Capito says infrastructure deal possible by Memorial Day
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CHARLESTON -- Speaking to reporters Thursday, U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said she believed that Senate Republicans and White House officials could come to a deal by Memorial Day weekend on an infrastructure package.
Capito, R-W.Va., said that talks between officials in President Joe Biden's administration and Senate Republicans will continue today. Both groups met in Capito's office on Capitol Hill on Tuesday and last week at the White House with Biden himself. Capito said she was also on the phone with the White House on Thursday morning.
"Certainly, in my life is infrastructure all day, every day," Capito said during her virtual briefing with media Thursday. "I think we're closing the gap, but we still have a ways to go. I'm cautiously optimistic though realistic at the same time."
Capito, Senate Republicans, and Biden officials are trying to find agreement on infrastructure projects. Republicans want to focus on core infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges, drinking water and wastewater, public transportation, airports and waterways, and broadband.
The Biden administration wants those things too, but they also want "human infrastructure" projects, such as funding for home health workers, childcare, and climate change mitigation and clean energy projects.
"We still need to narrow the definition to where we're comfortable with infrastructure, and then try to reach some kind of dollar figure and of course how to pay for it," Capito said. "I think it is important we stick with core infrastructure and that we get the bipartisan support that we all want and the President wants."
The Biden proposal, called the American Jobs Plan, would cost $2.3 trillion with both the traditional and human infrastructure proposals, paid for by rolling back former president Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts. The plan presented by Capito and her colleagues, called the Republicans Roadmap, would cost $568 billion and be paid for through with unused federal COVID-19 relief dollars and user fees, including fees on drivers of electric vehicles currently not paying federal gasoline taxes.
This week, Senate Republicans signaled they would be willing to come up on the cost of an infrastructure package to as much as $800 billion with additional pay-fors coming from increased IRS collections of delinquent taxes. But Republicans are unwilling to agree to increasing corporate tax rates.
According to Politico, several Senate Democrats are encouraging the White House to ditch discussions with Senate Republicans in favor of pushing the Biden package through the Senate using the reconciliation process. That would allow the bill to pass with just a simple majority of 51 votes instead of the 60 votes needs for the regular process, but it also would mean that the Senate parliamentarian could rule that parts of the American Jobs Plan are not germane to the bill and strip them out. Capito said it would make more sense to work with Senate Republicans in a bipartisan manner.
"I think it's to everybody's political advantage, Republicans and Democrats, to have a big win, to talk about moving into the next election if that's the goal," Capito said. "If you have to go back to your district and say, 'I couldn't get that bridge fixed, and I couldn't get that road fixed because I didn't want to do what the Democrats wanted or I didn't want to do what the President wanted,' that's an empty thought for a lot of voters and a lot of taxpayers."
Capito said talks could fall apart and Biden and Democratic lawmakers might go their own way similar to what happened to the American Rescue Plan in March, but she remains optimistic that something good will come from the back-and-forth discussions.
"This may not work. We know that, but we're working hard at it," Capito said. "We have mutual goals. We are in communication constantly. At the end of the day, working together is what the American people want to see us do, especially in common areas, because there's other areas that we're going to fight on tooth and nail, but these are areas that we can agree on."
Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com