REMINDER: Support Infrastructure Bill, Oppose Budget Reconciliation Tax Hikes

The U.S. House of Representatives was scheduled to vote on the Senate’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill last on Monday. It did not. And then on Thursday, September 30, House Democratic leaders postponed another vote on the bill because they did not believe they have a sufficient number of votes to pass it.

While it is unclear what the leaders’ next step is, on Friday, President Joe Biden met with the Democratic caucus and emerged saying he had no strict timeline for when the bill needed to be passed. According to The Hill, the president also said he wants the House to consider the bipartisan infrastructure bill and Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation at the same time.

As a reminder, the business community opposes the reconciliation because it includes more than $2 trillion in new taxes on businesses, workers, and families. (See MSCI’s previous analyses here, here, and here.)

Some Democrats continue to oppose the $3.5 trillion measure — either because they object to the overall level of spending or they don’t agree with specific provisions in the legislation. For example, last week Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said he wanted to see the overall amount of spending in the legislation reduced from $3.5 trillion to $1.5 trillion. He also said the energy measures in the legislation must accommodate for an “all of the above” energy policy that includes natural gas. As Connecting the Dots has reported, as written currently, the bill does not account for a robust energy policy. (Read more here.)

While President Biden suggested he might be willing to accept a smaller budget reconciliation package, he did not indicate what that would mean for the tax increases that Democrats have proposed. As such, MSCI continues to ask that its member company employees and leaders do two things:

• Oppose the Budget Reconciliation and Its Tax Increases. What is the easiest way to make your voice heard? The National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) has created a Tax Action Center that further explains the impact of these proposed taxes and allows individuals to take immediate action to send an email to lawmakers.
• Support the $1.2 Trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. MSCI asks that individuals continue to write to their lawmakers using this portal from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to support the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

As a reminder, without raising taxes, the bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill would:

• Provide the largest investment in roads, bridges, and passenger rail in more than a half century and the largest federal investment in public transit, clean drinking water, and wastewater infrastructure in U.S. history;
• Connect 14 million Americans to broadband;
• Streamline the permitting process to prevent the federal government from blocking future infrastructure projects;
• Invest roughly $100 billion in total energy, resiliency, sustainability, and climate change programs; and
• Provide incentives to increase private funding for infrastructure, including through public private partnerships.