U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Sunday he would be willing to move forward with his $2 trillion infrastructure plan without the support of Republican lawmakers if President Joe Biden can’t reach a bipartisan agreement, Reuters reported.
Granholm said Biden would prefer Republican support for his plan, but failing that, he might support using a procedural tactic called reconciliation to get the plan passed by Democrats in the Senate.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Granholm said, “As he said, he was elected president to do something for America. If the vast majority of the country, Democrats and Republicans alike, support us spending money on our country and not losing us in global campaigns, then that’s what he will do.”
Granholm said a majority of Americans currently support the Democratic president’s plan. Granholm was one of several senior Biden administration officials who touted the proposal on Sunday’s television news program.
Since taking office in January, the Democratic president has repeatedly expressed a desire to work with Republicans.
But the infrastructure plan – his second major legislative initiative – so far seems unlikely to garner more bipartisan support than his first plan. His first plan, a new $1.9 trillion coronavirus bailout, passed last month with only Democratic support, using the procedural tactic of reconciliation.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said last week that Biden’s infrastructure plan was “very bold” but would raise taxes and increase the debt. He vowed to “fight it every step of the way.”
Republican Sen. Roy Blunt urged Biden on Sunday to significantly scale back the plan if he wants the support of Republican lawmakers.
Speaking on Fox Sunday News, Blunt said, “If we go back and look at the roads and the bridges and the ports and the airports and maybe even the groundwater system and the broadband, you’re talking about less than 30 percent of the entire package.”
Blunt said he believes a smaller target, about $615 billion, would be more palatable to some of his fellow Republicans.
Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi, joined others in his party in trying to characterize Biden’s plan as a tax hike rather than fixing and rebuilding the nation’s transportation, communications, water and power networks.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Wicker said, “What the president proposed this week is not an infrastructure bill. It’s a huge tax increase,”
Biden’s plan would raise the deductible corporate income tax rate to 28 percent from the current 21 percent. His predecessor, President Trump, and Republican lawmakers lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent in 2017.
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