EDITORIAL: Biden should take GOP infrastructure deal

Senate Republicans have offered the Biden White House a reasonable compromise on infrastructure spending, but Democrats appear hesitant because it focuses on bridges, roads, ports and water projects rather than funnelling money to progressive special-interest groups.

President Joe Biden originally proposed a $2.3 trillion spending blowout that defines unrelated items such as child and elder care as “infrastructure.” The GOP countered with a $568 billion proposal focused on more traditional transportation improvements. By Friday, Mr. Biden was down to $1.7 trillion and Republicans had come up to $928 billion, even adding more money for public transit projects.

The GOP offer, the Wall Street Journal reports, includes $506 billion for roads and bridges, $98 billion for mass transit, $72 billion for water projects, $65 billion for broadband, $56 billion for airports, $46 billion for passenger and freight rail and $22 billion for ports. But it doesn’t include loads of cash for job training, home health care or child care under the guise of “infrastructure” improvement.

Polls show that Americans support an infrastructure bill — both Republicans and Democrats have been talking about an elusive deal for five years. Any such agreement will inevitably include a fair amount of pork as members of Congress seek to secure funding for favorite projects back home. That’s the nature of the game. But if taxpayers are to get the most return on investment, any bill must be trimmed of extraneous spending on items that have little relationship to actual transportation and utility systems. The GOP plan is at least a step in that direction.

The Republican offer includes another worthwhile aspect. It would pay for the spending in part by redirecting COVID relief money for states and local governments toward federal infrastructure projects. Congress should look to “some of the funding that’s been sent to states already under the last few bills” to help pay for an agreement, Sen. Mitt Romney said last week, the New York Times reported. “They don’t know how to use it. They could use that money to finance part of the infrastructure relating to roads and bridges and transit.”

A great many states are now wallowing in cash thanks to better-than-expected tax collections throughout the pandemic. Yet the Biden administration still insisted on sending $350 billion to states such as California that have significant budget surpluses. “It increasingly looks like” many states “do not need more federal money,” the Times acknowledged. “That is particularly true in states that do not rely primarily on the tourism or hospitality industries for tax revenues.”

Is the White House more interested in enabling blue state profligacy or signing an infrastructure bill? The choice should be clear.

“We’re going to keep talking, and I understand the president is willing to keep talking,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday. “We’d like to get an outcome on a significant infrastructure package.” The GOP’s lead negotiator, West Virginia Republican Shelley Moore Capito, echoed that sentiment. “We’re still talking. I’m optimistic, we still have a big gap,” she said. “I think where we’re really falling short is we can’t seem to get the White House to agree on a definition or a scope of infrastructure that matches where we think it is, and that’s physical, core infrastructure.”

Democrats can hardly call the GOP stingy when it signs up for nearly $1 trillion in new spending. But a sensible infrastructure bill wouldn’t rewrite the definition of infrastructure to include safety net spending. Mr. Biden has long professed a desire to reach across the aisle to find common ground. If he’s serious, the Republican infrastructure olive branch would be a fine place to start.