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Tag: american jobs plan
Senate vote of bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Biden’s Popular Infrastructure Bill Passes Senate Over GOP Opposition

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

The Senate passed a bipartisan bill on Tuesday to invest $550 billion in infrastructure. But most Republican senators voted against it.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed 69-30. All of the no votes came from Republicans.

The package will provide a historic investment in transportation, water systems, broadband, and electrical grid infrastructure.

In March, President Joe Biden proposed a $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan, which included these and other infrastructure investments.

After months of negotiations, a group of 21 senators from both parties agreed in June on a framework for a bipartisan plan. Days later, Biden signed on.

Polls have shown the public strongly in support of the legislation. Large majorities of Democratic and independent voters backed the plan, as did a plurality of Republicans.

But one key Republican opposed it: former President Donald Trump.

Trump promised as a candidate in 2016 to invest in infrastructure and "build the next generation of roads, bridges, railways, tunnels, sea ports, and airports." Like many of his other pledges, he did not follow through— blowing up bipartisan negotiations to punish congressional Democrats for pursuing oversight of his administration.

On July 26, Trump warned Senate Republicans not to give "the Radical Left Democrats a big and beautiful win on Infrastructure" by passing the bipartisan package.

Two days later, he threatened that if the Senate GOP gives "a victory for the Biden Administration and Democrats," he and his followers will "never forget" and "lots of primaries will be coming your way!"

After those warnings, two of the Republicans who helped negotiated the deal flip-flopped and came out against it: Indiana Sen. Todd Young and South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds. Rounds missed the vote for family reasons.

The bill now moves to the House of Representatives.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Sen. Lindsey Graham

GOP Senators Torpedo Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal They Endorsed

Reprinted with permission from American independent

Senate Republicans used the filibuster rule on Wednesday to block consideration of a bipartisan infrastructure deal — weeks after several of them endorsed the $579 billion package.

Every member of the Democratic Senate majority backed beginning consideration of H.R. 3684, a procedural step needed to debate and pass the bipartisan framework, but because Senate rules require a three-fifths supermajority for this type of legislation, the Republican minority was able to block it.

President Joe Biden proposed a $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan in March, asking Congress to improve the nation's transportation, water systems, broadband, clean energy, climate change, and caregiving infrastructure.

On June 16, after lengthy negotiations, a bipartisan group of senators agreedon a deal, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, to invest $579 billion in "core infrastructure" programs only, including transportation, broadband, and water systems.

Republican Sens. Richard Burr (NC), Bill Cassidy (LA), Susan Collins (ME), Lindsey Graham (SC), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Rob Portman (OH), Mitt Romney (UT), Mike Rounds (SD), Thom Tillis (NC), and Todd Young (IN) all signed onto a joint statement with 10 members of the Democratic majority, affirming their support for the deal.

"We support this bipartisan framework that provides an historic investment in our nation's core infrastructure needs without raising taxes," the statement read. "We look forward to working with our Republican and Democratic colleagues to develop legislation based on this framework to address America's critical infrastructure challenges."

Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) endorsed the plan later that day.

On June 24, Biden signed on to the bipartisan plan and has been urging its passage since.

"We should be united on one thing: passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, which we shook hands on," he said on Monday. "We shook hands on it."

But not long after the agreement, some Republicans began to have second thoughts.

Some objected to acknowledgements by Biden and Democratic leaders in Congress that they would later try to pass some of their other priorities — including the omitted climate change, child care, and caregiving "human infrastructure" provisions — through a separate budget reconciliation process, without any GOP support. Graham complained that this plan amounted to extortion.

They then abandoned one of the key provisions that financed the bipartisan agreement: a crackdown on wealthy tax dodgers who are not currently paying their fair share. Portman said Sunday that they had dropped the provision due to "pushback" from Republican senators who did not want to give more money to the understaffed Internal Revenue Service to enforce the tax code.

Again, Graham protested the deal he'd backed, telling Axios on June 30, "There's some people on our side who don't like empowering the IRS; I don't mind empowering the IRS if it's a reasonable thing to do. But I mean, how much uncollected taxes can you gather with $40 billion?"

