WASHINGTON — Republicans on Capitol Hill began lining up on Wednesday against President Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan and the tax increases he proposed to finance it, even as some Democrats suggested that the package was insufficient to address the country’s aging infrastructure and vulnerabilities to climate change.
While most Democrats showered praise on Mr. Biden for the expansive package, the critiques from members of both parties illustrated that infrastructure legislation, once seen as a promising area of bipartisan compromise, is unlikely to sail through this Congress with widespread support from both sides.
Republicans scoffed at the breadth of the plan — which includes traditional public-works projects as well as far-reaching initiatives to tackle climate change and racial inequities in the economy — and condemned Mr. Biden’s determination to pay for it in part with corporate tax increases.
“We cannot begin thinking of bills that spend trillions as the new normal,” said Representative Sam Graves of Missouri, the top Republican on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. “The president’s blueprint is a multitrillion-dollar partisan shopping list of progressive priorities, all broadly categorized as ‘infrastructure’ and paid for with massive, job-killing tax increases.”
the same fast-track budget reconciliation process they used for the stimulus measure. That would protect the plan from a filibuster and enable Democrats to muscle it through the Senate over potentially unanimous Republican opposition.
the top rules enforcer, to weigh in on the matter. Democrats have not yet committed to using the maneuver, though Republicans have privately said the request is a sign that their input will not be taken seriously.