Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Tuesday that the $65 billion for broadband means that some people in her state would get access to the internet for the first time. “The pandemic that we have endured for more than a year laid bare the disparities in access to high-speed internet,” Collins said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, spoke of how the bill would lead to more rural and Native Alaskans having access to a sink to wash their hands in. The bill dedicates about $55 billion in new funding for water and wastewater systems. “We have to do right by our Native people,” she said.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., noted there is about $16 billion for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that would help fund projects designed to curb coastal erosion. “My state has lost as much land as is in the entire state of Delaware. But other states are losing land, too,” he said.

And Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., talked about how $110 billion in new funding for roads and bridges would mean access to markets for farms in Montana such as his own. “It is critically important we keep our aging bridges and roads and airports up to snuff,” Tester said.

The lawmakers, part of a group that they like to call the G-10, for gang of 10 — five Republican, five Democratic senators — are appealing to the wishes of many voters for not only better airports, roads and internet service, but also for some bipartisanship in Washington, without being directly asked to pay for those improvements through higher income taxes or user fees.

While it’s looking like the Senate will approve the bill during the coming week, supporters of the legislation will face an array of obstacles advancing the package, a major priority in President Joe Biden’s agenda. Interest groups on both sides of the political spectrum are taking aim at provisions they don’t like, potentially unraveling the agreement.

Some conservatives don’t like that the agreement moves the country further away from relying on user fees, such as the federal gas tax, to pay for highway and transit improvements. Others are wary that the bill sets a course for much more federal spending after the government already provided for nearly $5 trillion dedicated to COVID relief. This week, the Treasury Department warned Congress it was hitting the nation’s debt limit. “Every single time we add an enormous sum to our national debt, there is bipartisanship behind it,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said.

Environmental groups worry that the bill doesn’t do enough to address climate change. “It is clear that the deal does not meet the moment on climate or justice,″ said Tiernan Sittenfeld, a senior vice president of the League of Conservation Voters.

The pressure from the left underpins House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s statement that there won’t be a House vote on the bipartisan infrastructure plan until the Senate also passes the $3.5 trillion Democratic bill that boosts spending on health, environment and social programs.

The Senate is plowing through efforts to amend the narrower infrastructure bill, which will require 60 votes to advance for passage. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is intent on passing the legislation as soon as possible so that the Senate can turn its attention to a budget blueprint that will set the stage for crafting and passing the larger $3.5 trillion package in the fall.

Formally called the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the proposal has clocked in at some 2,700 pages. The Senate’s Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, has sided with those voting to allow debate to proceed, but he has not said how he will ultimately vote. He said Tuesday the bill has a chance to be a “bipartisan success story for the country,” but he is warning Democrats against trying to speed up the amendment process.

“Like a lot of us, I’m interested in what it looks like in the end,” McConnell said. He noted that “the past two administrations tried to do it, were unable to. The American people need it. I think it’s one of those areas where there seems to be broad, bipartisan agreement.”

By evening, the Senate had overwhelmingly approved three noncontroversial amendments, while rejecting three others. As the amendment process continued, senators were weighing how much to try to change the package and how hard to try, knowing it would be difficult to reach the 60-vote threshold to approve any substantial changes.

In addition to the $110 billion in new spending for roads and bridges and $55 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure, the bipartisan package is expected to provide, $39 billion for public transit and $66 billion for rail. There’s also to be billions for airports, ports, broadband internet and electric vehicle charging stations.

Paying for the package has been a challenge after senators rejected ideas to raise revenue from a new gas tax or other streams. Instead, it is being financed from funding sources that might not pass muster with deficit hawks, including repurposing some $205 billion in untapped COVID-19 relief aid, as well as unemployment assistance that was turned back by some states, and relying on projected future economic growth.

The bipartisan bill still faces a rough road in the House, where progressive lawmakers want a more robust package but may have to settle for this one to keep Biden’s infrastructure plans on track. The outcome with the bipartisan effort will set the stage for the next debate over Biden’s much more ambitious $3.5 trillion package, a strictly partisan pursuit of far-reaching programs and services including child care and health care that touch almost every corner of American life. Republicans strongly oppose that bill, which would require a simple majority for passage. Final votes on that measure are not expected until fall.

