Biden’s quest for a bipartisan infrastructure bill
What happened
President Biden hit the road to sell Americans on a bipartisan infrastructure package this week, even as back in Washington intraparty wrangling over the compromise plan left its passage in doubt. Biden and a bipartisan group of 10 senators announced last week they’d reached an agreement for a $1.2 trillion package focused on the physical infrastructure projects supported by Republicans. It would spend billions—though $600 billion less than Biden initially sought—on roads, bridges, airports, mass transit, electric-vehicle charging stations, and expanding broadband access. It’s a “historic bipartisan framework” that’s “good for the economy and the country,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, who backed the deal along with Sen. Mitt Romney and three other GOP moderates. The deal delivers “not just for red states or blue states, but for everybody,” said Biden in La Crosse, Wis. “This is a blue-collar blueprint to rebuild America.”
The deal’s future, however, was threatened by Democrats’ plan to use the filibuster-proof budget-reconciliation process to pass a second spending bill on a 51-50 party-line vote. That bill would earmark trillions more for progressive priorities such as child and elder care, universal pre-K, and combating climate change. Some Republicans balked at backing the bipartisan package if Democrats planned to push through a second bill with no GOP support. And some progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, vowed to withhold support from the bipartisan package if it were not linked to passage of the reconciliation bill—a threat Biden himself made before he walked it back in response to Republican anger. “It almost makes your head spin,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor. “An expression of bipartisanship and then an ultimatum on behalf of your left-wing base.”
Meanwhile, there was a stark divide among Democrats over how large a second “human infrastructure” bill should be. Sanders called for a $6 trillion package, while centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia—whose vote is critical to any Democratic plan—indicated he wouldn’t back anything over “maybe $2 trillion.”
What the editorials said
Republicans shouldn’t fall for this “charade,” said the National Review. The “so-called compromise proposal” involves nearly $600 billion in new spending our deficit-ridden nation can ill afford and is “vague about how everything will be paid for.” Democrats have made clear that the GOP’s willingness to compromise won’t stop them from ramming through a reconciliation bill “stuffed with liberal wish-list items.” With two bills, Democrats will get everything they want, so why should
Republicans give this false compromise the “veneer” of bipartisanship?
“There is much to like in the bipartisan framework”—but Democrats gave up too much, said the Los Angeles Times. Biden’s proposed investments in the clean-energy sector are missing, and so is funding for housing, schools, and child care. Still, Americans should welcome the deal as a sign that Senate Democrats and Republicans can still “agree on something important.” Such compromise “is necessary, even if it’s not sufficient.”
What the columnists said
Biden and Democratic leaders now must pull off a daunting tightrope act, said Jonathan Weisman in The New York Times. The infrastructure deal needs backing from at least five more GOP senators to pass, and some are vowing to vote against it if Democrats link it to a reconciliation bill. Meanwhile, Democrats “must unite around a reconciliation bill” that’s not too big to alienate moderate Democrats like Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema “but also cannot jettison so many liberal priorities that it loses the left flank.”
This is how things used to work before rank partisanship drove everything, said Jonah Goldberg in TheDispatch.com. Deals got hammered out in committees and moderates prevailed over extremists. Moderate Democrats “understand that funding traditional infrastructure helps them and the party,” while a progressive spending blowout “might put them in peril.” Manchin is not the only Democrat to see that a far-left agenda will cost them in 2022 and 2024. Right now moderates are “the most powerful bloc in government”—and that’s “the old normal.”