Comments after the infrastructure meeting
There are so many difficult problems here. If Republicans will support it, they don't want to raise taxes but they also want to make sure it's paid for. So how do they propose paying for it?
Meanwhile, Democrats want more than Republicans are willing to offer and many also want to pay for it. The easiest thing for them to find is the Trump tax cut.
- Pelosi: said she's more optimistic about possibility of passing a bipartisan bill
- McConnell: "We're not interested in reopening the 2017 tax bill, we both made that clear to the president, that's our red line," McConnell said alongside McCarthy
- McConnell: Suggested that Republicans want to re-allocate state and local funding from the previously passed bill to help pay for a bipartisan infrastructure bill
- Schumer: "We said that we would explore the places where we could agree on and come to bipartisan agreement"
- Schumer: "we're going to try hard to get [a deal]"
- McCarthy: "I think there's an opportunity that we could work together on infrastructure."
Outside of brief moments of crisis around the pandemic and the financial crisis, the number of times there's been bipartisan compromise towards a large bill in the past 15 years is nearly nil. I don't think anyone is betting on some kind of grand compromise, especially when Democrats have a way to get it done solo, via reconciliation.
