GOP at odds on infrastructure bill
Some in party will vote for it despite calls to oppose
WASHINGTON — Business groups and some Senate Republicans — working at cross-purposes with Republican leaders in the House — have mounted an all-out drive to secure GOP votes for a bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Although the measure is the product of a compromise among moderates in both parties, House Republican leaders are leaning on their members to reject the $1 trillion infrastructure bill by disparaging its contents and arguing it will pave the way for Democrats to push through their larger climate change and social policy bill.
Their opposition has ratcheted up pressure on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, who has the more progressive members of her Democratic caucus threatening to withhold their support for the infrastructure package until Congress acts on that broader bill. If Republicans unite in opposition, Pelosi can afford to lose as few as three Democrats on the bill.
But some Republican senators who helped write the bill, along with influential business groups that support it — including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable — have started a countereffort to try to persuade House Republicans to back the legislation.
“It’s a good bill; it’s right there for the country, so I’m encouraging Republicans to support it,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, and one of the bill’s negotiators.
How the conflicting pressure campaigns play out could determine the fate of the infrastructure bill.
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., who runs his party’s vote-pressuring operation in the House, is closely tracking which Republicans intend to vote for the infrastructure bill.
“We’re working to keep that number as low as we possibly can,” he said.
A few House Republicans who are members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus have announced their support for the measure, including Reps.
Tom Reed of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Don Bacon of Nebraska. On Monday, Rep. Don Young of Alaska, the longest-serving member of the House, announced his support with an impassioned speech on the House floor.
Moderate Democrats say other supporters may surface — maybe as many as 20 Republican votes — if Pelosi can win over enough liberals to keep it close. But with a Thursday vote looming, time is running out.
The infrastructure bill is an unusual phenomenon in a starkly polarized Congress: a truly bipartisan and significant bill, hammered out by Democrats and Republicans before it passed the Senate last month with 69 votes, 19 of them Republican, including that of the minority leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
With $550 billion in new federal spending, the measure would provide $65 billion to expand high-speed internet access; $110 billion for roads, bridges and other projects; $25 billion for airports; and the most funding for Amtrak since the passenger rail service was founded in 1971. It would also renew and revamp existing infrastructure and transportation programs set to expire Friday.
But because House Democratic leaders have at least verbally packaged it with a larger, $3.5 trillion climate change and social policy bill, it has been caught up in the politics of that measure — and broader Republican efforts to thwart Biden’s agenda.
With Democrats publicly feuding over Biden’s agenda, senior Republicans have little interest in having their rank and file bail Pelosi out of her predicament.
Supporters of the infrastructure bill are trying to stay clear-eyed about the bill’s merits, not the broader politics.
They argue that House Republicans are making the wrong political calculation about the infrastructure measure. GOP leaders have warned that the bill is a Trojan horse whose passage would only increase the chances of Democrats passing the more costly plan that Biden calls his Build Back Better agenda, which is packed with expansions of social safety net programs, initiatives to combat climate change and tax increases on corporations and the wealthy.
“I just think it’s not accurate,” Portman said.
Instead, some proponents of the infrastructure measure see its passage as a potential setback for the bigger plan. They argue that the enactment of the infrastructure bill could sap progressives of their leverage to dictate the terms of the more ambitious and costly piece of their agenda.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said he had lobbied every member of his state’s delegation to support the measure.
“I can’t predict where they will end up, but I’m certainly encouraging people to consider the merits of the bill as opposed to worrying about what outside observers have to say,” he said.
In this case, House Republican leaders appear to be heeding pressure from conservative groups, which have disparaged the infrastructure bill as bloated with spending that goes far beyond its stated purpose. And they predict that moderate Democrats who have pressed for its passage will be angered enough by its demise that they will exact revenge by bringing down the social policy bill.