Former President Donald Trump is not happy with the 17 Senate Republicans who joined with all 50 Democrats last night in voting to begin debate on bipartisan infrastructure legislation.
And there may well be plenty of good policy reasons to oppose such a bill. Experts from the Right and Left have both identified the National Environmental Policy Act as a major source for delays and cost increases on federally funded projects. And the legislation reportedly doesn’t reform NEPA at all. That’s bad.
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But we also do not know what is in the bill yet because it hasn’t even been written. That’s a good enough reason for any Republican to vote no.
But it does appear that the 17 Republican yeses are playing a longer game. Admittedly, their strategy carries some risk, but it appears to be the wiser choice.
By agreeing to begin debate on infrastructure, Republicans have strengthened the ability of centrist Senate Democrats to say “no” to President Joe Biden’s larger and more damaging $3.5 trillion bill.
When constituents ask why they don’t support Biden’s larger spending plan, Democratic Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, of Arizona, and Joe Manchin, of West Virginia, can now say, “Look, I supported a $1.2 trillion bill that actually spent money on roads and bridges. This was bipartisan legislation that funded real infrastructure investments. It’s not my fault Speaker Pelosi chose to kill the bill in the House.”
And that is probably what will end up happening here if the Senate does eventually succeed in writing a bill, debating it, voting on amendments, and then voting for final passage. The bill will go over to the House, where Pelosi will promptly throw it in the trash can as she has already promised she will do.
Then, the focus will be back on the Senate, where Democrats will need all 50 senators to pass a reconciliation bill, much of which will most likely get tossed by the parliamentarian because much of its subject matter does not conform to Senate reconciliation rules.
As each new progressive priority gets tossed by the Senate parliamentarian, the pressure from liberals on Democratic centrists will grow to abandon reconciliation entirely and just end the filibuster altogether, thus allowing the Democrats to pass a far-left agenda with just 50 votes.
But if Democratic centrists can point to a significant bipartisan deal, like the bipartisan infrastructure bill, then it becomes much harder for liberals to argue that bipartisanship is impossible. Viewed in this way, a Republican vote for the bipartisan infrastructure deal is really a vote to preserve the filibuster. And Sen. Thom Tillis wrote an op-ed yesterday saying essentially that.
