The all-time record holder for hostage-taking in the Senate is issuing ultimatums to President Biden on infrastructure, saying Biden "cannot let congressional Democrats hold a bipartisan bill hostage over a separate and partisan process." Not to put too fine a point on it, Sen. Mitch McConnell just took the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage. That's assuming the Republicans actually have been working in good faith with Democrats to craft a hard infrastructure bill that at least 10 Republicans—enough to avoid a filibuster—would vote for. Since McConnell never blessed that process, that's never been a safe assumption.
In Thursday's press conference announcing the framework for a bipartisan deal he had struck with senators, Biden said what news reports had been making clear for days if not weeks: There would be this bill—if senators could come to agreement—and at the same time a budget reconciliation bill that would pass with just Democratic votes. "Both need to get done," Biden said Thursday. "I am going to work closely with Speaker Pelosi and Sen. Schumer to make sure both move through the legislative process promptly and in tandem. Let me emphasize that: in tandem." He reiterated that: "I control it. If they don't come, I'm not signing it. Real simple."
That resulted in a performative Republican hissy fit, with senators pretending as if this hadn't been the plan all along. That whining got the desired result of Biden issuing a new statement Saturday essentially reiterating what he'd said before. "My comments also created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.
"So to be clear: our bipartisan agreement does not preclude Republicans from attempting to defeat my Families Plan; likewise, they should have no objections to my devoted efforts to pass that Families Plan and other proposals in tandem," Biden continued. "We will let the American people—and the Congress—decide." In tandem. Two bills, moving at the same time.
McConnell is now purposely lying about what Biden said in that follow-up statement and trying to drive a wedge between Biden and Democratic leadership. "The President has appropriately delinked a potential bipartisan infrastructure deal from the, massive, unrelated, tax-and-spend plans that Democrats want to pursue on a partisan basis." Biden said he wanted the two bills in tandem. Linked. "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," McConnell continued.
Sen. Chris Murphy nailed it in this tweet.
A few of the supposedly 10 Republicans who have been in the negotiations were fine with Biden’s statement clarifying his earlier remarks and are—theoretically anyway—still on board.
But that gives McConnell at least another five Republicans who are all looking for a reason to say no. When Biden refused to abandon the reconciliation process, that will be their reason. It's been hugely predictable all along.
The two-track process wasn't just sprung on Republicans. Schumer and Budget Committee Chair Bernie Sanders started working on it over a week ago. Senate and House Democrats have been saying for weeks that they couldn't support a bill that didn't have the larger climate and care economy goals from Biden's original plan. And McConnell himself has been plotting for two weeks on the basis of this plan. They figured they could peel off at least a few Democrats who are in the bipartisan group and break Democrats' unity on reconciliation. Divide and conquer.
Then Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, of all people, shot that down. "Reconciliation is inevitable because basically Republicans I understand on the tax they don't want to undo anything on the 2017 [bill]," Manchin told reporters on Thursday, referring to the massive tax cuts wealthy Republicans passed that year—using budget reconciliation no less. "There's going to be a reconciliation bill. We just don't know what size it's going to be," he added.
So now it’s all about Democrats holding together on reconciliation, but also fighting some of the unacceptable things in the bipartisan bill. Like the "public-private partnerships" that will account for $100 billion to help pay for the plan. That's essentially a fire sale of existing infrastructure to the highest private bidder, a privatization scheme to put our roads and bridges and water systems in private hands, which was exactly what Trump wanted to do when he was thinking about infrastructure. Instead of paying a gas tax, we would all be paying fees to profiteers for using the public goods they would now own. That's not something any Democrat should be signing on to.
The $1 trillion bipartisan deal has other problems: It includes $579 billion in new spending, down from the multiple trillions Biden originally called for. In addition to increasing IRS enforcement on tax cheats, the "pay-fors" in this deal include cutting unemployment insurance (taking funds that had been earmarked for emergency UI in COVID relief packages), raising state and local taxes, selling broadband spectrum and oil, and mandatory cuts to other programs. It does have some climate-related components, but the spending is far below what Biden has proposed. It includes $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging stations; $7.5 billion for electric buses; $21 billion for environmental remediation; $73 billion to shore up the power infrastructure; and $47 billion in climate "resilience" efforts.
Biden's original proposal for $2.25 trillion on the American Jobs Plan includes $115 billion to modernize bridges, highways, and roads. It has another $85 billion for public transit, $80 billion for Amtrak, and $174 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, to electrify 20% of school buses, and to electrify the federal fleet. He would spend $100 billion on broadband, $25 billion for airports, and $111 billion for water projects.