Biden urged to stop negotiating with Republicans as stimulus talks stall

Progressives are urging President Joe Biden to acknowledge that GOP senators are not interested in backing his infrastructure package.

"President Joe Biden's talks on infrastructure with Republicans may stall out in their third week, with negotiators sharply disagreeing on the level of spending required and even the basic definition of the term," Business Insider reported Monday. "The Biden administration made another offer on Friday, paring down its original proposal to $1.7 trillion from $2.3 trillion. It kept many of the original provisions on so-called social infrastructure and moved some of the funding into other bills."

Despite Biden scaling back his proposal by over half a trillion dollars, Republicans still didn't back the bill.

"The administration's bipartisan approach is increasingly colliding with calls from progressives for Biden to end the talks. They argue that Republicans are not serious about striking a deal. Instead, those lawmakers want to start embarking on the reconciliation process, a step that enables the passage of certain bills by a party-line vote in the Senate," the report explained.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) explained the situation on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

"We would like bipartisanship, but I don't think we have a seriousness on the part of the Republican leadership to address the major crisis facing this country," Sanders said. "If they're not coming forward, we've got to go forward alone."

Read the full report.