Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said Monday that he doesn’t expect any Republican senators will back President Joe Biden’s $4 trillion plans.
“If they can’t get all their ducks in a row, to use reconciliation again they’ll have to have every single Democrat in the Senate, all of them, in line, in lockstep, in order to do that. A number of them are saying they agree with us,” McConnell said at a press conference. “I think it’s worth talking about, but I don’t think there’ll be any Republican senators, none, zero, for the $4.1 trillion grab bag, which has infrastructure in it, but a whole lot of other stuff.”
McConnell discussed the 2017 tax bill, which lowered the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, saying, “We’re not willing to pay for it by undoing the 2017 bill.”
“We’re open to doing a roughly $600 billion package which deals with what all of us would agree is infrastructure and to talk about how to pay for that in any way other than reopening the 2017 tax reform bill, which I believe – and all of my members believe – is what created, as of February 2020, the best economy in 50 years,” McConnell told reporters.
Fox News reported that a collection of moderate Republican senators led by Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) have called for an infrastructure project that would cost $568 billion. “White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki signaled that proposal was the ‘beginning of a discussion’ on bipartisan legislation.”
Last week, Biden laid out two of his plans to create major investments in key areas. The “American Families Plan” is expected to cost $1.8 trillion. It includes massive investments in education, families, expands the Child Tax Credit and creates the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which would let families receive up to half of their child care spending as a credit on their taxes, among other items.
The “American Jobs Plan” has been touted as an infrastructure package, but it covers many sectors and is projected to cost $2.7 trillion, The Daily Wire reported.
In a statement on the plan, the White House said, “this is no time to build back to the way things were. This is the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy. The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China.”
The plan includes investments in transportation infrastructure, schools, drinking water, VA hospitals and federal buildings, care economy, manufacturers and small businesses, as well as workforce development.
Alongside the American Jobs Plan, Biden proposed the “Made In America Tax Plan” in order to pay for the infrastructure package by setting the corporate tax rate at 28%, among other changes.
The Daily Wire reported, “The Congressional Budget Office estimated Biden’s American Rescue Plan would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. According to Just the News, the final version of both pieces of legislation ‘are estimated to cost about $4 trillion combined’ as our national debt currently sits at $28 trillion.”