Republicans were unimpressed with President Joe Biden’s overtures to them during his first speech to a joint session of Congress Wednesday night, saying that, just as he redefined infrastructure and COVID relief, he has adopted an unusual definition of bipartisanship.
“The president talked about unity and togetherness while reading off a multitrillion-dollar shopping list that was neither designed nor intended to earn bipartisan buy-in,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said in response.
The White House “first redefined ‘infrastructure’ to meet their agenda, now they are redefining ‘unity’ to suit their politics,” tweeted Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican. “Words have meaning. We can’t have a productive conversation if they keep redefining terms.”
“Biden has a curious way to define bipartisanship,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “Typically, you define a bipartisan process as one where both sides give up something to get something. Biden has defined it to mean that if Republicans give up all of their principles, they get the chance to support the Biden agenda. And that’s not how the normal legislative process works.”
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“Vice President Harris and I meet regularly in the Oval Office with Democrats and Republicans to discuss the American Jobs Plan,” Biden said in his remarks. “And I applaud a group of Republican senators who just put forward their proposal. So let’s get to work.”
But that wasn’t all he had to say on the subject of bipartisan cooperation. “We welcome ideas. But the rest of the world isn’t waiting for us. Doing nothing is not an option,” Biden continued. “We can’t be so busy competing with each other that we forget the competition is with the rest of the world to win the 21st century.”
To many Republicans, that means compromise is only possible if they accept Biden’s premise that the United States should have a welfare state as extensive as many other countries — something many in the GOP reject on principle.
Biden did meet with Republican senators who had floated a compromise on the American Rescue Plan. But the president said from the beginning he was not interested in a bill much smaller than the $1.9 trillion he had proposed. The legislation passed without a single Republican vote.
The White House has been more complimentary of the Republican counteroffer on infrastructure. “So we do see it as different. We do think the process will be different,” said press secretary Jen Psaki at a daily briefing. “There’s more time to move forward. There’s more time to discuss and negotiate. And we’ll take advantage of that — that time available.”
Still, as was the case with the American Rescue Plan, there is a steep difference in price tags between the Biden and Republican bills. With the new, nearly $2 trillion American Family Plan on the horizon, few in the GOP expect Democrats to give much ground unless lawmakers such as Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, hold firm in defecting.
“According to Joe Biden, bipartisan doesn’t actually mean bipartisan,” said a Republican National Committee statement ahead of the president’s speech. “Merriam-Webster defines bipartisan as: ‘of, relating to, or involving members of two parties. specifically: marked by or involving cooperation, agreement, and compromise between two major political parties.”
“However, Biden seems to think bipartisan means forcing through a far-left agenda using a hyper-partisan process without any votes from Congressional Republicans, and he has spent months trying to redefine the word,” the statement continued.
Biden campaigned last year on the idea that the country needed a more unifying leader after four years of a polarizing president. He argued that his 36 years in the Senate prepared him to be a bipartisan deal-maker and a Washington institutionalist. With narrow majorities in Congress, Biden will likely need Republican votes to pass bills at some point.
But Biden also promised to deliver on a sweeping agenda backed by the left-wing of the Democratic Party. Sen. Bernie Sanders, his leading rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, said he would help Biden become “the most progressive administration” since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In a few areas, such as slow-walking gun control and accepting the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling that a $15 an hour minimum wage could not be passed through reconciliation, Biden has not delivered for liberals. However, In terms of his legislative agenda, Biden has proposed a number of liberal policies and trillions in new spending.
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Democrats believe that if they can deliver on the economy and the pandemic, the public will forgive the lack of bipartisanship.
“Process is less important than results,” one Democratic strategist said.
