Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced Wednesday that he is convening a meeting of members of the Senate Democratic caucus in order to start the “reconciliation process” for President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure plan.
Schumer told media that he is “meeting with all 11 Democratic members of the Senate Budget Committee on Wednesday to begin the process for passing a budget resolution, paving the way for Democrats to pass a major infrastructure bill on a party-line vote,” if a number of key moderate Senators, including Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), agree to key elements of the plan.
“Tomorrow I’m convening a meeting with all 11 Democratic members of the Senate Budget Committee regarding a fiscal year ‘22 budget resolution,” Schumer said, per The Hill. “Now that President Biden’s fiscal ‘22 budget request has been received by Congress, the Budget Committee can begin the important work of producing a budget resolution.”
Biden’s budget is a shocking $6 trillion package that includes the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan and the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan on top of the administration’s $1.1 trillion budget plan. According to Fox News, the administration wants “roughly $4 trillion in new spending,” offset by tax hikes.
“To fund the various proposals, Biden has pushed for a slew of tax hikes, including raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, nearly doubling the capital gains tax rate paid by wealthy Americans to 39.6% from 20%, restoring the top individual income tax rate to 39.6%, closing the stepped-up basis at death and imposing a global minimum of 15% on U.S. companies foreign profits,” the outlet noted.
The Biden White House had hoped to negotiate with Republicans on elements of the infrastructure bill but ran into difficulty earlier this year when Republicans suggested an “infrastructure bill” should be focused on repairing and replacing physical infrastructure, rather than on financing a major expansion of government welfare programs. A “bipartisan group” of Senators has authored their own $1 trillion infrastructure budget ,The Washington Post noted, but has yet to “sell” it to the White House as an alternative to the official proposal.
Schumer noted to reporters that he still plans to send a scaled-down infrastructure package to the floor after the August recess, but his decision to trigger reconciliation sends the signal that both leading Democrats and the Biden administration want to pursue the full bills rather than a stripped-down bipartisan measure.
“Schumer tacitly noted that a budget resolution would set the stage for passing elements of Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan with simple majority votes,” The Hill reported. “That would set the stage for passing a massive infrastructure investment bill with only Democratic votes after the August recess.”
“Both are moving forward, the bipartisan track and the track on reconciliation, and both we hope to get done in July, both the budget resolution and the bipartisan bill,” Schumer said.