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But he added that the two sides still needed to “define what infrastructure is,” suggesting that the two sides had not made significant progress on the most basic elements of a negotiation.

A White House readout of the meeting said the attendees had “agreed there was a need for investment” in infrastructure, but did not cite any other progress.

Pelosi sounded the most optimistic of the attendees, saying that after the meeting she felt “more optimistic now that we will do [infrastructure] in a bipartisan way. But we’ll see.”

The first piece of Biden’s two-part domestic policy agenda is the $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan, which is aimed at a broad array of infrastructure spending that spans both traditional projects like roads and more progressive efforts like expanded broadband.

Republicans have objected to Biden’s plan to classify projects like expanded broadband and electric vehicle charging stations as “infrastructure.”

McConnell also reiterated the GOP’s firm red line on raising the corporate tax rate, which was slashed in 2017 under then-President Donald Trump, in order to fund any of Biden’s proposals.

“We’re not interested in re-opening the 2017 tax bill. We both made that clear with the president. That’s our red line,” McConnell said. “This discussion … will not include revisiting the 2017 tax bill.”

The second part of Biden’s agenda is the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan, which proposes funding for four additional years of free universal education, subsidize child care for middle-class families, and expand paid family leave and child tax credits.

During his presidential campaign, Biden promised to reach across the aisle and find areas of consensus between the two parties, something he said would help to repair the deeply divided nation.

Yet Republicans say the only way Biden could hope to win bipartisan support for any part of his legislative agenda is by whittling down his infrastructure plan to less than half of its current size, and funding it not with tax hikes on corporations, as Biden proposes, but with user fees on drivers and transit riders.

As for the family and child care plan, few, if any potential areas of compromise have emerged so far.

Biden also found himself seeking common ground with a fractured Republican Party, further complicating the political calculus.

Wednesday’s meeting took place just hours after House Republicans expelled Rep. Liz Cheney, Wyo., from her position as GOP conference chair over her refusal to embrace former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged.

On Thursday, Biden is scheduled to meet with six Republicans senators who serve as the ranking members of committees with jurisdiction over infrastructure: Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Roy Blunt of Missouri, Mike Crapo of Idaho, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and Roger Wicker, Mississippi’s senior senator.

This meeting has the potential to yield more concrete areas of agreement than Wednesday’s leadership meeting did.