Infrastructure bill clears major Senate hurdle, passage in sight

Bloomberg

The $550 billion infrastructure bill cleared a procedural hurdle in the US Senate as members began working through proposed amendments in one last drive to finalise the White House-backed public works plan.
The 67-27 vote to end debate on the bipartisan compromise measure puts the legislation on track to pass as soon as this weekend after weeks of negotiations between the White House and Republican and Democratic lawmakers. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pleaded with Republicans to lift objections to moving forward with the final batch of amendments.
“We can get this done the easy way or the hard way,” the New York Democrat said. “Either way the Senate will stay in session until we finish our work. It’s up to our Republican colleagues how long it takes.”
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell moments later called the bill imperfect but said investments in roads, bridges, airports and other infrastructure was necessary and long overdue. He also stressed there are “many outstanding amendments” that should receive votes.
“This is a compromise product crafted by colleagues with big, principled differences in the Senate with the narrowest possible split,” the Kentucky Republican said.
Montana Senator Jon Tester, one of the negotiators on the bill, said leaders are continuing to negotiate on which amendments the Senate will tee up for debate. If there is an agreement, the Senate could vote on final passage of the bill.
Vice President Kamala Harris was on hand in the Capitol for final discussions on the bill, which would be the biggest investment in the nation’s infrastructure in decades and is a key element of the Biden administration’s economic agenda.
President Joe Biden urged the Senate to complete its work on the legislation.
“It’s a bill that would end years of gridlock in Washington and create millions of good-paying jobs, put America on a new path to win the race for the economy in the 21st century,” he said at the White House.
Schumer plans to pivot quickly after the infrastructure vote to a budget resolution that will set the stage for a much broader $3.5 trillion package of social spending and taxes that Democrats can muscle through without any Republican votes.
The Senate will have to confront one unresolved fight before passing the infrastructure bill: two dueling amendments to modify a provision of the bill dealing with reporting requirements for cryptocurrency transactions and tax collection. The bipartisan group that drew up the legislation was counting on the extra tax revenue generated to help pay for some of the bill’s costs. Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, a progressive Democrat, teamed up with conservative Republicans Pat Toomey and Cynthia Lummis in working with the cryptocurrency industry to draft changes to narrow who would be affected by the reporting requirements. It would exclude entities including miners, software designers and protocol developers from the groups that need to report data to the Internal Revenue Service.
The infrastructure bill includes $110 billion in new spending for roads and bridges, $73 billion for electric grid upgrades, $66 billion for rail and Amtrak, and $65 billion for broadband expansion. It also provides $55 billion for clean drinking water and $39 billion for transit.