Senators laboriously build bipartisan infrastructure bill
WASHINGTON — Senators were laboring Sunday toward eventual passage of a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure package, resigned to stay as long as it takes to overcome Republican holdouts who want to drag out final votes on one of President Joe Biden’s top priorities.
The bill has won widespread support from senators across the aisle and promises to unleash billions of dollars to upgrade roads, bridges, broadband internet, water pipes and other public works systems undergirding the nation.
But a single Republican senator’s protest halted swift passage, forcing the Senate into long day and night sessions toward final votes early Tuesday.
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., stressed to colleagues that they could proceed the “easy way or the hard way,” as the Senate slogged through its second consecutive weekend session.
“We’ll keep proceeding until we get this bill done,” Schumer said.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would provide what Biden has called a “historic investment” in public works programs, the first part of the president’s his rebuilding agenda. Once voting wraps up, senators immediately will turn to the budget outline for a $3.5 trillion package of child care, elder care and other programs that is a much more partisan undertaking and expected to draw only Democratic support.
As many as 20 Republicans are expected to join Democrats in what would be a big vote on final passage.
Another procedural vote was expected late Sunday, as senators push toward
Tuesday’s final passage. If approved, the bill would go to the House.
“We’re on the cusp of seeing that move through the Senate,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said, citing “a remarkable coalition” that includes business, labor and lawmakers from both parties. “I think we’re about to get this done.”
Despite the momentum, action ground to a halt over the weekend when Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-tenn., an ally of Donald Trump, forced the Senate to run out the clock on debate time, refusing to consent to speeding up the process.
Hagerty, who had been Trump’s ambassador to Japan, was leading the effort to take as much time as needed to debate and amend the bipartisan bill, in part because he wants to slow the march toward Biden’s next big bill, which plans $3.5 trillion for child care, an expansion of Medicare for seniors and other so-called soft infrastructure needs.
Hagerty said Sunday that he was trying to prevent a “socialist debt bomb” of new government spending.
Hagerty’s office said he had not spoken to Trump. But the former president has been critical of the bill and criticized Biden and the senators from both parties who support it.
Schumer has said the Senate won’t recess for August until progress is made on both bills.
As the standoff dragged on, Republicans who helped negotiate the compromise spoke up Sunday commending Trump for having sparked infrastructure talks when he was in the White House even if those bills never panned out.
“The American people deserve to have good roads and bridges and infrastructure to drive on, travel on,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, the lead Republican negotiator.
Another negotiator, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-utah, acknowledged no compromise is perfect, but doing nothing was not an option.
“Every president in the modern era has proposed an infrastructure package,” he said. “This was an effort to say let’s break the logjam.”