President Biden entered office billed as a consummate Washington deal-maker, but the Democrat’s first major piece of legislation is unlikely to score a single Republican vote, calling into question his pledge to work across the aisle.
Democrat Jim Manley, a former top aide to onetime Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, suggested Biden cut his losses early.
“He was smart enough to realize quickly that negotiations with Republicans were never going to work out and that he made the right decision to use the so-called reconciliation process,” Manley said.
Democrats, “from the get-go, said that they were going to use budget reconciliation,” said Ford O’Connell, a Republican strategist.
A veteran of several Republican administrations said he thought Biden had never planned to concede much.
“I suspect it’s mostly muscle memory. He obviously has no intention of making deals,” said Mike McKenna, former deputy legislative affairs director in the Trump White House, of Biden’s reflexive outreach to Republicans. “Everyone is now in campaign mode.”
The new president kicked off discussions some 10 days into office, inviting a group of centrist Senate Republicans to the White House in a bid to find a sweet spot for both parties in negotiations over his $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package.
“We cannot govern this country, cannot sustain our democracy without arriving at a consensus,” Biden told supporters last year in Vinton, Iowa, vowing to do “big things” if he could earn the party’s nomination and get elected. “That’s what I’ve done my whole career.”
A 36-year veteran of the Senate who then spent eight years as vice president to former President Barack Obama, Biden, who is 78, has cut legislative deals for more than half his life.
But as the American Rescue Plan moved through the upper chamber, Republican support was not forthcoming.
“Look, the American people strongly support the bill. That’s the key,” Biden said in remarks on Saturday after the bill passed in the Senate.
He added: “There’s a lot of republicans who came very close. I still haven’t given up.”
The final vote was 50-49, with one Republican senator absent. The Senate’s version of the bill now heads to the House.
Asked last week why the bill was failing to garner Republican backers, the White House pointed to public polls that showed bipartisan support to suggest that Biden has not strayed from his pledge.
“Bipartisanship is not determined by a single zip code in Washington, D.C. It’s about where American people sit and stand, and a vast majority of the American people support the Rescue plan,” press secretary Jen Psaki said.
A recent poll from Morning Consult shows 3 in 4 people back Biden’s bill, 76%, including 60% of Republicans.
“The risk is if we don’t see recovery,” said historian David Greenberg, author of a book about presidential spin. “If we do this big spending bill, and in a year’s time, the economy’s in bad shape, then Biden’s [bill] will look very bad.”
If the pandemic health crisis and economy recover, voters will view it favorably, even if it failed to draw bipartisan support, he said. “I think the real risk is, how effective will this bill be in rejuvenating the economy?”
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“What you realize is 9, 10% of the bill goes towards public health and the checks, and the other part was to help blue states that were mismanaged and pet projects,” said O’Connell.
“In one sense, yes, he can say he didn’t get bipartisan support, but it never was intended to get bipartisan support, so it’s not like he’s unified anyone who really put out an olive branch,” he added.
McKenna said Biden’s failure to concede much this time may mean he struggles to pass a bill that requires 60 votes later on.
“The unwillingness to negotiate on the stimulus actually makes his life more difficult down the road,” McKenna said. “Why would the Republicans give him anything on climate, infrastructure, or tax?”
The White House has made some adjustments at the bill’s margins, trimming the scope of the $1,400 payments to the public, for instance. But the total remains some $1.9 trillion.
But McKenna said the size of the bill that Democrats are set to pass could, in effect, poison the well with Republicans. Democrats will need 10 to pass future legislation through regular processes.
“The stimulus is so unnecessarily egregious that it sets the tone, and not a good one, for the next two years,” added McKenna.
Greenberg said the White House’s efforts going forward will show how serious the new administration’s bipartisan overtures are.
“If Biden, from this point on, washes his hands of the Republicans and doesn’t do additional outreach, then I think that could be grounds for saying, ‘OK, he made a kind of cosmetic gesture,'” Greenberg said.
“But I think if there are continued efforts to work across the aisle that keep meeting with rebuff, then I think Biden’s the one who will be vindicated.”
Some Republicans that met with Biden at the White House last month to discuss a $600 billion counterproposal have voiced concern that Biden’s top aides stifled negotiations, with Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican, pointing to chief of staff Ron Klain.
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Biden “was very attentive, gracious, into the details. There was a great discussion. And Ron was shaking his head in the back of the room the whole time, which is not exactly an encouraging sign,” Collins said.
