President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that he reached a deal with a bipartisan group of senators on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. This number is much closer to Republicans’ asking price than it is to Democrats’ original $6 trillion progressive wish list, but it’s not a win for the GOP — not yet, at least.
To make sure this bipartisan agreement really is a compromise, Republicans need ironclad assurance that Democrats won’t turn around in a few weeks and try to pass the rest of Biden’s multitrillion-dollar agenda through reconciliation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already threatened to withhold a floor vote on Biden’s infrastructure compromise unless Senate Democrats promise to use the budget reconciliation process to circumvent the filibuster and pass the policies that Biden had to cut from his original infrastructure proposal.
