The negotiation farce between Biden and the Senate GOP on the infrastructure bill is in full swing now. I call it a farce because step one — meet at the White House to discuss infrastructure - really didn’t go very well. Senators Romney and Hoeven said “NO WAY!” to raising corporate tax rates to pay for rebuilding our infrastructure.
What did anyone expect from Mr. “Corporations are PEOPLE too!”?
Anyway, it appears that Biden has asked the Senate GOP to have a counter offer for him by mid May. And given what Romney and Hoeven have offered right now, I expect the Senate GOP to leave a flaming bag of shit on the White House lawn as their counter offer. And I don’t mean that they are just opposed to raising corporate taxes to pay for any infrastructure bill.
What they are saying: While both Romney and Hoeven are in favor of an infrastructure package, they sat they want to see a more targeted payment mechanism – gas taxes and user fees – to help fund individual projects.
- “There is broad support for infrastructure, and I believe a bipartisan bill is possible, but we need to find agreement to make these updates in a targeted way that doesn’t raise taxes,” Hoeven said in a statement.
- “I know that my Democratic friends are more inclined to look for the general revenue fund for taxpayers to pick up the bill, but my inclination is more towards the people who actually use a facility to be the ones that pay for it,” Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill.
A tax is still a tax. And this one, instead of going to the Mitt Romney’s of the world, will go instead to people like you and me. Nothing like making the middle class and poor take the brunt of the economic sacrifice. Again.
In fact, Romney also argued that they could dip into the COVID-19 relief funds to pay for some of the infrastructure.
Romney told The New York Times that during the meeting he had raised the possibility of letting state and local governments use money from the pandemic relief package to pay for infrastructure projects.
Yeah, let’s do that. I’m sure none of those state and local governments will mind getting screwed over. Not like they lost lots of revenue during the COVID-19 shutdowns.
Yes, Senate Republicans, for the umpteenth time since 2009 are negotiating in bad faith. This time, McConnell is sending in Romeny and Hoeven to help stall the infrastructure bill and water it down to something that does no good and pisses Democrats off. I believe the last time this was done with the ACA and Grassley and a few others did this same stunt.
Besides elder care taking a hit, I’m sure anything that might help with green jobs will have to do, according to Republicans. And they had said something about how pipes are not part of real infrastructure either. It’s only highways and bridges that are infrastructure to Republicans. I suppose that is where the “user fees” come into play (i.e. tolls).
As someone how has to pay a toll to go to work, I fucking hate tolls.
Anyway, I’m not sure how this farce is supposed to convince anyone of anything. Maybe it is the “low information” — ignorant and dumb actually — voter that this dance is supposed to convince? Washington is trying to work to bring the parties together….blah, blah, blah.
No one really cares how bills get passed. They only care that they get passed. But there is no way that Republicans are going to vote for the infrastructure bill.