Democrats Unimpressed With GOP Compromise Infrastructure Bill

A group of Republican lawmakers have been circulating a new attempt to compromise with Democrats on the impending American Jobs Plan infrastructure bill. The new GOP measure, however, falls short of President Joe Biden‘s sweeping package. The new bill’s $800 billion asking price is a far cry from Democrats’ proposed $2.5 trillion bill.

“The path forward that I’m seeing and that I’m working for is one where we take up and pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill, one that focuses on areas where the parties really agree,” he said in a CNN interview. “That could end up being an $800 billion to $1 trillion bipartisan bill,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Delaware).

Coons also said in an interview that Democrats may benefit from passing Republican-approved measures in an infrastructure bill and then moving forward on Democrat provisions through budget reconciliation. “We are trying to get $2 trillion in infrastructure and jobs investments moving ahead. Why wouldn’t you do $800 billion of it in a bipartisan way and do the other $1.2 trillion [Democrats] only through reconciliation?”

“We’re going to do whatever it takes. If it takes $4 trillion, I’d do $4 trillion, but we have to pay for it,” said centrist Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), who has since indicated he will not support a Republican bill at the new low price mark. “What we have to do is identify infrastructure. Come to an agreement but we all identify. And the need of infrastructure, make sure we can do it [with] timeliness and make sure we pay for it. There’s no number that should be set on at all.”