smart money says the latest bipartisan infrastructure effort will fail. Biden should prove that wron

President Biden and first lady Jill Biden walk in Carbis Bay, England, on Friday. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Opinion by the 
Editorial Board
June 12, 2021 at 5:00 a.m. PDT

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TALKS ON a possible infrastructure compromise between President Biden and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) collapsed definitively on Tuesday, but fortunately there is more than one way to achieve a bipartisan deal. If there can’t be one between the White House and Senate Republicans, perhaps something acceptable to the president can be worked out between senators themselves, working across the aisle. That, at least, is the hope raised by the announcement Thursday that a 10-member Senate group, split evenly among Republicans and Democrats, has agreed on a proposal.

Details are sketchy, and what is known of the deal 
suggests it is far from ideal. Some Republicans are 
likely to object to anything that spends a lot of money 
and hands even a partial political victory to Mr. Biden; on the Democratic left, 
meanwhile, critics are already saying their party should 
stop wasting time and pass a bill using a party-line procedure known as reconciliation. Mr. Biden, however, campaigned not only on investing in productivity-enhancing public goods but also on restoring functionality to Washington. He should therefore engage with the Senate group in good faith.

Their plan includes about $974 billion in infrastructure spending over five years. Of that amount, however, $579 billion would be new spending above what has already been authorized. Mr. Biden has said he won’t settle for less than $1 trillion in new money, but the Senate group’s plan is at least within shouting distance of that number — and reportedly also adds clean energy spending, a Biden priority that Ms. Capito rejected.The real problem is how to pay for the plan. The Senate group, in deference to GOP ideology, claims to do it without raising taxes. The president, whose original $2.2 trillion relied on raising the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, should insist on some revenue from higher corporate taxation, perhaps in the form of the 15 percent minimum corporate tax rate he floated in discussions with Ms. Capito.

In fairness to the Republican members of the group, they are open to inflation-adjusting the federal fuel excise tax — a tax increase in all but name, and a truly modest one given that the tax hasn’t been raised since 1993. Higher fuel taxes are also good policy: They both raise revenue and, at the margins, reduce driving, which means they reduce carbon emissions. Mr. Biden is the obstacle here, because he has sworn not to increase taxes for anyone who earns less than $400,000 per year. That promise seems especially ill-advised in the context of transportation infrastructure, where fuel taxes function as a rough user fee for the nation’s highways.

Time is growing short between now and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) self-imposed July 4 deadline to bring a bill to the floor. The smart money is betting that Republicans and Democratic centrists are just posturing, and that these negotiations will end in the usual partisan impasse. Americans in general would not be surprised if that happens — but undoubtedly wish it wouldn’t. As the one player in this drama who was elected by all the people, Mr. Biden’s role is to help prove that this time the smart money is wrong.President Biden and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) were light-years apart in their infrastructure negotiations. Biden wants $1.7 trillion in spending, paid for by raising corporate taxes. Capito had put only $257 billion in new spending on the table with no specified funding mechanism. Unsurprisingly, the two broke off talks on Tuesday. “While I appreciate President Biden’s willingness to devote so much time and effort to these negotiations, he ultimately chose not to accept the very robust and targeted infrastructure package, and instead, end our discussions,” Capito said in a statement.

At the daily news briefing on Tuesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki made clear the president was not solely relying on the potential for a deal with Capito. “We’re right in the middle of the sausage-making right now,” Psaki said. “This train is moving on several tracks.” She stressed that the process of moving forward with a Democratic bill (as Democrats did via reconciliation on the American Rescue Plan) is getting underway.

Biden therefore now turns to another group of lawmakers who might put more on the table. That group reportedly includes Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.).What’s going on here? The administration has been emphatic and consistent: Biden would like to reach a deal with Republicans even if it means trimming his plan. (It has already been cut by $500 billion.) He would not have spent hours upon hours exploring a deal if he did not have hope that some bipartisan agreement was possible. But he is not going to abandon his goal of a major investment in infrastructure. If there are no Republicans willing to put serious money on the table, I have no doubt he will proceed with reconciliation that would deliver on a robust bill.

Even if there are not 10 Republicans, Biden may well make modifications to gain some Republican support on a bill proceeding through reconciliation. (Many reconciliation efforts are bipartisan.) That makes for interesting possibilities, such as one reportedly offered by Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.):