KEVIN FREKING and LISA MASCARO | AP NEWS

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Monday that President Joe Biden is awaiting an infrastructure counteroffer from Senate Republicans after a core group of GOP negotiators rejected his latest $1.7 trillion proposal, leaving the fragile talks on a compromise at a standstill before a Memorial Day deadline.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the president is “eager to engage” and would welcome more talks with the senators. But she said the Republicans have “a ways more to go” to find common ground. Biden dropped $500 billion from his initial $2.3 trillion offer, and Psaki said the Republicans raised their $568 billion offer by about $50 billion. Republicans have rejected Biden’s plan to pay for the road and broadband spending with a corporate tax increase.

“The ball is in the Republicans’ court,” Psaki said at the White House briefing.

On Monday, the president will be hosting Alaska’s Republican congressional delegation to the White House for a bill signing ceremony on an unrelated cruise ship tourism measure. That’s meant as a signal of potential areas of bipartisanship. The invited lawmakers could be key players in any infrastructure deal.

With a deadline a week away, the White House and Senate Republicans remain far apart after nearly two weeks of closed-door talks between Biden’s team and senators. The lack of progress on Biden’s effort to strike a bipartisan agreement has Democrats considering whether they should leave Republicans behind and try to pass his top priority on their own.

Psaki insisted no decisions had been made and expected more talks this week. Asked if Biden might move ahead with his infrastructure plans without Republican support, she said, “We’re not quite there yet.”

Democrats hold only slim majorities in the House and Senate, and the administration will face other problems trying to find an agreement with sufficient support from within the president’s own party for the big spending. Republicans, who risk political fallout from doing nothing on potentially popular proposals, have resisted Biden’s approach as excessive. Late Friday, the group led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., rejected Biden’s counteroffer and suggested the two sides were moving farther apart.

“We’re eager to see their proposal and see what they have to offer,” Psaki said.

The GOP senators have not said if they were preparing another proposal.

Biden’s American Jobs Plan is a massive investment in not just roads, bridges and broadband, but also in water systems to remove lead from pipes, veterans hospitals and green energy, including electric vehicle charging stations that Republicans say go too far beyond traditional infrastructure spending.

Republicans offered an initial $568 billion alternative more narrowly focused on roads, bridges, ports and broadband. Last week the GOP senators boosted that offer, but did not disclose the new total.

According to a White House memo obtained by The Associated Press, the administration said the GOP offer bolstered the new spending by $50 billion — from $175 billion to $225 billion — beyond what Congress typically allocates.

The two sides are also at odds over how to pay for any new spending. Biden wants to lift the corporate tax rate, from 21% to 28%. Republicans are staunchly opposed to any tax increases, having lowered the corporate rate from 35% in 2017 under their GOP tax plan.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — With an appeal to think big, President Joe Biden is promoting his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan directly to Americans, summoning public support to push past the Republicans lining up against the massive effort they sum up as big taxes, big spending and big government.

Republicans in Congress are making the politically brazen bet that it’s more advantageous to oppose the costly American Jobs Plan, saddling the Democrats with ownership of the sweeping proposal and the corporate tax hike Biden says is needed to pay for it. He wants the investments in roads, schools, broadband and clean energy approved by summer.

“They know we need it,” Biden said of the Republicans as he returned to Washington on Monday. “Everybody around the world is investing billions and billions of dollars in infrastructure, and we’re going to do it here.”

The once bipartisan source of unity has cracked and groaned under the weight of political polarization. Where Biden sees an urgency in going big, Republicans want a narrow plan that focuses on roads and bridges, and warn that any corporate tax increase would crush economic growth.

The standoff almost ensures a months-long slog as Congress hunkers down to begin drafting legislation and the White House keeps the door open to working across the aisle with Republicans, hoping that continued public attention will drum up support.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declared plainly on Monday that Biden’s plan is “something we’re not going to do.”

Speaking to reporters in Kentucky, McConnell said Republicans could support a “much more modest” approach, and one that doesn’t rely on corporate tax hikes to pay for it.

A core dividing line is Biden’s effort to pay for infrastructure by undoing Donald Trump’s tax break for corporations, a signature achievement of the Trump White House and its partners in Congress.

The 2017 GOP tax bill, which all the Republicans voted for, slashed the corporate rate from 35% to 21%. It was supposed to usher in a new era of American investment and job creation, yet growth never came close to the promised levels and the economy fell into a recession because of the pandemic.

