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US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that Senate Republicans will not support the mega $4.1 trillion spending package proposed by President Joe Biden.
"I don't think there will be any Republican support, none, zero, for the $4.1 trillion grab bag which has infrastructure in it but a whole lot of other stuff," McConnell said at a press conference on Monday in his home state Kentucky. "We're open to doing a roughly $600 billion," he said. McConnell's remarks came after a group of Senate Republicans last month unveiled a $568 billion infrastructure investment plan as they seek compromise with Democrats on the issue, reports Xinhua news agency. "This is the largest infrastructure investment Republicans have come forward with," Shelley Moore Capito, the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said when unveiling the proposal. Despite Republican objection, Biden has proposed a $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan and a $1.8 trillion spending proposal focusing on childcare and education, with higher taxes for corporations and wealthy households to pay for the massive package. "For too long, we've had a two-tiered tax system. Working families pay taxes they owe on the wages they earn, while some of the wealthiest Americans avoid paying anything close to that fair share," Biden said on Monday at an event. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has also defended Biden's proposals, supporting "trading higher taxes on high-income taxpayers for middle-class tax cuts and major economic investments pro-growth". But Maya MacGuineas, President of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, urged Congress to shrink the size of the packages or identify additional offsets, arguing that Congress should match new spending and offsets over the customary 10-year timeframe, rather than the 15-year window Biden proposed. --IANS ksk/ ( 298 Words) 2021-05-04-12:18:05 (IANS)
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