House Republicans did Democrats fighting for the maximum infrastructure budget reconciliation package a real solid on Thursday. They demonstrated the utter futility of trying to make substantive policy bipartisan. The House passed a transportation and water infrastructure bill Thursday in a 221-201 vote. Two Republicans voted for it. Two.
More than 100 Republicans asked for—and got—projects in this roughly $760 billion bill. House Democrats brought back earmarks, or "member-directed spending" in hopes that they would get Republican buy-in on things like infrastructure, and that getting their own projects specifically funded would bring Republicans around to supporting the bill. That's the way it used to work, anyway. They seriously overestimated their colleagues on that one.
Look at this guy, Rep. Sam Graves, who got $20 million’s worth of projects into the bill, but stood on the floor in opposition to passing it.
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The same dynamic is playing out in the Interior-Environment appropriations bill. It contains more than 300 earmarks from both Democrats and Republicans to the tune of $445 million, and at least some of the Republicans who secured projects in it opposed it in mark-up this week. One senior Republican on the committee, Rep. David Joyce of Ohio, has five projects in the bill totally $9.4 million. He won't support the bill, "criticizing several provisions as well as its overall spending level."
His spokesperson, Katherine Sears, justified it. "Who better to direct funding to local communities than the member of Congress they chose to represent them as opposed to a random government bureaucrat?" she told Roll Call. "However, these requests, which are the equivalent of .02% of the bill’s overall spending level, do not translate to support for $43.4 billion in new federal spending."
In other words, "my stuff is essential and wonderful but yours is bullshit and costs too much." But the bill is going to pass anyway without his vote, so who's the sucker here?
We're now seeing Senate Republicans do an about face on infrastructure, and you don't have to look too hard to see them eyeing a similar play. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the bipartisan gang, performed his usual bit, a temper tantrum, last week over the made-up kerfuffle over Biden's insistence there would be two bills—the bipartisan one and the go-it-alone Democratic budget reconciliation. "Most Republicans could not have known that," he said, referring to the linkage of the two bills. Which had been discussed for weeks prior. "There's no way. You look like a fucking idiot now." He added, "I don't mind bipartisanship, but I'm not going to do a suicide mission."
Now? It's all good. He's claiming credit for Biden's "clarification" that he wasn't going to veto a standalone bill. "I think it had the intended effect," he told Politico. He also said he's going to be the lead on the pay-fors, which gives him another opportunity to play the saboteur. "It's one thing to talk about the deal conceptually, and another one to write it," Graham said. Which we know the gang hasn't done. In Oregon Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio's words, "there is no policy attached to their proposal." He's taking the lead on informal negotiations with the Senate to try to get this sped up.
He's also the Transportation chairman who just watched more than 100 Republicans join with the rest of their colleagues in voting against a bill they helped write, a bill that has lots of nice projects for them that they'll brag about to their constituents back home. So at least he's going into this clear-eyed about Republicans.
House Democrats are also going into this with new knowledge about their Democratic colleagues in that Senate infrastructure gang—that they are being driven by ExxonMobil in the whole process. At least, that's what ExxonMobil's lobbyist Keith McCoy said in a totally candid conversation with what he thought was a potential new client. That turned out to be a brilliant Greenpeace U.K. sting, one that has exposed exactly what's going on behind the scenes with moderate Democrats that group.
"Joe Manchin, I talk to his office every week," McCoy boasted. "He is the kingmaker on this because he’s a Democrat from West Virginia which is [a] very conservative state, so he is, and he's not shy about sort of staking his claim early and completely changing the debate," McCoy said. "On the Democrat side we look for the moderates on these issues," he continued, pointing to Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, Montana's Jon Tester, and particularly Chris Coons, a Biden ally from Delaware. "Senator Coons […] has a very close relationship with [President] Biden, so we’ve been working with his office—as a matter of fact our CEO is talking to him next Tuesday and having those conversations and just teeing it up, and then that way I can start working with his staff to let them know where we are on some of these issues." So that's very cozy.
ExxonMobil and Senate Republicans are on a mission to water this bill down, to drag the process out, to do whatever they can to sabotage Biden. And then they won't support whatever finally passes, but they'll happily take credit for the scraps that are left, that Democrats pass without them. It's not like they're even trying to hide that this is the play.
Democrats had better being getting everything they need into this reconciliation bill.