Portman Biden
© APSenator Rob Portman and President Joe Biden
Republican senators working to negotiate a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill are ditching plans to strengthen enforcement at the Internal Revenue Service as a way to pay for the legislation, Sen. Rob Portman said Sunday.

The Ohio GOP lawmaker is one of 22 senators working to negotiate the lofty infrastructure bill. The proposal to amplify IRS enforcement as a means to raise new revenues was not supported by his fellow conservative colleagues, Portman told CNN, indicating that negotiators will have to find new ways to pay for the bill.
"Well, one reason it's not part of the proposal is that we did have pushback. Another reason is that we found out that the Democrats were going to put a proposal into the reconciliation package, which was not just similar to the one we had but with a lot more IRS enforcement."

The latest draft for the proposal suggested an additional $100 billion could be collected by the IRS over the next decade by increasing enforcement to ensure the government is accurately collecting taxpayer portions.

The Ohio senator, who revealed that the bipartisan group of negotiators is meeting again on Sunday to work through the details, criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for imposing an "arbitrary deadline" for the bill, accusing the New York Democrat of rushing the process.
"Chuck Schumer, with all due respect, is not writing the bill. Nor is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell, by the way. We should bring the legislation forward when it's ready."
Some conservatives have opposed the bipartisan infrastructure framework, despite its emphasis on traditional physical infrastructure projects, such as roads and bridges, arguing it spends more money amid an overheating economy with rising inflation.
"Again, this is a complex bill — it involves several committees, it involves, you know, a lot of very tough issues because we've got to resolve them between us first, so again, we're meeting today. ... We're moving as fast as we can."