WASHINGTON – Even before securing his first major legislative priority, President Joe Biden is preparing the step for the second: an even bigger spending plan that the White House is charging as the infrastructure package long sought by both parties.
Although the final votes on approving a Covid-19 aid package are still at least weeks away, Biden has already begun courting Republicans because of his infrastructure effort, which is likely to be the focus of a historically first speech late to Congress, probably sometime in March. But even as he seeks Republican support, White House officials have already begun to discuss the possibility of moving forward without him, just as Democrats seem about to do with the relief of pandemic.
Biden welcomed a bipartisan group of senators to the Oval Office on Thursday for a discussion of what the White House described as “the critical need to invest in modern, sustainable American infrastructure”.
Senator James Inhofe, R-Oklahoma, one of the participants, called the conversation “very good”, but warned Democrats about the excess.
“When you’re working on infrastructure, that’s expensive,” he said. “And I just don’t want them to put their diary on something else just to try to hold it hostage.”
A new legislative push would set another test as to whether Biden’s desire to act quickly on key campaign promises will come at the expense of his stated goal of working at the altar whenever possible.
Bipartisan cooperation on Capitol Hill is already rare. Biden met with Republicans during his predecessor’s impeachment trial, which Biden officials say he fears has already poisoned the atmosphere for bona fide negotiations, although Biden has done his best to prevent this.
Biden drew up an infrastructure plan of more than $ 2 trillion during the presidential campaign, saying at the time that it would be the “biggest mobilization of public investment since World War II”. The plan and a similar structure approved by the House of Democrats at the last Congress are the basis of what Biden will propose.
In addition to just repairs or new road and bridge construction, the plan included expanding access to broadband, as well as an ambitious climate agenda.
“We are looking at a much broader definition of infrastructure going forward than has been the practice in the past,” said Whip House majority Jim Clyburn, DS.C., an important Biden ally in an interview.
Officials hope the approval of the $ 1.9 trillion Covid-19 aid plan, combined with progress in increasing vaccine distribution, will help build momentum for additional economic stimuli, which Biden would sell in a prime-time speech. Congress and that could be his biggest public post-inauguration.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Said on Thursday that the speech would wait until after the pandemic relief bill was passed, meaning that Biden’s first speech in Congress would be the most recent president’s first year since the inauguration was moved from March to January 1937.
“This is the first order of the day,” she said.
The infrastructure effort would mark a pivot of “rescue” mode for an ambitious project to modernize America’s infrastructure and put the economy on a more secure footing.
“The president and many Democrats and Republicans in Congress believe that … building an infrastructure that serves our national interests, that boosts the United States’ economy, creates well-paid union jobs here in America and advances our climate and our energy goals cleanliness is something we can certainly work on together, “said White House press secretary Jen Psaki this week.
The White House is also prepared to sell the recovery package as part of the government’s foreign policy strategy, especially its efforts to challenge China.
A senior government official said that Biden’s approach to China depends largely on the ability of the US to strengthen its economic base, particularly “to ensure that we are making the public investments necessary to emerge stronger on the other side of this economic crisis. and maintain our innovation advantage and to rebuild our industrial base. “
Invoking his conversation on Wednesday night with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden told lawmakers on Thursday: “If we don’t move, they will have lunch. They are investing billions of dollars to deal with a series of issues that relate with transportation and the environment and a host of other things, so we just need to step forward. “
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Biden’s so-called Build Back Better agenda was also the main focus of his meeting this week with some of the country’s top business leaders, while the White House works to build bipartisan support from outside Washington in the face of what hopes to be another difficult battle. to win the support of Republicans in Congress.
Democrats hope that any major new spending measures they put in place again will have to go through the reconciliation process to avoid a Senate obstruction, and they are gearing up for Republican attacks at the expected price.
“I talk to my ex-colleagues all the time. They remind me that the problem is not building infrastructure. The problem is who pays for it,” said former deputy Steve Israel, DN.Y.
When Biden announced in July, he said his infrastructure plan would double as an aggressive effort to combat climate change – the kind of structure that Republicans like Inhofe are likely to face.
One of the initiatives that Biden most frequently promoted in the campaign was to add hundreds of thousands of electric vehicle charging stations across the country as part of a massive infusion of federal money to accelerate the transition to electric vehicles and renewable energy, a critical part of its goal of achieving 100% clean electricity by 2035 and zeroing out on US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
The Biden campaign proposal also envisaged spending billions to modernize schools and weather public and private housing and to finance and expedite permission for a quick start to repairs on highways, roads and bridges, as well as a known priority for Biden – a network national high-speed rail that he said would be the “second major rail revolution”.
Transport Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who virtually joined the Oval Office meeting on Thursday, is expected to play an important role in promoting Biden’s plan before and potentially after his approval to highlight its benefits.
Josh Lederman and Julie Tsirkin contributed.