WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure investment bill cleared its first, and maybe biggest, hurdle Tuesday in the Senate.

What You Need To Know

  • The Senate passed the $1.2 trillion INVEST in America Act on Tuesday 69-30

  • The bill aims to fix roads, bridges and other surface transportation needs and fund new climate resilience and broadband programs

  • Nineteen Senate Republicans voted against the bill, citing the rising national debt 

Nineteen Senate Republicans voted with all of the Senate’s Democrats in sending the infrastructure package, a major cornerstone of Pres. Joe Biden’s agenda, to the House where it’s expected to eventually pass. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin believes this is also a major investment in those tasked with rebuilding the country.

When we're looking at such significant investments in rebuilding our nation's infrastructure, I want to make sure that the components we use and the workers we use are U.S. workers and U.S. manufactured components, and that we're not sending all those tax dollars offshore,” she said. “So, Buy America provisions are all throughout this bipartisan bill and that's a result of some of my focus and work.”

While Sen. Baldwin is celebrating its passage, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin is defending his vote against the legislation, saying the nation faces a ballooning deficit. Sen. Johnson says he joined 29 other Republicans in voting against the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill because he’s worried about the federal deficit.

“I think we all agree we do need to spend money and infrastructure, but we also need to stop further mortgaging our children's future,” he said. “We could have literally taken the more than $700 billion of the partisan COVID relief package that isn’t even spent till 2022 through 2028, repurpose that toward infrastructure. That actually would have been more than the approximately $550 billion dollars, which isn't fully paid for.”

The vote came as the government is nearing its debt limit, prompting Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to urge lawmakers to work together in raising it. She says she’s been tapping other resources in the interim so the government can meet its obligations but, in a letter to Congress, she warned, “the period of time that extraordinary measures may last this year is subject to heightened uncertainty related to the economic impact of the pandemic.”

Democrats are calling Republicans hypocrites for refusing to vote to raise the limit. Sen. Baldwin pointed out the fact that very few GOP lawmakers said much when the national debt grew by nearly $8 trillion during Donald Trump’s presidency.

“It’s always is frustrating to think that people would play around with the full faith and credit of the United States,” said Sen. Baldwin. “I mean, we pay our debts and that's why we enjoy the good credit rating that we have, and are really the world's standard with regard to credit.”

After the infrastructure bill’s passage, Progressives are watching what moderate senators Kirsten Sinema, D-Arizona and Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia do on a separate $3.5 trillion spending package. It’s the second track of the Democrats’ plan to enact Biden’s agenda. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California is holding off a floor vote on the infrastructure bill until the senate sends the other to her chamber.