A hard-fought bipartisan infrastructure deal on Capitol Hill still faces a number of hurdles as it moves through the Senate.
Lawmakers from both parties spent months negotiating a deal that could survive an evenly split Senate and narrowly split House. Pressure from the Left forced the bipartisan group of negotiators to break the legislation into two parts: one, a bill focused primarily on roads, bridges, and other traditional infrastructure elements, and another, an ambitious spending package including everything from healthcare to climate change.
MANY REPUBLICANS MOBILIZING AGAINST ‘BIPARTISAN’ INFRASTRUCTURE BILL
The second bill is to be passed using a Senate budget tool known as reconciliation.
Despite the first bill having, so far, enough support to overcome a filibuster, here are the obstacles that remain for infrastructure.
HOUSE LIBERALS
Liberal House Democrats have spent weeks expressing skepticism about the bipartisan negotiations, characterizing them as a waste of time for Democrats.
They have clung to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assurances that she won’t bring up the deal in the lower chamber until the Senate passes the much larger spending package under reconciliation.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said Sunday that for the bipartisan deal, “the only chance that it has at passing the House” is if the reconciliation bill arrives first.
That could prove challenging, as lawmakers are set to leave at the end of the week for their August recess and wouldn’t be back until mid-September unless congressional leadership pushes back the start date of their break.
SENATE MODERATES
The reconciliation bill that liberals say they need to see before moving on to bipartisan legislation is far from a done deal, however.
Centrist Democrat Sen. Kyrsten Sinema threw a wrench into her party’s plans last week when she came out against the price tag on the spending package Democrats had planned to advance — $3.5 trillion.
Sinema said she would work with leadership to arrive at a less expensive topline number for the package.
But the $3.5 trillion cost was already a compromise with the liberal wing of the party; lawmakers such as Sen. Bernie Sanders wanted to see nearly double that sum spent on the social programs that will make up the bulk of the bill.
CONSERVATIVES
Conservative lawmakers in both the House and Senate oppose the infrastructure deal because, despite talks that drove down the price tag, it would still spend billions of taxpayer dollars.
Some conservative senators did not vote to move forward with the deal last week because, at the time, a legislative text did not exist, and some of the methods for funding the infrastructure projects remained unclear.
Only 17 Republicans supported advancing on the deal.
Now that a text does exist, some conservatives are still opposed. Beyond the major expenditure, some on the right are reluctant to back any deal that paves the way for President Joe Biden to notch a political victory.
The Democrats’ decision to tie the bipartisan bill to their much larger, partisan package has also angered some conservatives and threatened to erode support for the bipartisan deal during the negotiation stage.
LINDSEY GRAHAM’S COVID CASE
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, announced Monday that he tested positive for Covid despite having been vaccinated.
The diagnosis will keep him off the Senate floor for at least 10 days, threatening the math needed to pass the bipartisan deal.
Graham was among the 17 Republicans who voted to advance the bipartisan bill. That number could shrink considerably as the infrastructure bill moves through the amendment process, and every vote will count when Senate leaders are pushing to clear the 60-vote threshold needed to send the legislation to the House.
What’s more, Graham was at a party over the weekend on centrist Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin’s houseboat. If additional senators test positive for Covid and have to quarantine, the path forward for the bill becomes even more complicated.
THE PAY-FORS
How to pay for the $550 billion in new spending contained in the infrastructure bill has been a major point of contention — both among Republicans and between the two parties.
The bill contains some ideas for covering the cost, including taking unspent pandemic relief funds and funneling them into infrastructure projects.
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But some lawmakers remain skeptical that the mechanisms written into the bill will pay for its prescriptions without adding to the deficit.
Those concerns could be addressed during the amendment process this week; senators will have a chance to add or subtract from the existing legislation if at least 60 of their colleagues support their amendments.
However, with certain kinds of pay-fors off the table from the start, including tax hikes and user fees, the likelihood that the entire bill will be funded is still low.
