, ironclad assurance that there will be a really adequate, robust package” to follow.

Thursday’s deal was struck by the bipartisan group led by Portman and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., including some of the more independent lawmakers in the Senate, some known for bucking their parties.

“I think that this coalition, and now being endorsed by the president, sends a message not just to Congress, not just to the country, but to the world, that we can do the big things — we can function,” Sinema said. “We continue to be the leader of the world, and this is evidence that we are doing the work.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, agreed: “It sends an important message to the world as well that America can function, can get things done.”

Senators who were not involved in the negotiations were reluctant to commit to the plan without seeing full details. But in a positive sign, neither progressives nor conservatives completely ruled out supporting it.

Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., noted that the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, on which he serves, will have jurisdiction over the legislation in the Senate once it is ready to proceed.

“I’m really glad to see that people are working very hard, making progress in a very bipartisan effort. We’ve got significant infrastructure problems. The question is ‘How much do you do?’ and ‘How do you pay for it?’ It appears that they’ve got a framework together. Now you’ve got to fill in the details,” he said.

“In talking to the leadership of the … committee, everybody’s negotiating in good faith. I think that’s a good thing,” Boozman said.

The senator said he looks forward to seeing the actual language of the bill.

“Right now, we have an idea. We don’t have legislative text, so we’re waiting for that,” Boozman said.

Several liberal lawmakers also said they needed to see more details — but they said their support hinged on a reconciliation package.

Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., warned that progressives had more than enough votes to kill the infrastructure deal in the narrowly divided House.

“It’s not worth it for us as a country, let alone a party, to pass a very narrow infrastructure bill that doesn’t benefit as many people as it should benefit,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “And I think that we’ve won that case.”

PAYING FOR PROGRAMS

The proposal includes both new and existing spending on long-running programs and highlights the struggle lawmakers faced in coming up with ways to pay for what have typically been popular ideas.

The investments include $109 billion on roads and highways and $15 billion on electric-vehicle infrastructure and transit systems as part of $312 billion in transportation spending. There’s $65 billion toward broadband and expenditures on drinking water systems and $47 billion in resiliency efforts to tackle climate change.

Rather than Biden’s proposed corporate tax increase that Republicans oppose or the gas tax increase that the president rejected, funds will be tapped from a range of sources — without a full tally yet, according to a White House document.

Money will come from $125 billion in covid-19 relief funds approved in 2020 but not yet spent, as well as untapped unemployment insurance funds that Democrats have been hesitant to poach. Other revenue is expected by going harder after tax cheats by beefing up Internal Revenue Service enforcement that Portman said could yield $100 billion.

The rest is a hodgepodge of asset sales and accounting tools, including funds coming from 5G telecommunication spectrum lease sales and the strategic petroleum reserve, and an expectation that the sweeping investment will generate economic growth — what the White House calls the “macroeconomic impact of infrastructure investment.”

The senators from both parties stressed that the deal will create jobs and rebuild the nation’s standing on the global stage, a belief that clearly transcended the partisan interests and created a framework for the deal.

“We’re going to keep working together — we’re not finished,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah. “But America works, the Senate works.”

Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said it will show the world “we’re not just, you know, a hot mess here.”

For Biden, the deal was a welcome result. Though the total is far less than he originally sought, Biden had bet his political capital that he could work with Republicans toward major legislation.

And Biden and his aides believed they needed a bipartisan deal on infrastructure to create a permission structure for more moderate Democrats — including Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia — to then be willing to go for a party-line vote for the rest of the president’s agenda.

The announcement leaves unclear the fate of Biden’s promises of significant investment to slow climate change, which this spring he called “the existential crisis of our times.”

Biden’s presidential campaign helped win progressive backing with pledges of major spending on electric vehicles, charging stations, and research and funding for overhauling the U.S. economy to run on less oil, gas and coal. The administration is expected to push for some of that in future legislation.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, stressed that there are billions of dollars for resiliency against extreme weather and the impacts of climate change and deemed Thursday’s deal a “beginning investment.”

Biden has sought $1.7 trillion in his American Jobs Plan and the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan for child care centers, family tax breaks and other investments that Republicans reject as far outside the scope of infrastructure.

The president has proposed financing much of the reconciliation bill spending through an ambitious rewriting of the tax code. The Senate Finance Committee is already working on three targets: corporations that profited handsomely from the 2017 tax cut, oil and gas companies, and affluent individuals.

“I will in no way, shape or form support throwing those kinds of priorities and other concerns overboard,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the Finance Committee chairman, said Thursday. “They happen to be directly connected.”

Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Lemire, Josh Boak, Lisa Mascaro, Kevin Freking, Mary Clare Jalonick, Alan Fram, Matthew Daly and Darlene Superville of The Associated Press; by Emily Cochrane, Jim Tankersley and Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times; by Jennifer Haberkorn and Eli Stokols of the Los Angeles Times (TNS); and by Frank Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.