As President Joe Biden threads the needle to pass one infrastructure bill that can win Republican support and another that funds liberal priorities exclusively with Democratic votes, protracted negotiations could evoke memories of “Infrastructure Week.”
That famous phrase from former President Donald Trump’s administration was supposed to herald a breakthrough on infrastructure. Instead, it degenerated into a punchline signifying Republican failure on the issue.
The Trump White House would periodically declare “Infrastructure Week” had returned, but no bill capable of winning bipartisan support or getting through Congress ever emerged. The 45th president’s aides often trotted out the themed weeks to change the subject after the boss, as he often did, created a controversy he and his team were unable to control.
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Biden allies argue the new president has already gotten further than his predecessor: While Trump’s rumored $1 trillion infrastructure plan was never fully fleshed out, there is already a bipartisan framework for one bill under Biden in addition to the reconciliation measure congressional liberals are cobbling together.
But passing two bills won’t be easy, especially if they are seen as competing with each other. Liberals in Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, already said they wouldn’t pass a bipartisan bill without a bigger package moved through reconciliation, negating the need for Republican votes in the Senate.
GOP lawmakers were taken aback when Biden appeared to threaten to veto the bipartisan framework if the liberal legislation does not also pass, but he later walked the comments back.
Nevertheless, it is a dilemma to resolve. For liberals, who viewed Biden’s opening bid of nearly $2.3 trillion as a compromise from their preferred expenditure of $6 trillion to $10 trillion, the $1.2 trillion proposal backed by centrists and some Republicans is not just insufficient. They fear its passage will make a successful reconciliation bill less likely, which is why they want to link them.
Republicans inclined to support the compromise object to having their concessions rolled back in a second bill with much of the spending they initially objected to. The resulting confusion has also emboldened conservatives who oppose the bipartisan framework because they believe it costs too much money.
“I can’t see my boss voting for this unless some of the unspent COVID relief funds are used to pay for it,” said a Senate Republican aide.
A group of outside conservative organizations mobilized against the bipartisan infrastructure plan on Tuesday.
“The latest ‘compromise’ infrastructure framework agreed to by some Senators is no compromise at all,” said Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, and the Coalition to Protect American Workers in a joint statement. “The top three Democratic leaders in Washington, D.C. have made clear that the compromise framework is being held hostage by Speaker Pelosi and is tied to a hyper-partisan reconciliation package being shepherded through by avowed socialist Bernie Sanders.”
Slamming the reconciliation bill as a “Trojan horse” for the Green New Deal, the conservative groups also opposed the bipartisan framework.
“Even alone, the ‘compromise’ package that some Senate Republicans signaled support toward doesn’t pass the smell-test,” they wrote. “The proposal would spend $1.2 trillion on Left-leaning priorities and fails to properly pay for it.”
Many conservatives worry about mounting federal debt and an overheating economy in which trillions of dollars in new spending lead to inflation. Continued economic reopening from the pandemic, they argue, will boost jobs and growth.
Liberals do not want to simply fund physical projects, such as roads and bridges, without additional money to tackle climate change or childcare. Biden has already had some difficulty navigating the competing priorities.
“They have my word. I’ll stick with what we’ve proposed, and they’ve given me their word as well,” the president said when announcing the bipartisan deal. “None of us got all that we wanted. I didn’t get all that I wanted. But this reminds me of the days we used to get an awful lot done up in the United States Congress.”
Within hours, Biden talked about passing the two bills “in tandem” and implied he would not sign just the bipartisan package. Biden later said, “It was certainly not my intent” to threaten to veto the deal.
Much of this comes down to two factors. Will centrist Democrats such as Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona support the reconciliation bill? And will House liberals, who once said they would not pass Obamacare without a public option, hold firm on linking the two bills if only the bipartisan one has the votes?
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Some leading Democrats have already begun to tone down their infrastructure threats. But summer recess and next year’s midterm elections, in which the party is defending narrow congressional majorities, mean their time is limited.
“We’re going to be judged on jobs, shots, and getting kids back to school,” said a Democratic strategist. “None of the process stuff, bipartisan versus reconciliation, matters.”
