Senate vote advances bill for infrastructure
19 from GOP sign on to bipartisan decision
WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday approved a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections, advancing a historic burst in federal spending after years of failed attempts on Capitol Hill to invest anew in the country’s aging infrastructure.
The vote, 69-30, was uncommonly bipartisan. The yes votes included Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate Republican leader, and 18 others from his party who shrugged off efforts by former President Donald Trump to derail it.
“This historic investment in infrastructure is what I believe you, the American people, want, what you’ve been asking for for a long, long time,” President Joe Biden said from the White House as he thanked Republicans for showing “a lot of courage.”
“We can still come together to do big things, important things, for the American people,” Biden said.
McConnell, who publicly declared that his priority was stopping the Biden agenda, said in a statement that “I was proud to support today’s
historic bipartisan infrastructure deal and prove that both sides of the political aisle can still come together around common-sense solutions.”
Even though the proposal must still clear the House, where some Democrats recently have raised concerns that the measure falls short of what they seek, the Senate outcome moves the bill one step closer to delivering Biden his first major bipartisan win.
The package, nearly half of which constitutes new spending, would mark the most significant investment in the country’s inner workings since Congress marshaled a major, yet smaller, rescue bill after the 2008 recession. It would combine lawmakers’ desire for immediate, urgently needed fixes to the country’s crumbling infrastructure with longer-term goals to combat challenges including climate change.
The bill proposes more than $110 billion to replace and repair roads, bridges and highways, and $66 billion to boost passenger and freight rail. That transit investment marks the most significant infusion of cash in the country’s railways since the creation of Amtrak about half a century ago, the White House said.
The infrastructure plan includes an additional $55 billion to address lingering issues in the U.S. water supply, such as an effort to replace every lead pipe in the nation. It allocates $65 billion to modernize the country’s power grid. And devotes it additional sums to rehabilitating waterways, improving airports and expanding broadband internet service, particularly after a pandemic that forced Americans to conduct much of their lives online.
Lawmakers also agreed to authorize a significant amount of funding to improve the environment and respond to the oft-deadly consequences of a fast-warming planet. The aid includes $7.5 billion to build out a national network of electric-vehicle charging stations, a major priority for Biden, who has worked to advance the next generation of emissions-friendly vehicles. And it apportions $47 billion to respond to wildfires, droughts, coastal erosion, heat waves and other climate crises that previously have wrought significant economic havoc nationwide.
“America’s often had the greatest prosperity and made the most progress when we invest in America itself,” Biden said Tuesday in a speech heralding its passage, stressing the investments ultimately would create jobs. “And that’s what this infrastructure bill does, with overwhelming support from the United States Senate.”
BIPARTISANSHIP PRAISED
Its success, painstakingly negotiated largely by a group of Republican and Democratic senators in consultation with White House officials, is a vindication of Biden’s belief that a bipartisan compromise was possible on a priority that has long been shared by both parties — even at a moment of deep political division.
“This is what it looks like when elected leaders take a step toward healing our country’s divisions rather than feeding those very divisions,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and a key negotiator, said before the bill’s passage.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, said that “everyone involved in this effort can be proud of what this body is achieving today — the Senate is doing its job.”
More poetically, Mark Warner, D-Va., called the agreement “a little balm to the psychic soul of the country.”
Sinema and Portman for weeks shepherded a group of 10 lawmakers from both parties toward a compromise that could thread a needle — proffering the costly investments Biden initially sought without raising alarm among spending-wary Republicans.
The result is a bill that is less than the roughly $2.2 trillion American Jobs Plan that Biden put forward this spring, but one that earned bipartisan support.
“It will improve the lives of all Americans,” Portman said in a floor speech over the weekend as lawmakers prepared to vote. “People do expect here in America, [with] this great economy we have, we should also be able to lead the world in infrastructure. But we don’t.”
PAYING FOR IT
Lawmakers jettisoned Biden’s plan to raise taxes on corporations to finance the new infrastructure investments, a nonstarter for Republicans, who strained to protect the tax cuts they instituted under Trump four years ago. Instead, their new legislative effort relies on a mix of odd measures — and potential budgetary gimmicks — to try to offset its cost.
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office said the legislation would add $256 billion to the deficit over 10 years, contradicting the claims of its authors that their bill would be fully paid for.
