US Senate makes final push to pass $550 b infrastructure bill

The US Senate on Saturday begins working through a round of proposed amendments to a $550 billion infrastructure package in one last drive to finalise the massive public works plan.

Senators have more procedural votes before moving forward, but the legislation appears to be on track to pass as soon as this weekend after weeks of negotiations between the White House and Republican and Democratic lawmakers.

President Joe Biden on Friday urged the Senate to complete its work on the legislation, which would be the biggest investment in the nation’s in frastructure in decades and is a key element of his economic agenda. “It’s a bill that would end years of gridlock in Washington and create millions of good-paying jobs, put America on a new path to win the race for the economy in the 21st century,” Biden said at the White House. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to pivot quickly after the infrastructure vote to a budget resolution that will set the stage for a much broader $3.5 trillion package of social spending and taxes that Democrats can muscle through without any Republican votes.


The Senate will have to confront one unresolved fight before passing the infrastructure bill: two dueling amendments to modify a provision of the bill dealing with reporting requirements for cryptocurrency transactions and tax collection. The bipartisan group that drew up the legislation was counting on the extra tax revenue generated to help pay for some of the bill’s costs.

Senate Finance Chairman Ron Wyden, a progressive Democrat, teamed up with conservative Republicans Pat Toomey and Cynthia Lummis in working with the cryptocurrency industry to draft changes to narrow who would be affected by the reporting requirements. It would exclude entities including miners, software designers and protocol developers from the groups that need to report data to the Internal Revenue Service.

But Senators Rob Portman, a Republican, and Democrats Mark Warner and Kyrsten Sinema — three key players in negotiating the legislation — proposed an 11th-hour alternative endorsed by the White House. It would target some software firms and crypto miners.