Republicans make $568B, 5-year counter-offer to Biden:
* more for roads and bridges
* no corporate tax hike, no SALT rollback bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
GOP *very* vague on payfors:
* tax electric cars
* rescind unspent money (previous COVID relief, etc.)
* no increase in federal debt
* user fees floated
* oppose undoing 2017 tax law and raising business taxes
They also specifically oppose any attempt to nix the $10K cap on SALT GOP created in 2017 tax law — a potential sticking point given some House Ds are insisting on high-test SALT.
Biden's proposing $1.52 trillion in regular discretionary spending, including big boosts for Title I education, health, climate, research bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
$20B Title I increase alone is massive. Some of the states with a lot of Title I schools? West Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi. 👀
Presidents have a pretty poor track record of enacting all of their budget requests in the last decade — Trump kept proposing DOA domestic cuts; Obama proposed spending hikes GOP shrunk.
This doesn't solve Dems' biggest problem on passing Biden's economic agenda: Staying unified. Manchin is already demanding changes and some House moderates are getting SALTy too.
But it does give Democrats options on timing/packages/etc.
If Biden's infrastructure-plus packages become law, the impact of Ossoff/Warnock wins would be in the ballpark of $4-5 trillion.
That's just on the spending/tax cuts/COVID relief side. Tax increases on $400K+ and corporations almost certainly would have gone straight into the Senate GOP's circular file.
Also why I'm always surprised Senate races haven't all become multi-billion-dollar affairs given the multi-trillion-dollar impacts they can have.