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer moved to bring up the framework on Wednesday as a way to speed up the bill writing process. "I understand that both sides are working very hard to turn the bipartisan infrastructure framework into final legislation, and they will continue to have more time to debate, amend and perfect the bill once the Senate votes to take up this crucial issue," the New York Democrat explained to colleagues on Monday. "But they have been working on this bipartisan framework for more than a month already, and it's time to begin the debate."

Republicans said they were not ready to move forward.

Senate Republican Whip John Thune — who memorably ran for his seat in 2004 by lambasting the Democratic incumbent for using his position "to slow down, to obstruct, to stop" then-President George W. Bush's agenda — opposed even beginning debate on the bipartisan infrastructure framework. "I can't say we will have every Republican, but he [Schumer] is not going to get 60," he vowed Monday.

On Wednesday, all of the 11 Republican backers who supported the bipartisan deal previously — along with the rest of the Republican minority — voted against debate on the matter.

Schumer voted "no" as well, for procedural reasons.

"At the end of the vote, I changed my response [from a yes] to a no so that I may move to reconsider this vote at a future time," the majority leader explained, moments after the vote failed, 49 to 51.

Due to Schumer's last-second maneuver, the Senate is still able to reconsider the vote in the future. Alternately, the Democratic majority could simply add the provisions to a budget reconciliation package and pass it with a simple majority, if they can remain united.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Sen. John Barrasso

Republicans Oppose More IRS Audits Of Super-Rich Tax Evaders

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

A provision in the bipartisan Senate infrastructure bill announced on June 24 would provide for investing more money in enforcement of laws targeting top earners who evade payment of taxes. Republican senators are furious.

Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, the third-ranking member of the minority party leadership, told Axios on Wednesday that "spending $40 billion to super-size the IRS is very concerning." "Law-abiding Americans deserve better from their government than an army of bureaucrats snooping through their bank statements," he said.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn warned of "a huge potential for abuse": "Bigger government results in more waste, fraud, and abuse."

"Throwing billions more taxpayer dollars at the IRS will only hurt Americans struggling to recover after waves of devastating lockdowns," said Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. "Instead of increasing funding for the IRS, we should abolish the damn place."

Even South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who backed the bipartisan framework, complained, "There's some people on our side who don't like empowering the IRS; I don't mind empowering the IRS if it's a reasonable thing to do. But I mean, how much uncollected taxes can you gather with $40 billion?"

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley tweeted on May 17, this year's Tax Day, "Im all for catching tax cheats +closing tax gap BUT Biden plan 2pump more $ into IRS & expand bank reporting is ripe for overreach + imposes more burdens on small biz/family farms."

Earlier in the year, Biden introduced the American Jobs Plan, a $2.25 trillion transportation, climate, water, broadband, child care, and caregiving infrastructure package, and the American Families Plan, a $1.8 trillion package investment in paid leave, free preschool and community college, and affordable health care. He proposed funding the plans by raising tax rates on corporations and those earning $400,000 or more and by spending $80 million more to enforce existing tax laws.

Republicans unanimously opposed the plans, drawing what Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called a "red line" against any tax increases for wealthy Americans or businesses.

Instead, a group of 10 Republican and Democratic senators agreed on a plan to boost enforcement by half of Biden's initial request to help fund $567 billion in new transportation, broadband, and water system infrastructure spending. They proposed that the rest of the funding would come from sources that would include petroleum sales, wireless spectrum auctions, and unused 2020 relief funds.

The White House says $40 billion in spending to improve tax law enforcement would more than pay for itself, bringing in $140 billion. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says it would bring in $103 billion over a decade. All of this is money already owed to the government under existing tax law.

"There's just a ton of money out there that we're not collecting," former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti told the Washington Post on Friday. "Why don't we collect some of that before we raise taxes on the people that are already paying?"

In recent years, the IRS has had to cut back on enforcing the law due to massive budget reductions. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between 2010 and 2018, the budget for enforcement dropped 24%, the number of enforcement personnel drop 31%, and the audit rate for millionaires dropped 61%.

"The steep decline in audits for high-income individuals stemming from IRS underfunding means that low- and moderate-income households claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) are now audited at roughly the same rate as the top 1 percent of filers," Chye-Ching Huang — then the senior director of economic policy with the Center — told the House Ways and Means Committee in February 2020.