Biden proposes raising the rate to 28% and instituting a global minimum rate to dissuade companies from relocating in lower-tax havens. Democratic senators led by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, unveiled their own framework for an international taxation overhaul Monday that could provide an opening to Biden’s approach.

“We desperately need reform,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., one of those involved in the effort.

Shepherding Biden’s proposal through Congress remains a work in progress, particularly in the evenly-divided 50-50 Senate, where Democrats have the majority because the vice president from their party, Kamala Harris, can cast a tie-breaking vote.

But a single senator can break ranks to influence the size and shape of the package. On Monday, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., indicated he would prefer a corporate tax rate at 25%, lower than what Biden is proposing.

Seizing on Democratic divisions, Republicans have signaled zero interest in undoing the tax cuts they approved with Trump, and instead prefer a smaller infrastructure package paid for by user fees on drivers or other public-private partnerships that share the costs.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of Senate GOP leadership, said Sunday a smaller infrastructure package of about $615 billion, or 30% of what Biden is proposing, could draw bipartisan support.

Administration officials have encouraged Republicans to talk more fully about what they dislike and would do instead, under the opinion that a battle of ideas will only help Biden gain support with voters.

The president has already met twice with bipartisan groups of lawmakers in the Oval Office, and members of Biden’s Cabinet leading the charge on infrastructure have also have placed dozens of calls to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Yet the White House has a fundamental disagreement with Republicans on the definition of infrastructure, such that any outreach is unlikely to yield an agreement.

“Infrastructure is not just the roads we get a horse and buggy across,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters at a Monday briefing. “Infrastructure is about broadband. It’s about replacing lead pipes so people have water. It’s about rebuilding our schools.”

That leaves Biden and congressional Republicans on a collision course, the outcome of which could define the parties and his presidency.

The GOP strategy is reminiscent of its Obama-era stance more than a decade ago, when the Republicans opposed the 2009 rescue after the economic crisis, framing it as government overreach that piled on debt — an argument they used in 2010 to win back control of Congress.

But it’s not at all certain the GOP playbook that worked more than a decade ago will produce the same political gains this time. Biden is banking on polling that suggests his infrastructure package is popular among voters of both parties, making it easier to bypass any GOP blockade on Capitol Hill.

Touring a water treatment plant Monday in California, Harris said access to clean water was about a broader issue of fairness.

With the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom, Harris noted that families in Iowa and parts of the Midwest needed federal help to upgrade the wells on their properties, while parts of California needed reliable access to fight wildfires.

“We must understand the equities and inequities of distribution and access to clean water, especially clean drinking water,” Harris said.

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PITTSBURGH (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday outlined a $2.3 trillion plan to reengineer the nation’s infrastructure over the next eight years in what he billed as “a once in a generation investment in America” that would undo his predecessor’s signature legislative achievement of giant tax cuts for corporations in the process.

Speaking at a carpenters union training center in Pittsburgh, Biden drew comparisons between his hard-hatted proposed transformation of the U.S. economy and the space race — and promised results as grand in scale as the New Deal or Great Society programs that shaped the 20th century.

“It’s not a plan that tinkers around the edges,” Biden said. “It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II. It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.”

White House officials say the spending would generate those jobs as the country shifts away from fossil fuels and combats the perils of climate change. It is also an effort to compete with the technology and public investments made by China, which has the world’s second-largest economy and is fast gaining on the United States’ dominant position.

“I’m convinced that if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this is the moment when America won the future,” Biden said.

Funding for the infrastructure projects would come from a hike on corporate taxes that would aim to raise the necessary piles of money over 15 years and then reduce the deficit going forward. In doing so, Biden would undo the action by Trump and congressional Republicans to lift the corporate tax rate to 28% from the 21% rate set in a 2017 overhaul.

“Ninety-one Fortune 500 Companies, including Amazon, pay not a single solitary penny in income tax,” Biden said.

Wednesday’s announcement will be followed in coming weeks by Biden pushing a companion bill of roughly equal size for investments in child care, family tax credits and other domestic programs. That nearly $2 trillion package would be paid for by tax hikes on wealthy individuals and families.

“Wall Street didn’t build this country,” Biden said. “You, the great middle class, built this country. And unions built the middle class.”

