Bipartisan ‘Gang of Ten’ Senators Propose Infrastructure Bill That is D.O.A. (Updated)

The misleadingly named bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus – they quite literally have never solved any problem – have put forward their own infrastructure plan, with no plan to pay for it. Just how bipartisan is it when its members vote the party-line on almost every piece of legislation? Spare me their nonsense.

Roll Call reports Bipartisan House caucus offers alternative infrastructure plan after Senate GOP talks collapse:

The 58-member bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus has put together a $1.25 trillion infrastructure spending framework, including $761.8 billion in new spending over eight years, to help salvage faltering bipartisan negotiations.

The caucus’s proposal comes as President Joe Biden ended his negotiations with a group of Senate Republicans led by West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito. That Senate GOP group had offered a nearly $1 trillion infrastructure plan, roughly a third of which was new spending above the “baseline” amount the government would normally spend to sustain current infrastructure.

Biden initially proposed a more than $2 trillion plan, which Republicans said went far beyond their definition of core, physical infrastructure. In negotiations with Capito’s group, the president was willing to go as low as $1 trillion, but he wanted that to be all new spending — although Republicans said Biden told them the $1 trillion could include baseline spending before his staff walked that back.

The Problem Solvers Caucus framework gets much closer to Biden’s demand on new spending. And unlike the offer from Capito’s group, it has buy-in from congressional Democrats. However, the bipartisan caucus has not yet included any provisions to offset the cost of its proposal.

The caucus’s framework includes $518 billion for highways, roads and safety; $64 billion for bridges; $155 billion for transit; $120 billion for Amtrak and passenger rail; $41 billion for airports; $26 billion for waters and ports; and $25 billion for electric vehicle infrastructure.

The transit, passenger rail and electric vehicle funding is significantly higher than in the Capito group’s plan.

The Problem Solvers framework, however, includes less money for broadband internet access — $45 billion, compared to $65 billion in the last public offer Capito’s group made. It also includes less money for drinking and wastewater — $60 billion, compared to Capito’s $72 billion.

The caucus also proposes funding for several areas that weren’t part of the Senate Republican plan, including $25 billion for connecting green energy sources to the electric grid, $10 billion for nuclear energy, $5 billion for hydrogen hubs, $5 billion for carbon capture and storage, $5 billion for direct air capture and $10 billion for veterans’ housing.

The Problem Solvers Caucus, which has 29 Democrats and 29 Republicans, has been working for the past two months to reach agreement on the scope of a bipartisan infrastructure package. Its infrastructure working group, led by Reps. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., and John Katko, R-N.Y., put together the framework with input from the broader caucus.

“Developed with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, this framework contains truly bipartisan policies that can form the basis for a comprehensive package to modernize our nation’s infrastructure systems,” Katko said in a statement.

Lamb emphasized the urgency of getting a bipartisan deal to ensure that infrastructure projects involving “bridges, locks, dams, power lines, and vehicle chargers will get started and finished no matter who is in power.”

The co-chairs of the full caucus, Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., have been separately engaged in talks with a bipartisan group of senators, including Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va.

Wait for it…

Rupert Murdoch’s The Wal Street Journal reports Bipartisan Group of Senators Reaches Agreement on Infrastructure Proposal:

Members of a bipartisan group of senators said they had reached an agreement on an infrastructure proposal that would be fully paid for without tax increases, pitching the plan to other lawmakers and the White House as they try to craft compromise legislation on the issue.

While the group of 10 senators didn’t reveal details of the plan in its statement, people familiar with the agreement said it called for $579 billion above expected future federal spending on infrastructure. The overall proposal would spend $974 billion over five years and $1.2 trillion if it continued over eight years, according to some of the people.

[To] move forward in Congress, the plan would need the buy-in from a broader group of Republicans and Democrats, as well as the White House. In recent days, some Democrats have indicated they are skeptical that the bipartisan talks will result in a large enough package.

“We are discussing our approach with our respective colleagues, and the White House, and remain optimistic that this can lay the groundwork to garner broad support from both parties and meet America’s infrastructure needs,” said the group, which includes Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), Rob Portman (R., Ohio) and Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.).

