GOP blocks Sanders infrastructure amendment

WASHINGTON – The Senate voted Tuesday to reject a proposal by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., that would have created millions of infrastructure jobs and closed an "absurd" tax loophole to pay for the plan.

Fifty-two lawmakers opposed the proposal during votes on amendments to a GOP fiscal 2016 budget proposal. Forty-five supported it in the party-line vote.

The tax loopholes targeted by Sanders' amendment let corporations and wealthy Americans shift jobs and profits overseas, often to offshore tax havens like the Cayman Islands. Nearly $100 billion is lost annually to offshore tax dodging, according to the U.S. Treasury.

Sanders, an independent and and top-ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee, said Democrats and Republicans agree the country needs infrastructure improvements but disagree about how to pay for it.

"Our Republican friends are not particularly interested in investments in America," Sanders, who is considering a presidential run, said on the Senate floor. "Their idea of dealing with the deficit is to cut, cut, cut."

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi of Wyoming said the accusation that Republicans don't care about infrastructure makes him "upset." He voted against Sanders' amendment, saying infrastructure improvements are needed but it would be wrong to prescribe how to pay for them when a different committee has jurisdiction over the issue.

"That's not right," he said on the Senate floor. "That's not the way we do legislation around here."

Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who chairs Environment and Public Works Committee, called Sanders' measure "a massive tax increase."

The measure proposed investing $478 billion over six years in improvements to deteriorating infrastructure, including roads, bridges, transit, airports and waterways. It also aimed to address broadband infrastructure, the electric grid and more.

Sanders cited a 2013 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers that showed the U.S. needs to spend $1.6 trillion above current spending levels by 2020 to return the country's infrastructure to a state of good repair.

"Every year that we delay, the problem only becomes worse," said Sanders, a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee. "We are spending billions of dollars just to maintain the status quo, patching up a deteriorating system, whether it's transit, rail, roads, bridges. We have to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure."

The GOP's 10-year fiscal blueprint, which does not have the force of law, would balance the budget within a decade without raising taxes. It would increase defense spending and potentially pave the way for a renewed effort to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act.

"The balanced budget before us is premised on a simple truth — that Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday as the Senate began debate. "I know that this can be hard for some to acknowledge, but politicians have a duty to the American people to simply admit it."

PREVIOUSLY: Sanders outlines progressive budget vision

Contributing: Susan Davis, USA TODAY.

Contact Nicole Gaudiano at ngaudiano@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ngaudiano.

CORRECTION: This story was updated to change the amount annually lost to offshore tax dodging.