Senate Republicans make new infrastructure offer as House Democrats urge Biden to dig in

In an attempt to salvage stalled negotiations, Senate Republicans on Thursday unveiled a revised counteroffer for infrastructure spending, outlining roughly $928 billion in a package that’s still far short of what the White House has proposed.

Only about a quarter of the total price tag appears to represent new spending above baseline levels under the “roadmap” put forward by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, W.Va., and her GOP counterparts. But lawmakers still stressed that their retooled approach “delivers on much” of what President Joe Biden had recommended in earlier talks between the two sides.

“Senate Republicans continue to negotiate in good faith,” Capito said at a press conference unveiling the blueprint.

The Republican plan proposes more than $500 billion for roads, $98 billion for public transit, $46 billion for passenger rail and more than $70 billion for water infrastructure. Republicans recommended additional spending for ports, waterways, airports and broadband connectivity, maintaining their belief that any package should hew to what they describe as traditional infrastructure.

But the plan does not close the other gaps that exist with the White House, where Biden recommended more than $2 trillion in new spending on a wide range of areas, including elder care, parents and families. GOP Sen. John Barrasso, Wyo., on Thursday described the scope of the White House proposal as “socialism camouflaged as infrastructure.”

Nor does it address the thornier disputes between the two sides over Biden’s plan to finance it through tax increases on corporations, which the GOP vehemently opposes. Instead, Republicans maintained their preference to pay for infrastructure using unused stimulus funds.

Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., one of the lawmakers involved in the talks, said Thursday that they count about $700 billion in still-unspent funds under the last coronavirus relief package. That includes money designated for use between 2022 and 2031 to help state and local governments, bolster coronavirus testing and expand the child tax credit, all major Democratic priorities.

“We believe that repurposing these funds needs to be a really important part of how we fill this gap,” Toomey said.

It is unclear how the White House will react to the blueprint, days after both sides put forward a first round of counteroffers that barely budged from their initial positions. For now, though, talks continue between the two sides with only days to go before a self-imposed Memorial Day deadline by which the White House has said it expects to see progress - or it could try to advance infrastructure legislation using only Democratic votes. The president maintains he prefers a bipartisan solution, after shepherding his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan through Congress without any GOP support.

As it haggles with the GOP, the White House also faced new political demands from lawmakers from its own party on Thursday. More than 200 House Democrats banded together to issue a new warning as part of the contentious debate over infrastructure spending: Include strong union and labor protections, or possibly risk losing some of their support.

In their letter, House Democrats stressed that Congress must couple any new federal loans, grants or tax benefits to improve the country’s infrastructure with a series of policy mandates to help workers. The companies that stand to profit from this potential influx of government aid must make it easy for employees to unionize, pay them prevailing wages, take action to prevent wage theft and train workers through apprenticeship programs for future positions, the lawmakers said.

House Democrats also registered particular concern with the emerging clean-energy industry, which could see billions of dollars in tax benefits and other fresh federal investment under Biden’s blueprint, known as the American Jobs Plan. In the lawmakers’ estimation, the industry already suffers from some of the worst worker protections across the U.S. economy, which they hope to remedy as part of an infrastructure overhaul.

“Whether it is through grants, loans, state revolving loan funds, bonds, or tax incentives, the primary condition of receiving the taxpayers’ money must be compliance with strong labor standards,” the Democrats wrote.

Three top party lawmakers - reflecting the full political spectrum among Democratic ranks - organized the effort: Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., leader of the Progressive Caucus; Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla., co-chair of the fiscally minded Blue Dog Coalition; and Rep. Susan Wild, D-Pa., who chairs a key clean-energy task force with the moderate-leaning New Democrat Coalition.

The letter, sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stopped short of explicitly promising to vote against an infrastructure bill if it did not contain these and other labor-minded provisions. But some of the Democrats involved in its crafting said Thursday they expect that any attempt to ignore their calls to action could lose them some votes, creating new challenges for Pelosi and Biden given the party’s slim majority in the House.

“We’re signaling very clearly with such an enormous group of Democrats across the ideological spectrum this has to be in the next package, that there’s really no option not to have it in there,” Jayapal said.

Asked whether she expected Democrats to pull their votes in the absence of labor requirements, Jayapal said that for some, it could “certainly be the case,” adding: “They may not lose every single vote of the people signed onto the letter, but there are a lot of people watching this very closely.”

Republicans, for their part, are likely to balk at any attempt to advance union-friendly policies as part of a larger package to improve the country’s roads, pipes, ports and Internet connections. A fight in the coming months over labor policy could complicate the prospects for a broader bipartisan deal - especially because such a compromise already seems out of reach.

Unveiled in March, Biden’s blueprint called for over $2 trillion in new spending not only on the country’s roads, bridges, pipes and ports, but also on programs that aim to benefit workers, families and elderly Americans. Throughout the proposal, the president also pledged to premise much of the public works investment on strong worker protections, aiming to ensure employees can bargain, seek fair wages and obtain necessary training as they upgrade the country’s inner workings.

Some of the issues may be addressed under existing state or federal law. Other elements of Biden’s commitment align in approach or spirit with a measure known as the PRO Act that House lawmakers adopted in February. The bill calls for significant changes to federal labor laws to help Americans form or join unions - and protect them against potential retaliation from their employers. Biden called on Congress to adopt it during his first address to a joint session of Congress this year.

But the fight over the PRO Act perhaps foreshadows some of the battles that await the president and his House Democratic allies as they seek strong union and labor protections in the infrastructure package. The bill cleared the chamber mostly on party lines only to stall in the Senate, where Democrats have been unable to advance it in large part because of opposition from some of the party’s centrist members - not to mention Republicans.

Wild, who supported the legislation, said she hoped the fate of Democrats’ renewed efforts are more effective - pointing to the fact that lawmakers from both parties for years have sought a massive influx in infrastructure spending.

“The PRO Act is a stand-alone,” Wild said. “This, of course, is coupled with something everyone professes deeply to want. I hope that will help lead the way for these labor protections to be included.”