Senate Republicans are underscoring differences between President Joe Biden, top White House aides, and Democratic congressional leaders as talks over their divergent infrastructure proposals teeter on the brink of collapse.
While the approach did not ramp up pressure during negotiations over Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package, it amplifies the Republican criticism that the president is a mere “puppet” of his staff and Democratic colleagues rather than the commander in chief. That is a charge GOP candidates intend to make between now and the 2022 midterm elections.
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For Republican strategist John Feehery, who once assisted former House Speaker Dennis Hastert, the GOP’s overriding strategy appears reasonable and fiscally sane before Biden’s self-imposed Memorial Day deadline for progress.
Voters can contrast that with the perception the White House is divided internally over whether to push for an expansive, expensive infrastructure package backed only by Capitol Hill Democrats or to wait and see if a bipartisan agreement can be reached, Feehery said.
“I think Biden’s political instincts are on the side of cutting a deal, but the ideologues on his staff would rather go big and go alone,” he told the Washington Examiner.
For fellow former Republican congressional aide John Pitney, who is now a politics professor at Claremont McKenna College, the tactic of scapegoating one’s staff is a familiar one.
“It is the staffer’s lot to take the blame so that the boss can save face,” he said. “In this case, blaming the staff enables the senators to air their grievances without directly attacking the president.”
According to Pitney, the senators may want to avoid a frontal assault because they know Biden personally or would like to keep the possibility of compromise open.
“Insults close doors. Kevin McCarthy illustrated a less mature and productive approach when he came out of a meeting with Biden and then issued a text calling him ‘corrupt,'” Pitney said, referencing the House minority leader.
White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre insisted Wednesday that Biden is spearheading the infrastructure talks with the hope relationships nurtured over 36 years on Capitol Hill, and another eight in another administration, would flower into bipartisan cooperation.
“We’re talking about investing in our country, investing in people, investing in roads, investing in bridges,” she said during her first briefing behind the White House lectern. “This is something that will have a long-lasting effect, something that we haven’t done in a generation. So, this is something that we believe — he believes, more importantly — that should have bipartisan support.”
West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, the Senate Public Works Committee’s top Republican, reinvigorated the effort to distinguish Biden from his staff and allies last week in her response to the White House’s $1.7 trillion counterproposal.
Capito dismissed the update as being “well above the range of what can pass Congress with bipartisan support.” Instead, she specifically pointed to disagreements over “the definition of infrastructure, the magnitude of proposed spending, and how to pay for it.” Republicans originally put forward a $568 billion counteroffer.
“Based on today’s meeting, the groups seem further apart after two meetings with White House staff than they were after one meeting with President Biden,” she wrote.
And then Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, who is one of six Republicans collaborating with Capito, predicted Biden would accept the $1 trillion Republican counteroffer, which is expected to be released Thursday, “if the president gets to make the decision.”
The same message is being amplified by Senate Republican leadership, including Sens. John Thune of South Dakota and John Barrasso of Wyoming.
“My impression is that the staff of the White House isn’t as inclined to make a deal perhaps as the president is,” Thune told Punchbowl News.
“We were pretty close when we met with President Biden in the White House. So one of two things is happening. Either he has changed his mind, or Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi have overridden what the president told us,” Barrasso added to the same outlet.
Lawmakers, including Mitch McConnell, echoed the same complaints about administration aides, such as White House chief of staff Ron Klain, at the height of the coronavirus spending negotiations.
“Our members who were in the meeting felt that the president seemed to be more interested in [bipartisanship] than his staff did, or it seems like the Democratic leadership in the House and the Senate,” he said.
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At the time, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was more forceful in denying the claims. Rather, she adamantly maintained there was “absolutely” no daylight between Biden and his advisers, and the president had consistently advocated for an “ambitious” coronavirus package.
