WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators and the White House are locked in intense negotiations to salvage a bipartisan infrastructure deal.
Pressure is mounting on all sides to wrap up talks and show progress on President Joe Biden's top priority.
Despite weeks of closed-door discussions, senators from the bipartisan group blew past a Monday deadline set for agreement on the nearly $1 trillion package.
Instead, they've run into disagreements over how much money should go to public transit and water projects.
According to the Associated Press, they also ran into roadblocks on whether the new spending on roads, bridges, broadband, and other projects would be required to meet federal wage requirements for workers.
But labor issues are also a flashpoint, as is tapping COVID-19 funds to help pay for the package.
Biden says he remains optimistic.
On Monday, several protesters with the Poor People's Campaign, an anti-poverty group that wants the government to pass policies to improve the lives of the poor, stood outside Senator Mitch McConnell's Lexington office to ask that the filibuster be ended, WLEX reported.
"We must stop Mitch's mayhem, madness, obstructionism, and the misery that he causes for all the people in Kentucky," one of the protesters told Scripps sister station WLEX.
Several protesters also stood outside Senator Rand Paul's office in Bowling Green.
