Dive Brief:
Republicans raised several lines of attack yesterday at a U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations hearing on President Joe Biden's American Jobs Plan and Congress' efforts to translate that into an infrastructure package. Chief among Republican arguments is that the plan strays too far from traditional infrastructure investment.
There is bipartisan support for an infrastructure package, but "the administration's proposal is so broad and ambiguous ... that it seems there is little if anything they do not consider or call infrastructure," Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., vice chair of the committee, said in his opening statement.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was also critical of proposed purchase incentives for electric vehicles (EV) relative to spending on roads and bridges. And Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., questioned whether the president's plan would have a meaningful impact on global climate change in a testy exchange with Michael Regan, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.