An April report by the Center for American Progress noted that while recent official estimates suggest the United States loses about $600 billion a year in unpaid revenue "on April 13, 2021, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig told Congress that he believes the United States is losing much more revenue—possibly $1 trillion or more every year."

Seth Hanlon, one of the report's authors, told The American Independent Foundation in May that smarter IRS enforcement would mean more compliance for the richest Americans — but fewer audits for everyone else.

"The whole point is it will let the IRS target audits in a smarter way, so honest people are gonna be less likely to be audited. People earning under $400,000 — as long as they're tax compliant — are gonna be less likely to be audited. The audit rate for those earning under $400,000 won't go up," he said.

Polling show strong popular support for making sure richer Americans pay their fair share. An April Monmouth University poll found 65% support for funding Biden's spending proposals with increased revenue from those making more than $400,000, compared to 33% opposition.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

President Joe Biden

Poll: Big Majority Supports Biden Spending Plans, Bipartisan Or Not

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

More than three-fifths of likely voters want Congress to pass President Joe Biden's spending plans, even if the Democratic majority has to do so without a single Republican vote, according to a new poll.

The survey, conducted by Data for Progress for Invest in America, which campaigns for public investment in infrastructure, was released Tuesday. It found 62 percent support for passage of Biden's American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan through the budget reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to pass taxation and spending bills by a simple majority vote.

Such a move is backed by 86 percent of Democratic voters, 59 percent of independents, and 36 percent of Republicans.

"Our polling w/ @DataProgress shows voters don't care about process, they care about results," tweeted Invest in America. "The bipartisan deal is a solid first step — but a majority of voters still support passing the rest of the American Jobs and Families Plans through reconciliation."

Congressional Republicans have tried to block a reconciliation package, objecting to the "partisan" process and saying it amounted to "caving" to the "left-wing base."

Biden proposed the American Jobs Plan in March, recommending a $2.25 trillion investment in bridges, roads, water systems, transit, clean energy, broadband, climate, child care, and caregiving infrastructure. In April, he proposed the American Families Plan, which would invest $1.8 trillion in paid leave, free preschool and community college, and affordable health care.

Not a single Republican in Congress backed either proposal, despite the wide popularity of both with the American public.

Biden and bipartisan group of senators struck a deal on June 24 on $579 billion in new spending on transportation, water, and broadband infrastructure.

Democratic leaders made it clear that in order to pass that agreement, Congress would also have to pass a separate package containing funding for climate and human infrastructure that was removed from the bill during negotiations.

But when Biden suggested that both bills would be necessary, Republicans claimed to be outraged.

"The two top Democrats literally pulled the rug out from under their bipartisan negotiators with these unserious demands before they'd even made it to the White House," complained Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. "An expression of bipartisanship, and then an ultimatum on behalf of your left-wing base."

Biden clarified on June 26 that he was not threatening to veto the bipartisan infrastructure plan, but hoped to see both it and the rest of the funding pass in tandem.

Now McConnell (R-KY) is trying to pressure Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi into skipping Biden's other priorities, suggesting that insisting on passing them together with the infrastructure bill amounted to holding the latter "hostage over a separate and partisan process."

"Unless Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi walk-back their threats that they will refuse to send the president a bipartisan infrastructure bill unless they also separately pass trillions of dollars for unrelated tax hikes, wasteful spending, and Green New Deal socialism, then President Biden's walk-back of his veto threat would be a hollow gesture," McConnell said Monday.

But McConnell has not even backed the bipartisan infrastructure deal and was not involved in the negotiations. Negotiations he did back, between Biden and a GOP group led by West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, broke down in early June after the Republicans refused to offer more than a small fraction of the new infrastructure spending the White House requested.

While McConnell and his colleagues have attacked Biden's proposed investments as unneeded socialism, the Data for Progress poll suggests those arguments are not working: 58 percent of those surveyed said the nation should invest more "to spur job creation and boost the economy after the coronavirus pandemic," while just 33 percent said it should wait "over concerns about the economy overheating and inflation."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.