Worth noting: The entire Barack Obama infrastructure-relief package in 2009, quarterbacked by Sheriff Joe himself, was only $800 billion. Now, suddenly, anything below a trillion dollars is “narrow,” at least according to the New York Times and its headline writer:

Senate Republicans unveil narrow offer for new spending to counter Biden’s $1.7 trillion infrastructure plan.

Senate Republicans countered President Biden’s latest infrastructure offer on Thursday, suggesting $928 billion in total spending over eight years as lawmakers and the administration struggle to narrow vast policy differences and assemble a bipartisan package to address the nation’s public works system.

Compared to Mr. Biden’s latest offer to spend $1.7 trillion in new funds, the Republican counterproposal appeared to include just a fraction of new spending on top of the expected reauthorization of current programs. Republicans also suggested paying for much of the plan by repurposing funds from the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief law, a proposal White House officials have panned in recent days.

A quartet of Republicans who proposed the plan, led by Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, said it was the latest indication that the party was negotiating in good faith, after initially offering a $568 billion plan for five years’ worth of overall spending. The group also included Senators Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, Roy Blunt of Missouri and John Barrasso of Wyoming.

“We believe that this counteroffer delivers on what President Biden told us in the Oval Office,” Ms. Capito said, referring to a private meeting the senators held with the president earlier this month. “It sticks to the core infrastructure features.”

Bear in mind that this “narrow” proposal constitutes nearly 20% of the present level of annual federal spending, including mandatory programs such as Social Security and Medicare. It’s over half of the current year’s discretionary spending. And it comes after spending nearly six trillion dollars on pandemic relief and stimulus, much of which has gone unspent so far and looks like it might be unnecessary, now that businesses are fully reopening.

That’s why Republicans want to redirect those funds for infrastructure. That should have a mildly short-term stimulating effect too, but it creates long-lasting improvements without printing more money or raising taxes any further. This proposal also focuses on actual infrastructure rather than the hobby-horse agenda of Democrats. It also now includes rural broadband in the definition of “core infrastructure, a key improvement in this proposal:

Here’s the $928 billion infrastructure counteroffer released this morning. pic.twitter.com/iOImcFc2Za

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 27, 2021

That’s a historic level of off-budget spending, especially in a Republican proposal. It’s also not the final offer, as Mitch McConnell told CNBC this morning, although it sounds as though Republicans will only agree to add spending in the current categories and still require the funds transfer from unspent pandemic relief:

Part of the problem with striking a deal is how to define infrastructure, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says. “What we’d like to see done is a bipartisan agreement on traditional infrastructure.” https://t.co/14WFNCnYby pic.twitter.com/uSTBAl5j0i

— CNBC (@CNBC) May 27, 2021

We can expect to see this offer characterized by the rest of the media in the way the NYT casts it here — “narrow,” conservative, perhaps even “skinny,” which would be hilarious under any other circumstances. This offer is none of those things, and instead is nearly reckless in its commitment to further spending after last year’s money-printing spree. McConnell alludes to this by referencing Lawrence Summers’ repeated warnings that we are courting ruinous inflation with these massive tranches of spending, and that this might be a good time to wait and see just what the longer term impacts will be before we go on another budget bender.