Biden’s choice of Pittsburgh for unveiling the plan carried important economic and political resonance. He not only won Pittsburgh and its surrounding county to help secure the presidency, but he launched his campaign there in 2019. The city famed for steel mills that powered America’s industrial rise has steadily pivoted toward technology and health care, drawing in college graduates in a sign of how economies can change.

The Democratic president’s infrastructure projects would be financed by higher corporate taxes — a trade-off that could lead to fierce resistance from the business community and thwart attempts to work with Republicans lawmakers. Biden hopes to pass an infrastructure plan by summer, which could mean relying solely on the slim Democratic majorities in the House and the Senate.

The White House says the largest chunk of the proposal includes $621 billion for roads, bridges, public transit, electric vehicle charging stations and other transportation infrastructure. The spending would push the country away from internal combustion engines that the auto industry views as an increasingly antiquated technology.

An additional $111 billion would go to replace lead water pipes and upgrade sewers. Broadband internet would blanket the country for $100 billion. Separately, $100 billion would upgrade the power grid to deliver clean electricity. Homes would get retrofitted, schools modernized, workers trained and hospitals renovated under the plan, which also seeks to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

The new construction could keep the economy running hot, coming on the heels of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package. Economists already estimate it could push growth above 6% this year.

To keep companies from shifting profits overseas to avoid taxation, a 21% global minimum tax would be imposed. The tax code would also be updated so that companies could not merge with a foreign business and avoid taxes by moving their headquarters to a tax haven. And among other provisions, it would increase IRS audits of corporations.

Biden appealed for Republicans and the business community to join him in negotiations on the bill, but the legislative prospects for Biden’s twin proposals already appear to hinge on Democrats coming up with the votes on their own through the budget reconciliation process, which requires just a simple majority in the 50-50 Senate.

“I’m going to bring Republicans into the Oval Office, listen to them, what they have to say and be open to other ideas,” Biden said. “We’ll have a good faith negotiation. Any Republican who wants to help get this done. But we have to get it done.”

Democratic leaders embraced Biden’s plan on Wednesday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said it would create millions of jobs.

“I look forward to working with President Biden to pass a big, bold plan that will drive America forward for decades to come,” Schumer said at an event in Buffalo.

But key GOP and business leaders were already panning the package.

“It seems like President Biden has an insatiable appetite to spend more money and raise people’s taxes,” Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the GOP whip, said in an interview.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell dismissed Biden’s package as nothing more than a “Trojan horse” for tax hikes.

The business community favors updating U.S. infrastructure but dislikes higher tax rates. U.S. Chamber of Commerce Executive Vice President and Chief Policy Officer Neil Bradley, said in a statement that “we applaud the Biden administration for making infrastructure a top priority. However, we believe the proposal is dangerously misguided when it comes to how to pay for infrastructure.” The Business Roundtable, a group of CEOs, would rather have infrastructure funded with user fees such as tolls.

Trump, in a statement, blasted his successor’s proposal, claiming it “would be among the largest self-inflicted economic wounds in history.”

Infrastructure spending usually holds the promise of juicing economic growth, but by how much remains a subject of political debate. Commutes and shipping times could be shortened, while public health would be improved and construction jobs would bolster consumer spending.

Standard & Poor’s chief U.S. economist, Beth Ann Bovino, estimated last year that a $2.1 trillion boost in infrastructure spending could add as much as $5.7 trillion in income to the entire economy over a decade. Those kinds of analyses have led liberal Democrats in Congress such as Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal to conclude Tuesday, “The economic consensus is that infrastructure pays for itself over time.”

But the Biden administration is taking a more cautious approach than some Democrats might like. After $1.9 trillion in pandemic aid and $4 trillion in relief last year, the administration is trying to avoid raising the national debt to levels that would trigger higher interest rates and make it harder to repay.

Biden’s efforts may also be complicated by demands from a handful of Democratic lawmakers who say they cannot support the bill unless it addresses the $10,000 cap on individuals’ state and local tax deductions put in place under Trump and a Republican-led Congress.

With a narrow majority in the House, they could conceivably quash any bill that doesn’t significantly lift the cap or repeal it entirely.

“I can only vote for a bill that has meaningful tax impact for my constituents if it addresses the SALT cap,” tweeted Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J.

“We say No SALT, no deal,” said Democratic Reps. Tom Suozzi of New York and Bill Pascrell and Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey in a joint statement.

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