Jason Easley comments, Bad Deal: Bipartisan Group Of Senators Reach Infrastructure Agreement With No Tax Increases On The Rich:

A bipartisan group of Senators – call it the Gang of 10 – announced that they had reached a $1 trillion infrastructure deal that doesn’t increase taxes on the wealthy or corporations.

The Senators announced:

https://twitter.com/TonyRomm/status/1403103585160908807

Compared to what the Biden administration proposed, this a minuscule amount of new spending. The bigger problem is that the Senators appeared to have agreed to a deal among themselves that will be paid for by increasing user fees on working and middle-class Americans. It is a safe bet that user fees are the funding mechanism because Sens. Romney and Portman are both touting user fee increases.

The deal is a joke compared to what the Biden administration has laid out as their vision for infrastructure and job creation.

Once again, Republicans [and U.S. Chamber of Commerce-owned Democrats] try to protect the rich while passing the cost on to the working people of the country.

The problem is that Biden’s plan to pay for massive infrastructure spending is popular with voters. The Senators who cut this deal are completely out of touch with what the American people want.

President Biden should hold his ground and pay for his bold infrastructure plan by repealing the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

A new poll from Americans For Tax Fairness finds:

Over two-thirds of voters (69%) support raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and support among Independents is just as high (68%). Support for raising taxes on those earning more than $400,000 a year is similarly high (67%), while 62% support raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%. Indeed, every proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations tested in the survey is supported by at least 55% of voters, with most generating over two-thirds support.

* * *

Only 22% of voters think raising taxes on those earning over $400,000 a year will hurt the economy, while 51% believe it will help it. Independents also believe it will help the economy by a 26-point margin (45% help economy / 19% hurt economy).

The American people want Congress to do what Joe Biden has proposed, and they aren’t buying the Republican claims that raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations will harm the economy.

In short, this bipartisan “Gang of Ten” Senator’s proposed infrastructure bill is dead on arrival (D.O.A.) because it will never garner the votes of actual Democrats in Congress. They are just spinning their wheels.

Note: Breaking reporting says this “Gang of Ten” bill fails to even address climate change. More about that later.

We cannot allow climate denial to masquerade as bipartisanship. Time is of the essence. I'll be on MSNBC with @chrislhayes at 8:25pm ET to talk about how bold climate action must be a part of any infrastructure package. Tune in.

— Ed Markey (@SenMarkey) June 11, 2021

CNN reports, Infrastructure talks shift to Capitol Hill, and this process will get messy:

The first round of bipartisan talks have collapsed between the White House and key Republicans, kicking into gear a multi-faceted process on Capitol Hill that will test Democratic unity and President Joe Biden’s own skills in selling his caucus on a signature policy proposal.

Bottom line: In the intervening weeks, this process will get messy.

The push and pull within the diverse Democratic caucus will force leadership to come face to face with their reality that margins are narrow in the House and nonexistent in the Senate. Any bill has to have the blessing of both Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the progressive caucus and the moderate problem solvers caucus. That’s the ball game.

So while bipartisan Senate talks are important and very real right now, keep in mind that any framework Manchin and Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah negotiate won’t automatically unlock the stalemate between the broader Republican and Democratic caucuses that doomed the Biden talks with Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, also of West Virginia.

Progressives made this point Tuesday in the Democratic lunch where one after another, they stood up to underscore that their votes aren’t a given. Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, were among those who spoke out. Sanders, of course, is leading the charge on reconciliation as the chairman of the Budget Committee. It’s a salient moment to remember that we focus a lot on Manchin, but any one senator can have an outsized impact on this process when Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer needs every single Democratic vote.

“It takes all of us, and nobody is going to get exactly the infrastructure package they wanted,” Warren told CNN on Wednesday morning. “This isn’t up to just one person. This is up to the 50 of us who now have the majority in the Senate.”

What you need to know about the Senate bipartisan group

For weeks, small groups of bipartisan senators have been meeting to try to see if they could find a consensus on infrastructure and how to pay for it. One of those subgroups included Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat from Arizona, Ohio Republican Rob Portman, Romney and Maine Republican Susan Collins.

The groups had kept their efforts quiet in part because they did not want to step on the negotiations between Biden and Capito, but when that effort fell apart, members of the group felt emboldened to get a proposal out and fast. Last night, Democrats Manchin, Jon Tester of Montana and Mark Warner of Virginia were part of the meeting, as were Republican Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.

