The president committed to talking again with GOP negotiators on Monday but made clear that their latest offer is insufficient.
President Joe Biden rejected the latest Republican counteroffer on infrastructure during a Friday afternoon call with the lead GOP negotiator but agreed to connect with her again on Monday as talks drag on for at least another week to try and break the impasse on a bipartisan deal.
Biden spoke by phone with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito to continue their talks on whether there’s a path forward to reach a bipartisan framework since they remain far apart on the amount of new spending, how to pay for it and what even constitutes infrastructure. According to the White House, Republicans’ latest proposal included $50 billion in new spending “across a number of infrastructure programs,” but Biden communicated that it fell short of his economic and climate change priorities.
The call comes a few days after the pair met at the White House on Wednesday for their first one-on-one talks. Biden reportedly discussed on Wednesday what he’d like to see included in any future GOP counteroffers on new spending and further narrowed his own proposal as it relates to taxes to pay for the plan.
“Sen. Capito conveyed to the president a new offer from her group which consisted of an about $50 billion increase in spending across a number of infrastructure programs,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement after the call. “The president expressed his gratitude for her effort and goodwill, but also indicated that the current offer did not meet his objectives to grow the economy, tackle the climate crisis, and create new jobs.”
A readout of the call from Capito’s office didn’t mention the latest counteroffer but briefly noted that the two “discussed the Republican infrastructure framework and the Biden administration’s proposal.” Both statements noted that they will talk again on Monday.
The White House is still grappling with the next steps in the process: whether to keep pursuing an elusive bipartisan agreement or to go it alone through a special budgetary process called reconciliation. If they ultimately go with the latter, like they did to pass COVID-19 relief in March, Democrats would effectively remove Republicans from the negotiating table since they could pass legislation without any GOP votes.
Biden is feeling the pressure from all sides, including some in his administration who wanted to see significant progress or at least more clarity on the issue by Monday when Congress comes back from the Memorial Day recess.
But with his conversation with Capito scheduled for next week, the White House is making it clear that the president plans to sustain bipartisan negotiations for at least a little while longer. And White House press secretary Jen Psaki has dismissed any characterizations of a looming deadline, though she acknowledged that the issue is time sensitive.
“It’s not unlimited but we have an opportunity. … We’re going to keep a range of pathways open to move these bold ideas forward,” Psaki told reporters Friday before Biden’s call. “We’ll continue to see if this is a viable path going forward.”
Republicans and the White House have been negotiating for weeks, and both sides have made concessions in recent days. Biden lowered his initial $2.3 trillion proposal to $1.7 billion, while Republicans bumped up theirs from $568 billion to $928 billion in overall spending.
At Wednesday’s Oval Office meeting, Biden reportedly told Capito that he’d like to see Republicans increase their offer to at least $1 trillion in new spending. The GOP’s current proposal only has $257 billion in new funds.
Biden has also shifted gears on tax hikes and instead proposed a 15% corporate minimum tax rate, according to Politico. He previously called for raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, but tax hikes have been a red line for Republicans who would rather implement user fees and tap into unused COVID-19 relief funds appropriated by Congress.
It’s possible that Capito and other Senate Republicans involved in bipartisan negotiations will submit a new counteroffer to the president, but bridging the large gulf between the two sides might be an insurmountable task.
Any possible bipartisan deal will need to garner 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. In a divided 50-50 Senate narrowly controlled by Democrats, that means the party will need to sway at least 10 GOP senators to vote with them.
If Democrats instead move forward with reconciliation, the process will lower the threshold to advance legislation in the Senate from 60 to 51 votes in very limited circumstances relating to spending measures.
As the clock winds down on infrastructure, Biden is also talking with key Democrats who will play an integral role in its passage. Psaki noted that he is speaking by phone with House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio of Oregon on Friday. DeFazio is holding a markup next Wednesday in his committee on a new Democratic highway bill that shares components of Biden’s American Jobs Plan.
But at least as of now, the White House doesn’t appear to be in a rush to abandon the weeks-long effort to find compromise – even as it rankles some Democrats who want to move on and quickly pass another element of Biden’s massive and ambitious economic agenda.
“We’ve seen Speaker Pelosi talk about how she wants to move forward with infrastructure in June. We’ve seen Leader Schumer talk about how he wants to move forward with infrastructure in July. Those are some realities in the timeline,” Psaki said at Thursday’s briefing, referring to the top Democrats in Congress: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. “But we’re not here to set new deadlines. We’re going to continue those conversations.”
