Twenty U.S. senators, including ten Republicans, agreed to support President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan Wednesday amid widespread GOP opposition.
Ten GOP senators, along with one Independent and nine Democratic colleagues, expressed their support for Biden’s infrastructure plan, known as the “American Jobs Plan,” in order to improve “America’s critical infrastructure challenges” in a joint statement.
“We support this bipartisan framework that provides an historic investment in our nation’s core infrastructure needs without raising taxes. We look forward to working with our Republican and Democrat colleagues to develop legislation based on this framework to address America’s critical infrastructure challenges,” the senators wrote.
????NEWS! 20 senators – INCLUDING 10 REPUBLICANS – agree on bipartisan infrastructure framework pic.twitter.com/ZXItk5sTjC
— Jacqui Heinrich (@JacquiHeinrich) June 16, 2021
The GOP senators supporting the plan include Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Mitt Romney of Utah, Susan Collins of Maine, and Richard Burr of North Carolina. (RELATED: Biden Seems To Yet Again Ignore Bipartisan Compromise To Join The Left On Infrastructure)
The $2 trillion “American Jobs Plan” intends to raise the corporate tax rate to 28% in order to invest in transportation infrastructure, modernizing utilities such as water and electricity, improving the livelihoods of the elderly and disabled, and in private sector innovation and clean energy projects.
A handful of Republican and moderate Democratic lawmakers have opposed the infrastructure plan, including Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin who criticized the package’s tax hike, and Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who compared the plan to a “Trojan horse.”
“This is not going to be apparently an infrastructure package. It’s like a Trojan horse. So it’s called infrastructure but inside the Trojan horse is going to be more borrowed money and massive tax increases,” McConnell said in March. Biden called McConnell in March to discuss the plan.
Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, along with six other GOP colleagues, have been leading an effort to compromise with Biden on the plan. The GOP proposed to spend $926 billion on infrastructure while the administration has brought the plan’s price to $1.7 trillion, according to The Guardian.
If the lack of GOP support for the plan continues, Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough said that Democrats could pass the infrastructure package through a simple majority vote known as reconciliation.