JTR Strategies Founder Featured in Politico story, "Biden infrastructure road could be long, painful"

Washington, DC - Ahead of the Biden administration's rollout of the American Jobs Plan Act proposal, JTR Strategies Founder Jenny Rosenberg spoke with Politico on the complicated politics of pushing an infrastructure bill through the Congress. 

From the story, "Biden infrastructure road could be long, painful":

While the Biden plan could be pushed through without Republican votes using the corporate tax hikes as a pay-for, lawmakers will have to find bipartisan support for a method of funding the surface bill, even if that's just through deficit spending. A gas tax hike is out of the question, as is a vehicle miles traveled fee, which was the subject of a brief kerfuffle involving Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg last week. Lawmakers have floated a truck-only tax, which the trucking industry has fiercely opposed.

Still, there is a significant history of bipartisanship on transportation matters, said former Obama DOT official and JTR Strategies founder Jenny Rosenberg.

“But frankly, if they know that Republicans at the end of the day are not going to vote for the bill, that could influence bipartisanship,” she said.
When it comes to the Senate, where Democrats have an even tighter margin and moderates like West Virginia’s Joe Manchin hold out for GOP participation, there could be a much slower timeline for passing the bill, she said.

In any case, she said Democrats were likely to be relentless on the bill this year.
“Democrats see this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to get something done with the Biden plan,” she said. “So that may mean that the surface reauthorization is a reauthorization bill without anything more than that in it, and bold proposals will be in this infrastructure package that the president is going to lay out later today.” 
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