Biden extols bipartisan infrastructure deal as an excellent start
President Joe Biden has announced a hard-earned bipartisan agreement on a pared-down infrastructure plan that could make a start his top legislative priority and validate his efforts to attain over the political aisle. But he openly acknowledged Thursday that Democrats will probably have to tackle much of the rest by themselves. The bill's price at $973 billion over five years, or $1.2 trillion over eight years, is a scaled-back but still significant little bit of Biden's broader proposals.
It includes greater than a half-trillion dollars in new spending and could open the entranceway to the president's more sweeping $4 trillion proposals for child care and what the White House calls human infrastructure down the road. "When we will get common ground, working across party lines, that's what I will seek to do," said Biden, who deemed the agreement "a genuine bipartisan effort, breaking the ice that too often has kept us frozen set up."
The president stressed that "neither side got everything they wanted in this deal; that's what this means to compromise," and said that other White House priorities would be taken on separately in a congressional budget process referred to as reconciliation, that allows for majority passage with no need for Republican voters.
