U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday embraced a $1.2 trillion bipartisan Senate deal to renew the nation's roads, bridges and highways and help stimulate the economy -- a major breakthrough on one of his key domestic policy goals.
"We have a deal," Biden told reporters, flanked by Democratic and Republican senators who wrote the infrastructure proposal that followed months of White House negotiations with lawmakers.
Its $579 billion in new spending includes major investments in the nation's power grid, broadband internet services and passenger and freight rail.
But it does not contain other key priorities for Biden and progressive Democrats, such as new spending on home health care and child care, which Biden pitched as "human infrastructure." The Democrats who control Congress by razor-thin margins aim to cover those areas in another spending package that they want to maneuver through the Senate without Republican votes.
"This deal means millions of good-paying jobs and fewer burdens felt at the kitchen table ... But it also signals to ourselves, and to the world, that American democracy can deliver, and because of that it represents an important step forward for our country," Biden said later at the White House.
One member of the bipartisan group of 21 senators who negotiated the deal, Republican Rob Portman, said: "We didn't get everything we wanted but we came up with a good compromise."
He said they had commitments from Republicans and Democrats alike to get the plan "across the finish line."
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who was briefed on the plan early on Thursday, did not answer questions about whether he would back the initiative.
The eight-year proposal contains $109 billion for roads, bridges and major projects; $73 billion for power infrastructure; $66 billion for passenger and freight rail; $65 billion for broadband access; $49 billion for public transit; and $25 billion for airports, according to a White House statement.
The investments would be paid for through more than a dozen funding mechanisms, including $100 billion in estimated tax revenues from a ramp-up in enforcement by the Internal Revenue Service, unused COVID-19 aid money and unemployment insurance funds returned by U.S. states.
Democratic and Republican members of the group displayed high spirits, chuckling and smiling together at microphones in the driveway of the White House.
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