Senate Republicans on Thursday have formally countered President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion proposal at $568 billion.
The proposal maintains the 21 percent corporate tax rate and current state and local tax (SALT) deductions, opposing Biden’s tax hike to 28 percent and Senate Democrats’ proposal of 25 percent. The initiative also includes raising “taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year,” Axios reported.
Moreover, the Republican initiative focuses on traditional infrastructure items, such as roads, bridges, water storage, broadband, and ports. The plan does not include the Democrats’ “Orwellian campaign” that seeks to relabel many far-left policies as “infrastructure.”
The plan articulates “Federal Programs & Policies should”:
- Avoid restrictive, one-size-fits-all requirements
- Expedite the environmental review and permitting process
- Reduce regulatory burdens
- Spur innovation and the development and deployment of technologies
The breakdown of the specific items are as follows:
- $299B for roads and bridges
- $61B for public transit
- $65B for broadband infrastructure
- $44B for airports
- $35B for drinking water and wastewater
- $20B for rail systems
- $13B for safety
- $17B ports and inland waters
- $14B for water storage
The cosponsors of the legislation are Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Roger Wicker (R-MS), John Barrasso (R-WY), and Mike Crapo (R-ID).
Meanwhile, Biden’s $2.25 proposal hit another wall Wednesday when Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said he would like to see bipartisanship on the measure. “I would hope to see Democrats and Republicans agreeing on infrastructure – infrastructure by itself,” he told reporters.
“It won’t be the $2.3 trillion; that, I can tell you,” Manchin said.
Manchin, along with Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), and Jon Tester (D-MT) are also bucking Biden’s corporate tax hike of 28 percent, potentially negotiating Biden down to 25 percent.
The Republican plan does not include SALT deductions in which 21 House Democrats have joined 9 Republicans to repeal.
“The SALT deduction cap was instituted by former President Trump and has, as a result, ‘put President Joe Biden in a bind’ due to the cap ‘disproportionately’ impacting ‘Democrats in high-tax states by eliminating a popular federal deduction.’” Breitbart News reported.
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