Republicans plan to block vote on bipartisan infrastructure bill
But lawmakers said their negotiations will intensify over the next few days with the goal of trying again to advance the measure by early next week.
“We all want the same thing here: to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill,” said Schumer. “But in order to finish the bill, we first need to start.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said the push to advance the bill is a “stunt” that is “set to fail” because negotiators have not finalized an agreement and therefore it’s premature to begin debate on the bill.
“Around here, we typically write the bills before we vote on them,” the Kentucky Republican said on the Senate floor. “That’s the custom.”
McConnell added that he also expects that after a final agreement is reached among bipartisan negotiators in the coming days.
In June, the White House and a bipartisan Senate group agreed to a $579 billion in new spending to build roads, bridges, railroads and airports, along with water, power and broadband infrastructure projects.
But lawmakers have since struggled over how to pay for the massive investment. They made their task even harder by agreeing to scrap a provision that would have strengthened the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to collect unpaid taxes, which would’ve raised up to $100 billion in government revenue. They also haven’t resolved other issues, including how much transit funding to provide, according to a Senate GOP source.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney, one of the Republican negotiators, said Tuesday that senators had “resolved probably three-quarters” of their issues in the last two days, and predicted that they could work out the rest “by the end of the week.”
Romney said that he wanted the vote to be pushed back to the beginning of next week.
“I am hoping that Sen. Schumer will have the vote on Monday when we’ve had a chance to resolve any remaining, outstanding issues,” Romney said.
This story has been updated with additional developments Wednesday.
CNN’s Ted Barrett, Ali Zaslav and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.
