Key Republican says no IRS pay-fors in infrastructure bill

Republican Sen. Rob Portman (Ohio) on Sunday said the bipartisan infrastructure bill will not include improving IRS enforcement of existing laws as a way to fund the new investments.

Portman, during an interview with host Dana Bash on CNN’s “State of the Union,” said stronger IRS enforcement of the existing laws is not being considered in the bipartisan infrastructure package because of pushback from senators, and because Democrats are reportedly considering a similar proposal in their reconciliation package, which will have “a lot more IRS enforcement.”

“One reason it’s not part of the proposal is, and we did have pushback. Another reason is that we found out that the Democrats were going to put a proposal into the reconciliation package, which was not just similar to the one we had but with a lot more IRS enforcement,” Portman said.

“That created quite a problem because the general agreement is that this is the bipartisan negotiated infrastructure package, and that we will stick with that, and President Biden to his credit, said that we will not be renegotiating these items in the reconciliation package,” he added.

Biden last month announced that he and a group of Republican and Democratic senators reached an infrastructure deal after months of negotiations.

Last week, top Democratic lawmakers introduced the second part of Biden’s infrastructure goals: A $3.5 trillion package to be passed through budget reconciliation, which bypasses the risk of a Republican filibuster by only requiring a simple majority vote.