Bipartisan infrastructure talks between President Joe Biden and GOP Sen. Shelley Moore Capito are over, according to an administration official. The president will now focus on working with a bipartisan group of 20 senators.
Biden and Capito spoke for five minutes on Tuesday, the West Virginia senator said, the final conversation in what’s been a stubborn deadlock over how to pay for a massive infrastructure bill and how large that measure should be. The two sides were about $700 billion apart after the GOP’s final offer.
The administration official said Biden never agreed to shift coronavirus relief funds to pay for infrastructure — a major GOP request — and that Republicans never increased the price tag of their offer enough to satisfy Biden, who sought at least $1 trillion in new spending over current infrastructure spending levels.
