U.S. Senate nears passage of $1 trillion infrastructure plan

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• William Brangham:

  Tonight, a major bill that could steer billions of federal dollars toward American roads, railways, water systems and broadband networks in America is inching closer and closer to a final Senate vote. But at the same time, Democrats who control the Senate's agenda are looking to the road ahead, laying the groundwork today for the next major piece of legislation that they want to push through.

  Lisa Desjardins is with us to get us up to speed.

  Lisa, as always, so good to see you. Last week, you helped us understand what was in the infrastructure bill. Tell us where that bill is now.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Man, talk about hurry up and wait and wait and wait. We expect the final Senate vote sometime in the next 20 hours or so, likely tomorrow morning. It's held up still over some of the fights because of some objections by Republicans. But I want to remind viewers why this is so important, why we are paying so much attention to it. This infrastructure bill, $1.2 trillion or so, the largest infrastructure bill the country has ever seen, inside it, the funding for it is — would be based on a lot of it from unused COVID relief.

  Now, this would give us substantial investment in roads, bridges, water. However, some of it would in fact add to the deficit. We now know about $256 billion in red ink and that, William, is one reason why it is taking so long. Republicans, in particular one senator from Tennessee is holding it up saying this is just too expensive.

• William Brangham:

  So, also, today as I mentioned, the Senate Democrats unveiled this much larger 3.5 trillion dollar piece of legislation that they would like to move through using budget rules. Tell us about that.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  That's right. This is the reconciliation bill that many, many Democrats including the Democrat who is president in the White House are most eager to see. Once the infrastructure bill passes, and we do expect it to pass the Senate, then Democrats will tee up this next bill and today, they told us essentially their rougher plans for what will go in it. I want to take a look because there is important.

  This bill, Democrats would use to expand Medicare adding vision, dental and extend the age of Medicare. But they haven't said to what age yet. It would have universal pre-K, also offer two years of community college for many Americans. This bill also significantly addresses climate.

  But we don't have the text yet so we don't know exactly how meaningful it will be. It could be very meaningful. The funding for this bill is based on taxes, increases for corporations and the wealthy. So we're going to be paying a lot of attention and paying a lot more attention to this.

• William Brangham:

  Lisa Desjardins as always, thank you so much.