![](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2021-08-09-3_USA-BIDEN-INFRASTRUCTURE.jpg?resize=1200,630)
After years of partisan gridlock, Republicans join Democrats in support of future investment in highways, transit.
The United States Senate approved a major infrastructure spending bill designed to invest $1 trillion in roads, bridges, public transport and improved internet access across the next five years.
After years of partisan gridlock in Washington, DC, Republicans joined Democrats in supporting the legislation, delivering a legislative victory for President Joe Biden who has urged members of the two major parties in Congress to work together.
“The American people will now see the most robust injection of funds into infrastructure in decades,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said.
“You’ll find better roads, bridges, airports, broadband in the United Arab Emirates than in the United States of America,” Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, said.
“The bill will make large and significant differences in both productivity and job creation in America for decades to come,” Schumer said.
Public opinion polls suggested the drive to upgrade America’s infrastructure, a product of months of negotiations between the White House and a bipartisan group of senators, was broadly popular.
The landmark 69-30 Senate vote set in motion a two-track legislative process that Democrats expect will allow them to enact key Democratic priorities in a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget bill that will address climate change and boost social spending.
Republicans, who supported infrastructure investments, have dismissed the Democrats’ budget plan – part two of the two-track process – as a “socialist” waste of money and promised to oppose it. Democrats plan to use special budgeting procedures to pass the bill over Republican opposition.
The US House of Representatives is prepared to take up both the $1 trillion infrastructure bill and $3.5 trillion budget measure in September, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said.
The budget blueprint was formally unveiled on Monday, the same day a UN climate panel warned that global warming was reaching emergency levels, or what UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres described as a “code red for humanity”.
After working for two consecutive weekends on the infrastructure bill, an around-the-clock “vote-a-rama” session could be in store for the Senate starting Tuesday afternoon as it kicks off debate on the larger budget plan.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell signalled that Republicans would try to use the vote-a-rama to pick off support from moderate Democrats for what he called a “radical” spending package that would create a permanent welfare state and usher in the largest peacetime tax increase in US history.
“Every single senator will be going on record over and over and over,” McConnell added. “We will debate, and we will vote, and we will stand up, and we will be counted, and the people of this country will know exactly which senators fought for them.”
To move through the evenly divided Senate without Republican support, Democrats aim to employ a “reconciliation” procedure that would allow them to advance the budget plan this week and implementing legislation later this year on simple majority votes.
The budget plan would provide various Senate committees with top-line spending levels for a wide range of federal initiatives, including helping the elderly get home healthcare and more families afford early childhood education.
It also would provide tuition-free community college and foster major investments in programmes to significantly reduce carbon emissions blamed for climate change.
Later, Senate committees would have to fill in the details for many federal programmes.
When Congress returns in September, it must also address increasing the US government’s authority to issue bonds to pay for US programmes.
Democrats are expected to push new national election and voting standards that would reverse recent moves by Republican-led state legislatures to restrict ballot access following former President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.