Biden-Capito Infrastructure Talks End With No Deal
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President Joe Biden ended talks with Republican Sen.Shelley Moore Capito on an infrastructure plan without a deal, after failing to reach agreement on the scope of spending or how to pay for it.
The talks concluded after a brief phone call between the president and the West Virginia senator. Biden will instead turn his attention to a bipartisan group of senators working on their own infrastructure plan, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement.
“The president is committed to moving his economic legislation through Congress this summer, and is pursuing multiple paths to get this done,” Psaki said, adding that Biden also spoke with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on June 8 about advancing Democratic-written legislation.
The bipartisan group of 20 senators has not yet signed off on a proposal, according to members. Instead, a smaller faction led by Utah Republican Mitt Romney and Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema have agreed on a spending level and how to pay for it, according to Romney, though he declined to give any details.
Romney said he and other members of the smaller group plan to meet the evening of June 8 to discuss their proposal.
A White House official said Biden and Capito called off their talks after the Republican and her allies refused to agree to higher new spending in the plan or detail specific ways to pay for it. Republicans have rejected Biden’s proposal to raise taxes on corporations and high-income Americans.
“While I appreciate President Biden’s willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions,” Capito said in a statement. “After negotiating in good faith and making significant progress to move closer to what the president wanted, I am disappointed by his decision.”
The blame game between the White House and Capitol Hill started almost as soon as the June 8 call between Biden and Capito ended.
Sen. John Barrasso, the third-ranking Senate Republican and a member of the team negotiating with Biden, torched the White House for creating a significant “roadblock” to getting a deal, both with continued demands for more spending than Republicans want and higher taxes that they oppose.
The White House said Biden had already come down by about a trillion dollars on spending.
Barrasso said Biden had agreed to $1 trillion over 8 years including money Congress is already set to spend, and that he had also agreed to repurpose some money from pandemic relief laws passed last year and under the new administration.
The White House official said the president never agreed to support the rescission of funds from pandemic relief packages, or to a $1 trillion package. The official said the president has always been clear that there would need to be a significant investment beyond so-called “baseline” spending.
— With assistance from Erik Wasson
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