GOP lawmakers float a corporate tax increase below Biden's proposed 28% at bipartisan infrastructure meeting

• Biden met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday to discuss his infrastructure plan.
• During the meeting, the GOP lawmakers pushed for a corporate tax increase below Biden’s proposed 28%.
• Biden expressed willingness to compromise on the scope and size of his plan to get the GOP on board.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

For the second time since unveiling his $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan, President Joe Biden met with a bipartisan group of lawmakers on Monday to discuss his proposals. One of the main discussion topics: the corporate tax increase.

Ten lawmakers, including Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, met with Biden in the Oval Office to hash out the scope and size of the president’s proposal. One of the main elements of Biden’s plan that Republican lawmakers opposed was raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% to fund infrastructure, but Biden expressed willingness to negotiate on the increase to get the GOP on board.

“I am prepared to compromise, prepared to see what we can do and what we can get together on,” Biden said at the meeting. “It’s a big package, but there are a lot of needs.”

Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida also attended the meeting and told The Wall Street Journal that lawmakers discussed “compromise wiggle room,” on raising the corporate tax rate. He said that with regards to the percentage rate, one “could see a 2 or 3% increase — maybe not all the way to 28 but 25.”

Some Senate Republicans, though, don’t want to see any form of a corporate tax increase to fund an infrastructure plan. Insider reported last week that the ten GOP senators who pitched Biden a $618 billion stimulus package, including Romney, are drafting an alternative infrastructure plan that is likely worth between $600 billion and $800 billion, and includes no corporate tax hikes.

“My own view is that the pay-for ought to come from people who are using it. So if its an airport, the people who are flying,” Romney told reporters. “If it’s a port, the people who are shipping into the port; if it’s a rail system, the people who are using the rails; If it’s highways, it ought to be gas if it’s a gasoline powered vehicle.”

Rep. Carlos Giménez of Florida, who also attended the Monday meeting, told The Wall Street Journal that GOP lawmakers were “more in favor of user fees so that whoever was benefiting from that particular infrastructure project would be paying for it in the long run.” He added that Biden hoped to see a counter-offer from Republicans by mid-May.

However, while Biden expressed willingness to negotiate on the corporate tax increase, he argued in a speech on April 7 that a tax hike to 28% is necessary to level the playing field for average Americans.

Biden said: “I’m not trying to punish anybody, but damn it, maybe it’s because I come from a middle-class neighborhood, I’m sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced.”

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