The bipartisan agreement is a significant victory, but Democratic leaders say it can pass only once a far larger social policy bill is complete.
President Biden and a bipartisan group of centrist senators reached a deal on Thursday for $1.2 trillion in investments to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, a victory for the White House but only the first lurch in what promises to be an arduous attempt to reshape the nation’s economic and social programs. The agreement on traditional infrastructure projects — roads, bridges, tunnels, rail and broadband — would be significant on its own, the first major increase of federal public works spending since President Barack Obama’s 2009 economic rescue plan. It would include some existing infrastructure programs, but also provide $579 billion in new money over eight years to patch cracking highways, rebuild crumbling bridges, speed rail traffic and more equitably spread high-speed internet access. The plan would also pour billions of dollars into waterways and coastlines washing away as a warming planet raises sea levels, and $7.5 billion into financing a half-million electric vehicle charging stations, all part of Mr. Biden’s climate pledges. It would be paid for in part with a $40 billion increase in the I.R.S. enforcement budget to bring in $140 billion in unpaid taxes, as well as repurposing unspent coronavirus relief funds, according to an outline provided by the White House. “This agreement signals to the world that we can function, deliver and do significant things,” Mr. Biden said from the White House’s East Room, after meeting with the lawmakers. But almost immediately after reaching the breakthrough, Mr. Biden and Democrats offered a giant caveat that could complicate its chances of passage. Both the president and top Democrats said the compromise, which constitutes only a small fraction of the expansive, $4 trillion economic agenda Mr. Biden has proposed, could advance only together with a far larger bill that would pour trillions more into health care, child care, higher education access and climate change programs. That measure, vehemently opposed by Republicans, would be paid for by remaking the tax code to capture the wealth of the superrich and multinational corporations that shift profits and jobs overseas. “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” Mr. Biden said of the infrastructure piece. “It’s in tandem.” Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the changes in their totality “transformative, if not revolutionary.” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, predicted that the pair of bills would be “the boldest, strongest legislation that this country has seen in decades.” They said they hoped all of it could come together by this fall, an enormous challenge that will involve persuading at least 60 senators to back the traditional infrastructure plan, and keeping Democrats united on the larger bill. The latter measure would have to pass through a budget process called reconciliation, which would allow it to bypass a Republican filibuster, but would require all 50 Democratic and independent votes in the Senate. “There ain’t going to be no bipartisan bill unless we’re going to have reconciliation,” Ms. Pelosi said, a message she repeated privately to Democrats, after liberals warned against acting just on a bipartisan deal that jettisons the provisions progressives want most.
