Senate Republicans released a second infrastructure counterproposal this morning. The eight-year $928 billion “Republican Roadmap” includes $360 billion more funding than the party’s April 22 proposal, with increases in every category but broadband infrastructure. The proposal, which follows weeks of negotiations between President Joe Biden and a group of Senate Republicans, falls roughly $70 billion short of the White House’s $1 trillion minimum baseline funding-level target.
In a memo to the president, Sens. Shelley Moore Capito(R-WV), Roy Blunt (R-MO), John Barrasso (R-WY), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Roger Wicker (R-MS) emphasized that they would only support the inclusion of policies directly related to physical infrastructure, recommending that nontraditional infrastructure priorities instead be enacted through separate legislation. The group also reiterated the Republican Conference’s opposition to revisiting any part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. To offset the proposal, they recommended utilizing a combination of unspecified user fees, infrastructure financing and repurposed COVID-19 relief funds. These funding mechanisms were publicly supported by a group of bipartisan senators earlier this week: Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT), Susan Collins (R-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Joe Manchin (D-WV), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Jon Tester (D-MT)
Click here for a full breakdown of the differences between the Republican infrastructure offers released on April 22 and May 27 and the administration’s proposals within each category.
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