It’s the kind of presidential shoutout that could make its way into a conservative primary challenger’s ad.
“For the Republicans who supported this bill, you showed a lot of courage,” President Joe Biden said as he celebrated the Senate passing a bipartisan infrastructure package. “And I want to personally thank you for that, and I’ve called most of you on the phone to do just that.”
But the only Republican senator Biden publicly named was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who beat a conservative primary challenger at the height of the Tea Party era. The $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill could join the 2008 bank bailout and the 1990 George H. W. Bush tax increase as a major dividing line among Republicans that separates the conservatives from the party establishment.
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Conservatives made it known they were not happy with the bill that cleared the Senate on Tuesday.
“Today, the Senate voted to advance a trillion-dollar bill that spends just one-tenth of its total on roads and bridges while funding ‘digital equity,’ dysfunctional Amtrak systems, ‘green’ subsidies, and more,” said Jessica Anderson, Heritage Action executive director, in a statement. “And as last week’s CBO report shows, and as conservatives predicted, the bill is not paid for and instead increases the deficit by more than a quarter trillion dollars.”
“Democrats’ $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill is more reckless spending on long-held Democratic priorities like railroads, public transit, and electric charging stations,” said Alfredo Ortiz, president of the Job Creators Network, in a statement. “The bill is infrastructure in name only.”
“It is disappointing to see so many Republicans waste taxpayer dollars without concern,” said Mike Gibbons, one of the Republican candidates running to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who voted for the bipartisan bill. “We expect this from Democrats, but it’s clear [that] career politicians, regardless of party, are more interested in cutting backroom deals than addressing our debt.”
Former President Donald Trump was quick to side with conservative activists — and against the GOP governing class. “Nobody will ever understand why Mitch McConnell allowed this non-infrastructure bill to be passed,” he said in a statement. “He has given up all of his leverage for the big whopper of a bill that will follow.”
Sitting Republican senators split, with 30 voting against it and 19 backing the bill’s passage. Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, described the package as “negotiated in secret, rushed through the process without meaningful opportunities to have input, and adds a net increase of $350 billion to the national debt. I can’t vote for a bill like that.”
Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine centrist, was among the Republicans who helped craft the infrastructure package.
“After months of working night and day, our bipartisan negotiations resulted in a truly transformational package for our country that would make the most significant investment in American infrastructure since the establishment of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s,” she said in a statement.
Conservatives also accused Republican supporters of paving the way for the much larger Democrats-only reconciliation bill, which costs nearly three times as much and funds a wider range of liberal policy priorities, to pass. The $1.2 trillion measure “opens the gate to the Trojan horse of an upcoming $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which will contain a laundry list of far-Left policies. Most concerning is a plan to reward millions of illegal immigrants with amnesty,” Anderson said.
“Senators should have rejected the ‘bipartisan’ bill,” the Heritage Action executive director continued. “Now they must reject efforts by the ‘Squad’ and the rest of the far Left to jam through a reckless tax and spending spree that will saddle our children with debt, fund a woke policy agenda, and put Americans last.”
The bipartisan infrastructure bill’s closest analog might be the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program legislation supported by then-President George W. Bush, candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, and much of the GOP congressional leadership. It was opposed by most rank-and-file Republicans.
Many progressives also opposed TARP as a Wall Street bailout. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is regarded with suspicion on the Left and the Right, but for opposite reasons: The most liberal Democrats in Congress fear its enactment will satisfy GOP and centrist appetites on infrastructure and make the reconciliation bill less likely to pass.
The 1990 Bush tax increase also pitted some party leaders against the Republican rank and file. Bob Dole and Bob Michel, the top Republicans in the Senate and House, respectively, sided with H.W. Bush on raising taxes. Newt Gingrich, then the minority whip, helped lead a conservative revolt against the bill, which paved his path to becoming speaker when Republicans won the majority four years later. The tax increase was also a major driver of Pat Buchanan’s 1992 primary challenge against H.W. Bush.
Trump, who once promised a $1 trillion infrastructure plan of his own and may run for president again in 2024, has used the current infrastructure spat to relitigate his complaints about McConnell’s Senate leadership.
“I have quietly said for years that Mitch McConnell is the most overrated man in politics — now I don’t have to be quiet anymore,” Trump said. “He is working so hard to give Biden a victory, now they’ll go for the big one, including the biggest tax increases in the history of our Country.”
By contrast, Biden said, “I want to thank … Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell for supporting this bill.”
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None of this means the bipartisan bill will necessarily fail. TARP and the 1990 “read my lips” pledge violation both became law.
But both also drove intraparty fights that conservatives often won, culminating in the Tea Party primary challenges of 2010-2014. Ambitious conservatives may take note.
