AP Photo/Tony Dejak
- Trump warned Senate Republicans to nix working with Democrats on a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
- “You are just being played by the Radical Left Democrats,” the former president said on Friday.
- Democrats hope to pass a separate and more robust infrastructure bill through reconciliation.
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Former President Donald Trump cautioned Senate Republicans against signing off on a bipartisan infrastructure bill and told GOP legislators to maintain the tax cuts that the party enacted during his tenure.
In a statement on Friday, Trump derided Republican members who are working with President Joe Biden and Senate Democrats as RINOs, or Republicans in name only, a pejorative generally reserved for members of the party who aren’t considered to be true conservatives.
“Very important that Senate Republicans not allow our hard-earned tax reductions to be terminated or amended in an upward trajectory in any way, shape, or form,” the former president said. “They should not be making deals on increasing taxes for the fake infrastructure proposals being put forward by Democrats, almost all of which goes to the ridiculous Green New Deal Marxist agenda.”
He added: “Keep the Trump Administrations [sic] tax cuts just where they are. Do not allow tax increases. Thinking about it, I have never seen anything so easy to win politically. Also, RINO Republicans should stop negotiating the infrastructure bill – you are just being played by the Radical Left Democrats – they will give you nothing!”
Last month, the White House and a bipartisan group of senators came to an agreement on a $1 trillion infrastructure framework that included funding for physical projects such as roads and bridges.
Republicans overwhelmingly oppose any infrastructure bill that raises corporate taxes, a key element of Biden’s earlier infrastructure proposal that would have struck at the heart of Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul. That law cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% through the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Democrats also hope to pass a separate infrastructure bill through the reconciliation process, which would allow them to enact legislation without the threat of a filibuster.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a leading moderate, said last month that he would consider changes to the Trump-era tax cuts, which were also passed through the reconciliation process on a party-line vote.
“Republicans have drawn a line in the sand on not changing anything, and I thought the 2017 tax bill was a very unfair bill and weighted to a side that basically did not benefit the average American. So I voted against it,” he told NBC News. “I think there are some adjustments that need to be made.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, wants to pursue a more robust Democratic-led $6 trillion reconciliation bill.
“The president has given us a framework, I think it’s a comprehensive and serious framework,” he said last month. “It is the function of the Congress now to take that framework and go with it. I think it is absolutely imperative that we deal with the existential threat of climate change, that we lower the cost of prescription drugs, that we make sure elderly people can chew their food because we expand Medicare to dental care, hearing aids and eyeglasses.”
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