Republicans punished a top figure Wednesday for insisting that Biden’s presidency is legitimate. Then GOP leaders went to the White House to discuss “common ground.”
“It’s just a kind of a ‘let’s make sure we understand what this bill is,’” he said. “Between now and when we can get it to the floor, we’re totally open to other insights.”
But Democrats face big challenges in the Senate, alongside intense pressure from their base, to make good on their promise to send the legislation to President Biden
To get the bill through the Senate, they would need support from all 50 Democrats and at least 10 Republicans an unlikely scenario given that all nine Republicans on the Senate Rules Committee, including GOP Leader Mitch McConnell
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the leading Senate GOP negotiator, said the talk was a positive step.
“The attitude that the president had in the Oval Office with us was very supportive, very much desirous of striking a deal,” Ms. Capito said.
In addition to hiking taxes, the president wants to beef up the IRS to go after tax cheats and suggested it’s an idea he can see Republicans supporting.
He said figuring out how to close the tax gap through stepped-up enforcement could generate between $700 billion and $1.3 trillion in revenues for the federal government
“Let’s say it’s somewhere in between. That’s a trillion dollars. I’m confident they would go for that,” the president told MSNBC this week.