It was “not an accident” the larger group assembled very publicly just hours after Capito and Biden called it quits, one aide said. It’s strategic. If a bipartisan infrastructure deal is going to be brokered in the Senate, lawmakers in the middle have to strike while there is still a window to do that work. It’s also part of the reason you saw the bipartisan Problem Solver’s Caucus unveil its own plan Tuesday.

Still, there is no shortage of obstacles to finding a bipartisan agreement: The Problem Solver’s proposal didn’t include any way to pay for the bill and that’s telling. Agreeing on how to spend money is the easier part. Deciding how to pay for the new spending? That’s where the biggest fractures between Republicans and Democrats exist. The bipartisan Senate group is trying to work through options now as well as the topline of how much they are willing to spend. Democrats have hoped to get to somewhere in the neighborhood of $860 billion in new spending, but one member warned last night that number is probably too high to win over Republicans.

One example: Portman echoed Romney on Wednesday, saying that tax increases to pay for the infrastructure package are off the table.

“The last thing we want to do an infrastructure package is to hurt the economy as we come out of Covid, and we want to actually help to keep the economy moving in the right direction so, you know, taxes would be a huge mistake,” Portman said.

A long list of issues to work through

As Democratic leaders let bipartisan talks play out in the Senate, the work is underway to turn Biden’s American Families Plan and America’s Jobs Plan into legislation. But, in order to do that, Democrats will have to work out a series of contentious issues that progressives and moderates have already raised as sticking points. They include:

• • • How long to extend the expanded child tax credit. Progressives have argued it needs to be permanent
    • Whether to repeal the cap on the State and Local Tax deduction, which has been a key priority for Democrats from high-tax states but costs considerable money.
    • Whether to include a prescription drug overhaul in the infrastructure bill as a key pay for.
    • The total price tag of the bill
    • How to pay for the legislation. Biden has talked about raising the corporate tax rate, but just how high moderate Senate Democrats would be willing to go is still a topic of discussion. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, also of Oregon, has also proposed a massive overhaul of international taxes that could be a potential pay for.

A reminder on reconciliation

There are strict rules governing what can be included in a reconciliation bill. Changes to green energy policies, massive overhauls of the care economy, permanent changes to the child tax credit? Those all could face an uphill climb in passing through reconciliation. Reconciliation was designed for legislation that has a real impact on the budget. And the changes cannot have an impact beyond the 10-year budget window. That means that some provisions Democrats may want to include may have to sunset in order to pass muster with the Senate parliamentarian. It also means that you can’t just raise the minimum wage or reimagine the social safety net entirely for a Democratic-only bill.

Watch: any announcements coming from the Senate’s Budget Committee on when it will begin marking up Biden’s budget. That is the first step in reconciliation and a key sign that Democrats are going it alone. Sanders indicated Tuesday, he’s prepared to move on a budget next month, but that doesn’t leave the Senate much time to pass a bill on the floor before the August recess if they go that route.

As Jason Easley said, “The American people want Congress to do what Joe Biden has proposed, and they aren’t buying the Republican claims that raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations will harm the economy.”

These goddamn U.S. Chamber of Commerce-owned Democrats who are sabotaging the plan to protect the wealthy and corporations from having to pay higher (fairer) taxes need to fall in line behind President Biden’s popular American Families Plan and America’s Jobs Plan and do right by the American people – deliver on your campaign promises – by passing  this bill through budget reconciliation with only Democratic votes, if necessary.

“Bipartisanship” has become synonymous with “do nothing.” Cut the crap. Do something!

UPDATE: The Hill reports, White House briefed on bipartisan infrastructure deal but says questions remain:

“Earlier today, White House staff were briefed by Democratic Senators working on the bipartisan agreement on infrastructure,” deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates said in a statement.

“The President appreciates the Senators’ work to advance critical investments we need to create good jobs, prepare for our clean energy future, and compete in the global economy,” Bates added. “Questions need to be addressed, particularly around the details of both policy and pay-fors, among other matters.”

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) tells MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell that it’s time to abandon bipartisan negotiations and pass the infrastructure bill through the budget reconciliation process. Sen. Wyden says this bipartisan “Gang of Ten” deal is a “nonstarter.” If you don’t have the Senate Finance Committee, you don’t have any deal.