President Joe Biden appears willing to make a significant concession to Republicans in the hopes of getting his proposed infrastructure package passed in a bipartisan manner, according to reports from the USA Today and the Washington Post.
In a meeting Wednesday with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the Republican senator from West Virginia who is acting as the GOP's top negotiator, Biden reportedly issued a counteroffer that would keep the current corporate tax rate in place at 21%.
Previous versions of Biden's infrastructure package proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28%. However, Republicans have signaled opposition to raising corporate taxes, hoping to keep in place the tax cuts that President Donald Trump signed into law in 2017.
Sen. Mitch McConnell has called making changes to Trump's 2017 tax law a "red line."
Offering to keep the corporate tax rates at 21% would be an about-face for the Biden administration, who intended to use tax increases on corporations and wealthy Americans making more than $400,000 a year to pay for the $1.9 trillion infrastructure package.
During a White House press briefing Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden is still exploring ways to keep elevated corporate tax rates in place.
"Absolutely not," Psaki said when asked if plans to raise corporate taxes had been abandoned.
Psaki added that the Biden administration believed that "corporations can afford to pay more" in taxes and that the White House is still in the midst of negotiating with Republicans.
Biden is slated to meet with Capito on Friday again for another round of negotiations.
