It’s been three months since President Joe Biden announced a “once-in-a-generation” infrastructure plan at a carpenters’ training facility in Pittsburgh. “The American Jobs Plan will lead to a transformational progress in our effort to tackle climate change with American jobs and American ingenuity,” Biden said at the time. That was before Biden’s moonshot proposal passed through the political meat grinder that is the U.S. Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes to get past the filibuster.
Last month, Biden tried to pare down his $2 trillion initial proposal to something a little more palatable to moderate Republicans and conservative Democrats in the upper chamber. Then, a group of Senate Republicans led by Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia tried to trim that down to a lightweight package that was almost unrecognizable to the White House. Talks between Biden and Capito eventually disintegrated, which is when a bipartisan group of 10 centrists in the Senate, led by Republican Rob Portman of Ohio and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, struck up a conversation with the administration.
On Thursday, the White House and that bipartisan group ... Read more
