Bipartisan Group of Senators Say They Reached Agreement on Infrastructure Plan

A bipartisan group of senators announced on Thursday that they had reached an agreement on a framework to invest in the nation’s aging public works system, racing to prove that a compromise was feasible despite deep divisions over how to structure and finance an infrastructure package.

The announcement came after a dizzying day on Capitol Hill, where senators involved in the bipartisan discussions offered conflicting assessments of their progress and declined to comment on specific proposals. But by early evening, five Democrats and five Republicans issued a joint statement announcing an agreement that would be fully paid for, albeit without any specific details about funding.

The framework is expected to include about $579 billion in new spending as part of an overall package that would cost about $974 billion over five years and about $1.2 trillion over eight years, according to two people familiar with the details, who disclosed them on the condition of anonymity. The outline is expected to address a narrower range of physical infrastructure projects and to avoid the Democratic push for tax increases; but it is also likely to suggest indexing the gas tax to inflation as one of the mechanisms for paying for the plan.