President Joe Biden undermined his campaign-trail claim of being a master deal-maker when the 36-year senator was forced to walk back his pledge to sign a bipartisan infrastructure bill only if Democrats quickly passed an even bigger one without Republican votes.
Angst on Capitol Hill among the GOP and Democratic senators with whom Biden and his top aides negotiated had to be stamped out with a weekend statement divorcing the bipartisan deal from what might be a $6 trillion measure sure to anger the 50 Republican senators poised to vote against it. But Biden stepped on his own bipartisan victory when, during an off-the-cuff moment with reporters, he linked the cross-the-aisle deal to the coming reconciliation package.
Biden’s weekend statement softening his stance tying the two pieces of legislation together is the latest instance of the two-term vice president and 36-year senator undermining his campaign promise to govern as an expert deal-maker.
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Biden’s initial insistence that the bipartisan and reconciliation infrastructure proposals be considered “in tandem” by Congress is merely more evidence the president is not the centrist deal-maker he portrays himself to be, according to Republican strategist Ryan Berger.
“The fact that he quickly tried to cover his tracks to ‘save’ the agreement shows he wants to have his cake and eat it, too, which moderates of both parties should take keen note of as this debate continues,” Berger told the Washington Examiner.
Biden’s original remarks revealed the president’s allegiance to more liberal Democrats, who insist on raising taxes and spending trillions more, said Berger, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee policy director turned Navigators Global principal. He added that these are “policies which will hurt job creation and drive up prices for everyday Americans.”
Biden’s attempt to appear bipartisan while also satisfying his left flank is almost impossible given hyperpartisanship in the nation’s capital, said Christian Grose, the academic director of the University of Southern California’s Schwarzenegger Institute and a political scientist.
For Grose, Biden is an expert in previous iterations of the Senate, which were more bipartisan, and he said Biden is relearning how to manage negotiations in 2020.
“The current U.S. Senate, with its 50 ‘D,’ 50 ‘R’ divide, and the increasing polarization between the parties is not something that Biden is an expert at,” he said.
Biden flies to Wisconsin on Tuesday to promote the $1.2 trillion bipartisan traditional, hard infrastructure deal. At the same time, he is expected to make the case for an up to $6 trillion reconciliation framework funding soft, human infrastructure.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki repeated Monday that Biden had clearly expressed his “in tandem” position in Saturday’s 600-plus word statement, despite reporters peppering her with questions seeking clarification.
“The president looks forward to signing each bill. He’s long supported the two-track approach,” she said.
When asked whether Biden would approve the bipartisan arrangement without the reconciliation one, Psaki repeated the same answer. But when pressed on whether the president had underestimated the backlash, she emphasized his weekend statement that he “did not intend to issue a veto threat.”
As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer sets the groundwork for both proposals to be brought to his chamber’s floor next month, Psaki distanced the White House from the process. He and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were responsible for “the sequencing of the legislation,” she said.
Schumer and Pelosi are in charge of vote counting, Psaki added after declining to say whether the White House was confident that 10 Republicans still endorse the bipartisan deal.
Both Schumer and Pelosi are at risk of losing majority support for both measures. Liberal members of their conferences are concerned they will not go far enough with their environmental provisions and that centrist Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona will thwart their efforts to introduce social welfare reform, including possibly universal prekindergarten and two years of free community college.
Manchin and Sinema, who were instrumental in brokering the bipartisan framework, are worried about the cost and scope of the reconciliation process, as well as the procedure itself.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seized on the dissension Monday. The Kentucky Republican ripped the top Democrats for holding the bipartisan proposal “hostage.”
“Unless Leader Schumer and Speaker Pelosi walk back their threats that they will refuse to send the president a bipartisan infrastructure bill unless they also separately pass trillions of dollars for unrelated tax hikes, wasteful spending, and Green New Deal socialism, then President Biden’s walk back of his veto threat would be a hollow gesture,” he said.
Schumer and Pelosi were both adamant last week that the bipartisan and reconciliation measures would be linked. The White House had also used the term “dual track” to talk about infrastructure negotiations, but it seemed to be deployed more to describe the reconciliation process as a fallback if the bipartisan compromise flopped.
Biden’s “in tandem” comments last week after a speech about the bipartisan framework caught the 11 Republican senators who endorsed the agreement off guard. Five of them had stood alongside the president at the White House to announce it only hours before.
Biden’s weekend statement was preceded Friday by a lengthy readout of a conversation between the president and Sinema that did not emphasize the veto threat.
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Biden similarly misjudged lawmakers when he predicted in February that “we’ll get Republican support” for his $1.9 trillion coronavirus spending package. A month later, it passed the House and Senate without a single GOP vote and lost two Democrats in the House.