The deficit spending set the stage for one of the only significant fights over the bill. The spending concerns prompted Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., to block the chamber from adopting the infrastructure measure swiftly over the weekend, arguing that Democrats should not be able to expedite passage of a work product that he said had not been paid for in full.
“We must fight to preserve our American system and the American Dream, not — in a tornado of hurried legislative activity — seal its decline,” Hagerty said in a floor speech Saturday.
Trump had called his one-time Japan ambassador and cheered him on, but it’s unclear whether the former president’s views still carry as much sway with most senators. Trump issued fresh complaints hours before Tuesday’s vote. He had tried and failed to pass his own infrastructure bill during his time in the White House.
In doing so, Hagerty’s opposition opened a rift between Democrats and Republicans over potential amendments, since changes to the bill’s timeline as well as its text required some measure of unanimous consent. The standoff ultimately prevented senators from making at least one key change to the bill targeting highly disputed rules that require cryptocurrency investors and brokers to report more information to the Internal Revenue Service for tax purposes.
Broadly, though, lawmakers managed to avoid the same intractable fights that have scuttled other legislative efforts this year to regulate guns, overhaul voting laws and investigate the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
BOOZMAN, COTTON VOTE NO
Sens. John Boozman and Tom Cotton, both Arkansas Republicans, voted against the infrastructure bill.
“I have long supported responsible infrastructure investment, but this bill increases deficit spending with too little to offer in return,” Boozman said in a written statement. “I’m disappointed we couldn’t reach a fiscally responsible solution to modernize and upgrade roads and bridges, water systems and broadband deployment, but instead are choosing to increase the burden on future generations of Americans to pay for more spending that’s occurring right now, while also paving the path for a $4.2 trillion spending spree of liberal wish list items.”
In a written statement, Cotton said, “Arkansans support real infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, waterways, rural broadband, and ongoing maintenance. They do not want President Biden’s ‘social infrastructure’ and climate alarmism, especially under the threat of increased inflation and higher taxes.”
ON TO PART TWO
With a bipartisan victory pocketed, Democrats turned immediately to a more partisan venture, a second social policy package that would fulfill the remainder of their spending priorities.
The Senate’s $3.5 trillion social policy budget, which is expected to pass along party lines, will allow Senate committees to draft legislation packed with policies to address climate change, health, education, and paid family and medical leave, and pass it over the threat of a filibuster. It will also include tax increases.
With the Republicans lockstep against the next big package, many of them reached for the current compromise with the White House because they, too, wanted show they could deliver and the government could function.
“Today’s kind of a good news, bad news day,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, one of the negotiators. “The good news is that today we really did something historic in the United States Senate; we moved out an infrastructure package, something that we have talked about doing for years.” The bad news, she said, is what’s coming next.
Democrats unveiled the blueprint Monday, and planned to debate the measure into the early hours of today if necessary, hoping to adopt it under a fast-track timeline that Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., set out in the weeks leading up to the Senate’s summer recess.
“Other parts of our infrastructure, not addressed by this bipartisan bill, still need focused attention and help,” Schumer said before the vote, citing areas including climate change. He added the Senate intends to adopt a budget that makes “generational transformation in these areas.”
Republicans have said they will unanimously oppose that $3.5 trillion outline, which opens the door for Democrats to craft legislation that would expand Medicare, invest new sums to combat global warming and boost federal programs that aid parents and children. Unlike infrastructure reform, Democrats intend to bypass the GOP and advance the final bill through a process known as reconciliation, which requires them to attain a majority to proceed rather than the usual 60 votes.
The infrastructure legislation faces a tricky path in the House, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. has repeatedly said she will not take it up until the Senate clears the reconciliation bill. The House has also passed its own infrastructure bill, which includes more money for climate change mitigation and nearly $5.7 billion to pay for 1,473 home district projects, or earmarks, that were vetted by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
A handful of moderate Democrats have urged Pelosi to avoid delaying a standalone vote on the bipartisan agreement. But Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, reiterated that pledge this week on behalf of her powerful bloc of lawmakers, without whom Pelosi cannot proceed. In a recent interview, Jayapal stressed there are “not going to be votes for the bipartisan bill without votes for the reconciliation bill.”
The successful vote Tuesday comes after months of bickering between lawmakers and the White House over Biden’s broader agenda, which he termed “Build Back Better,” dating back to the 2020 presidential campaign. Biden sought to deliver Washington its long-sought infrastructure ambitions after years of false starts under Trump, who could never coalesce Congress around a deal.