The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans say they won’t support $2.3T infrastructure plan
GOP calls for a more modest approach; Biden vows to push proposal.
Republicans in Congress say they oppose President Joe Biden’s “Rebuild America” infrastructure plan and will not lend support for the costly $2.3 trillion undertaking for roads, bridges and other infrastructure investments.
The president did not close the door on negotiations but vowed to “push as hard as I can” for the plan. “Everybody around the world is investing billions and billions of dollars in infrastructure, and we’re going to do it here,” he said.
Senate Republican leader Mitch Mcconnell declared on Monday that Biden’s plan is “something we’re not going to do.”
Speaking to reporters in Kentucky, Mcconnell said Republicans could support a “much more modest” approach, and one that doesn’t rely on corporate tax increases to pay for it.
Sen. Roy Blunt, R-MO., a member of Senate GOP leadership, said Sunday a smaller infrastructure package of about $615 billion, or 30% of what Biden is proposing, could find bipartisan backing from Republicans if the White House did away with the new tax and relied on user fees or other ways to pay for the spending.
Under the Biden plan, the corporate tax rate would rise back to 28% — not fully reversing the Trump-era GOP tax cut on big business but settling on a middle ground from what had been a 35% rate before Republicans approved the 2017 tax overhaul. It’s now at 21%.
Also on Monday Sen. Ron Wyden, D-ore., was poised to introduce a plan to overhaul the way the United States taxes multinational
corporations, in what could be a blueprint for how lawmakers will finance Biden’s infrastructure agenda.
In addition to raising revenue, the plan seeks to discourage companies from shifting profits and jobs to low-tax countries to avoid paying taxes in America. It also creates new incentives through the tax code for companies to invest in research and manufacturing in the United States.
The proposal would alter several aspects of President Donald Trump’s signature 2017 tax law, which created a series of new mechanisms for how the United States taxes multinational companies. It would increase the rate of a global minimum tax that was included in that legislation and change how it is applied to income that corporations earn in various countries overseas. It would also change two other parts of the 2017 law in ways that the senators behind the plan say would better encourage investment in America.
Those measures mirror the Biden administration’s ambitions on international taxation. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen called for global coordination on an international tax rate that would apply to multinational corporations regardless of where they locate their headquarters.