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Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg said:
There seems to be even more shadow-boxing than usual around the infrastructure bill now being debated by Congress. Politicians will always also try to influence such stories in ways that make them look good and others look bad, of course. And, if possible, they’ll use stories about procedure to influence policy outcomes. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it can be confusing. Especially when, as with the infrastructure bill(s), things start out fairly murky.
So it looks like there’s been a lot of movement over the past few days. First, President Joe Biden explicitly linked an infrastructure deal that he had negotiated with Republican senators on Thursday to a partisan bill that Democrats are expected to pass as well. Then Republicans bashed the president, claiming that this linkage could blow the deal up. Then Democrats argued that there was nothing new about the two-track process, with one compromise bill and one Democratic bill; to the contrary, they said, they had always been clear that they expected to move the second bill by using the “reconciliation” procedure that would allow it to pass with a simple majority in the Senate. Then the White House put out a statement apparently backing off of Biden’s explicit linkage, after which Republicans went back to supporting the agreement.
Well, that’s certainly a story. And it’s not entirely inaccurate. But, like I said, there’s a lot of shadow-boxing here.
For one thing, the Republican steps away from the deal and then back toward it may have been exaggerated. Perhaps wildly so. As far as I can tell, none of the five Republican senators who had negotiated the agreement complained publicly about Biden’s comments. On the other hand, those original five were the ones saying the crisis had passed once Biden’s clarification was published.
As Congress scholars Josh Huder and Sarah Binder point out, Biden won’t have the option of signing just one bill, because it won’t (and probably can’t) pass that way. In the House, the most liberal Democrats won’t vote for the compromise bill unless there’s also a second piece of legislation that meets their needs. And their votes are probably necessary because it’s unlikely that more than a handful of House Republicans will support the plan. That means that the one-bill option isn’t viable, and therefore House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t put the compromise on the floor without the second bill, which means the Senate needs to pass both.
Plus, there are still only five known Republican votes for the compromise bill in the Senate, and they’ll need five more to defeat a filibuster assuming all 50 Democrats are on board. There hasn’t really been much reporting on which Republicans are likely to support the bill, or for that matter whether the most likely success story would be exactly 10 Republicans or, as is sometimes suggested, a larger margin.
So don’t worry too much about what Biden will or won’t sign. The real questions remain: Are there 10 Republican votes for the compromise in the Senate? If not, will all 50 Democrats move ahead anyway? And either way, can Democrats reach agreement on the rest of what Biden proposed?
So it looks like there’s been a lot of movement over the past few days. First, President Joe Biden explicitly linked an infrastructure deal that he had negotiated with Republican senators on Thursday to a partisan bill that Democrats are expected to pass as well. Then Republicans bashed the president, claiming that this linkage could blow the deal up. Then Democrats argued that there was nothing new about the two-track process, with one compromise bill and one Democratic bill; to the contrary, they said, they had always been clear that they expected to move the second bill by using the “reconciliation” procedure that would allow it to pass with a simple majority in the Senate. Then the White House put out a statement apparently backing off of Biden’s explicit linkage, after which Republicans went back to supporting the agreement.
Well, that’s certainly a story. And it’s not entirely inaccurate. But, like I said, there’s a lot of shadow-boxing here.
For one thing, the Republican steps away from the deal and then back toward it may have been exaggerated. Perhaps wildly so. As far as I can tell, none of the five Republican senators who had negotiated the agreement complained publicly about Biden’s comments. On the other hand, those original five were the ones saying the crisis had passed once Biden’s clarification was published.
As Congress scholars Josh Huder and Sarah Binder point out, Biden won’t have the option of signing just one bill, because it won’t (and probably can’t) pass that way. In the House, the most liberal Democrats won’t vote for the compromise bill unless there’s also a second piece of legislation that meets their needs. And their votes are probably necessary because it’s unlikely that more than a handful of House Republicans will support the plan. That means that the one-bill option isn’t viable, and therefore House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t put the compromise on the floor without the second bill, which means the Senate needs to pass both.
Plus, there are still only five known Republican votes for the compromise bill in the Senate, and they’ll need five more to defeat a filibuster assuming all 50 Democrats are on board. There hasn’t really been much reporting on which Republicans are likely to support the bill, or for that matter whether the most likely success story would be exactly 10 Republicans or, as is sometimes suggested, a larger margin.
So don’t worry too much about what Biden will or won’t sign. The real questions remain: Are there 10 Republican votes for the compromise in the Senate? If not, will all 50 Democrats move ahead anyway? And either way, can Democrats reach agreement on the rest of what Biden proposed?
