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Schumer said the Wednesday vote did not require Senate
negotiators hammer out every provision in the bill by then and
that Democratic leaders of the bipartisan group supported his
approach.
"The motion to proceed on Wednesday is simply about getting the
legislative process started here on the Senate floor. It is not
a deadline to determine every final detail of the bill," Schumer
said on the Senate floor.
The announcement came as Republicans urged Schumer to delay the
Wednesday vote if the legislation was not yet fully written.
"If he moves ahead arbitrarily, before they actually come to
some sort of a deal, then yeah, all it's going to do is drag it
out, make it harder to get a deal in the end," Senator John
Thune, the chamber's No. 2 Republican, told reporters.
Thune said provisions for covering the cost of the bill were "a
long ways from being ready."
It was unclear if the bipartisan bill under negotiation could
garner the necessary 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to
advance.
Republican Senator Rob Portman, one of the leaders of the group,
has said he would vote against the bill if legislation was not
ready. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell has said that
the upper chamber should not vote on agreeing to debate a bill
before senators see the text of it.
Portman said on Sunday the group had scuttled a proposal for the
Internal Revenue Service to step up its pursuit of tax cheats.
But Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who was one of the members
of the bipartisan group, suggested the group had not made a
final decision to jettison the tax proposal, telling reporters:
"Who said we're taking the IRS enforcement out?"
Senators in the group said they had met late into Sunday evening
and had planned to meet again for hours on Monday. They said
they were considering provisions to reinstate fees on chemicals
to fund the Superfund program, which cleans up contaminated
waste sites, as well as other possible fees to cover costs.
Democratic Senator Jon Tester said he thought the group could
have legislative text by Wednesday, Tester told reporters.
Schumer has said infrastructure was moving on two tracks. Aside
from the first, bipartisan track, Democrats are also moving
forward with a different $3.5 trillion infrastructure package
using a procedural tool known as reconciliation. It allows
certain bills to advance through the Senate with only a simple
majority of votes, instead of the 60 needed for most
legislation.
Republicans oppose the second track.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Additional reporting by Richard
Cowan and Susan Cornwell; Writing by Makini Brice; Editing by
Karishma Singh)
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