The infrastructure talks roiling Washington may test a core conceit of President Joe Biden’s bid for the White House: His 36 years in the Senate uniquely prepared him to govern by cutting legislative deals across partisan lines.
Lyndon Johnson’s tenure as Senate majority leader and vice president helped him shepherd the Great Society social welfare programs and stalled civil rights legislation through Congress.
“I know the Senate and the House better than most of you know it,” Biden told reporters after announcing his support for the bipartisan infrastructure framework. “My whole life, that’s what I’ve done.”
Johnson is still called the “master of the Senate.” However, Biden has yet to flash a similar prowess.
Presidential leadership through the executive branch during 24/7 news cycles is different than backroom Senate dealings. It didn’t take long after coming out for an agreed-upon bipartisan deal for Biden to illuminate these differences.
BIDEN MAY HAVE OUTSMARTED HIMSELF ON INFRASTRUCTURE
“If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it,” Biden said of the bipartisan infrastructure deal. “It’s in tandem.”
Congressional liberals have pushed an infrastructure and climate package with a price tag ranging from $6 trillion to $10 trillion. Biden’s opening proposal clocked in above $2 trillion. The bipartisan deal is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion.
Both the White House and Democrats in Congress have publicly committed to a two-pronged approach to infrastructure from the start, though some liberals have questioned this strategy. First, negotiate a bipartisan bill funding physical infrastructure projects to win support from Republicans and Democratic centrists. At the same time, work through the reconciliation process to fund more liberal policy priorities, and pass that bill exclusively with Democratic votes.
Liberals fear the reconciliation bill will be diluted or even doomed if there is a bipartisan agreement. Republicans, many of whom are not unanimously behind a $1 trillion bill amid trillions of dollars in new spending dating back to the previous administration and emerging inflation fears, worry reconciliation will be used to restore everything they cut out in negotiations.
But few Republicans expected Biden to threaten to veto the bipartisan deal if a reconciliation bill failed.
“This deal remains fragile and shows the difficulties presented with trying to make all sides happy while also deal with unprecedented spending levels,” said Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.
On Sunday, Biden walked back his earlier comments linking the two bills, saying, “It was certainly not my intent” to issue a veto threat, and acknowledged Republicans were “understandably upset.”
In private, Biden could negotiate with all factions to find a path to passing the biggest infrastructure bill possible. As the leader of the Democratic Party, he ended up publicly negotiating with himself.
“Shows the power of the Left inside the Democratic Party remains very strong and enduring,” said veteran political strategist Doug Schoen, who has advised Democrats. “Forced Biden to link infrastructure to a more expansive piece of legislation, until it became untenable to proceed in this manner.”
Biden reiterated his support for the bipartisan framework on Monday.
“After months of careful negotiation, of listening, of compromising together in a good faith, moving together, with ups and downs and some blips, a bipartisan group of senators got together, and they forged an agreement to move forward on the key priorities of my ‘American Jobs Plan’ — and one of them is sitting in front of me,” he said.
The president’s style has long been to throw sharp elbows as a partisan Democrat in public while being more willing to deal away from the cameras.
“Mitt Romney’s never broken his word to me,” Biden said Friday of the man he less charitably described as wanting to “put y’all back in chains” in remarks to a predominantly black audience during the 2012 campaign.
Whether this can work as well outside the halls of Congress and in the unrelenting glare of the media spotlight remains to be seen. Initial talks between the White House and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a West Virginia Republican tasked by the party with negotiating infrastructure, did not go well. Senators from both parties kept trying to reach the deal Biden now says he supports.
Much of the success or failure of the two-track infrastructure process will come down to Democratic unity. Centrist Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia hold the keys to a reconciliation bill.
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Things may be headed in Biden’s direction. Manchin told MSNBC he was willing to support reconciliation depending on the dollar amount of the bill, while House Democrats softened their stance on connecting the two measures.
The future of this top Biden initiative remains fluid, however.
“Still not certain the infrastructure bill can and will maintain necessary support to win passage given the vacillation of the Democratic leadership in Congress and Biden after a deal with the Republicans was reached,” Schoen said.
