After meeting with several Republican senators last month, POTUS Joe Biden announced a bipartisan deal that works toward the passing of the infrastructure bill. Biden candidly mentioned that although they had arrived at a bipartisan deal that did not give him all that he wanted, he said the GOP senators gave more that what they were originally inclined to offer as their commitment.
According to the members of the group, the agenda was mainly about the funding for the package to which a framework has been agreed upon. It included a proposed amount of $579 billion in new spending, and an almost $1 trillion funding that will be spent during a five-year period. There’s also an option to increase funding to $1.2 trillion but to be spread across eight years.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins told reporters that discussions delved mostly on the scope, the costs and the method of paying for the such costs. Senator Collins added that although the three items were not easy to be agreed to, doing so was necessary.
Agreement Over Proposed Funding for the Entire Infrastructure Package
The White House has released details related to the proposed new funding, which will be financed using the money gained from reducing fraud in unemployment insurance as well as from the unused unemployment relief package from last year’s emergency relief bill and from “tax gaps”.
In addition, other funding sources would come from the following:
- State and local investments in broadband infrastructure;
- 5G spectrum auction proceeds;
- Extending expiring customs user payments;
- Reinstating Superfund payments for chemicals
- Extending “mandatory sequestration”action
- An estimated sale of the country’s petroleum reserve;
- Public-private partnerships and private activity bonds;
- Asset recycling and directly paid bonds for infrastructure investments
- Resulting macroeconomic impact of Infrastructure improvement investment
