By Friday, most observers seemed fully apprised that the infrastructure agreement unveiled the previous afternoon by Joe Biden and a group of senators from both parties was asinine — a bit of political theater designed solely to project faux “bipartisanship” and bolster Biden’s contention that as fractious as things are, he can still navigate the chamber with which he was once synonymous.
If you’re a Republican sworn to legislatively subvert the White House at every turn, you’re incredulous that you should feel compelled to support the plan despite the fact that Biden and Nancy Pelosi have already stated, unequivocally, that it won’t become law unless accompanied by a Democrat-only bill that secures the rest of the Democratic agenda. If you’re a Progressive, you’re wondering why the song and dance with Republicans on infrastructure when the entire Biden agenda was always going to be pushed through Congress using reconciliation anyway.
The infrastructure “deal” was just a photo op for Biden, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins and Mitt Romney (there were other people involved, of course, but those are the folks whose reputations are inextricably bound up with the word “moderate”).
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It’s not that bipartisanship is bad. It’s just that very little in this world is good “for its own sake,” so to speak.
The infrastructure deal sets up a situation where Republicans like Mitch McConnell can point to a reconciliation bill as evidence that there’s no real appetite for bipartisanship among Democrats. Mitch is already saying as much. “Caving, completely, in less than two hours? That’s not the way to show you’re serious about getting a bipartisan outcome,” he sneered, as much as someone whose face is incapable of expression can sneer.
Progressives, meanwhile, can legitimately claim that getting a few Republicans to agree that highways need paving and bridges need fixing is, at best, pointless. At worst, it emboldens Manchin and Sinema to pursue similarly inane compromises down the (newly-paved) road with no readily discernible benefit outside of their own quest to prove something to constituents about the lengths to which they’ll go for “bipartisan” bragging rights.
Manchin still hasn’t said (unequivocally, anyway) what price tag he’s willing to support when it comes to passing the rest of the Biden agenda without GOP votes. He muttered something about the national debt on Thursday.
I’m hesitant to broach the “pay-fors” subject again, having already reiterated how self-evidently ridiculous the discussion always is (see the first linked article above). But, if you’re inclined to persist in the notion that spending must be offset somehow (either with taxes, borrowing or “finding” the money in the figurative couch cushions), you’ll note that my derisive remarks from Thursday were echoed in less derisive terms by “experts.”
“I don’t want to say smoke and mirrors, but it’s soft, very soft,” former Republican Senate staffer Bill Hoagland told Bloomberg, of the pay-fors. Hoagland, Bloomberg noted, “worked on budget issues for 25 years.”
“While lawmakers have presented the deal as being ‘paid for’ in full, this might not be the case when using traditional congressional budget scorekeeping methods,” Goldman’s Alec Phillips said.
Because the majority of the spending outlined Thursday would have become law “one way or another,” Phillips noted that the real question is what the deal means for the reconciliation package.
Many key omissions “have essentially unanimous support among Democrats,” which means “even centrist[s] wary of using the reconciliation process are likely to find it necessary later this year,” Phillips went on to say, before noting that it’s “far from certain that this deal as currently structured will actually have the votes to pass both chambers of Congress, as it looks likely to face some opposition from Progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans.”
Why is that important? Because, as Goldman explained, “the harder the legislative path gets for a bipartisan infrastructure bill, the more likely it is that congressional leaders scale it back, which would make it even less likely to displace the rest of the [Democratic] agenda.”
The overarching point: Even if Biden and Democratic leaders weren’t explicit in demanding the infrastructure deal be accompanied by a bill that includes the rest of Biden’s agenda, it (the infrastructure proposal) wouldn’t have reduced the odds of a reconciliation package.
So, again, it’s far from clear that this was anything other than a monthslong effort to engineer a photo op and project bipartisanship to a nation which, frankly, is far too divided to care about who does or doesn’t sign on to legislation.
Bravo H! The current Democratic leadership in the Senate is still living in the 90’s when, holding hands and singing kumbaya was all the people wanted to see. Now you have a large swath of Republican voters who want to see “their enemies” arrested and murdered and that think anyone who is a Democrat is in a child murdering cabal. This is a photo op for the past, not the present.
Hey at least this photo op didn’t require any tear gas! Progress!
Well, that’s true.
The legislation is a positive
Unfortunately if we do not do better about resolving some of the differences at the top, we are likely one day to require bulldozers and lime to bury the bodies after future photo ops.
It surely would be interesting to ‘ be a fly on the wall ‘ and see how this turns out going 20 years forward..It guarantees a lot of shattered Ideologies at the least but if one considers longer term History a guide maybe not quite so many surprises . This game is being fought for all the marbles . It is easy to see that part but avoiding the dire consequences would be more important it seems yet unlikely at this juncture without radical changes to the system .
I believe the most important aspect of the deal / photo op is that symbolic splitting of the “moderate” republicans off from the larger wolf pack that was 100% united against Obama – given the slim margin of victories in the outdated and non democratic electoral college in 2016 and 2020 every seemingly little thing can be crucial…beyond sad that US democracy has gotten to this point…
There is only one way out of this and it is as old as time. Rulers through Time have been known to squeeze the poor too hard. The result is as predictable as is horrific, revolution. For a time the wealthy can keep the poor in check through terror and intimidation. But typically once they start the fear, the terror and intimidation they are loath to stop.
The result is the poor revolting against the rich as they have no other choice. This idea that the privileged whites buying ammo are going to revolt against the poor is as crazy as it is never to happen. What is more likely is this ammo and guns is used to suppress the poor more and start the revolution that even the assholes with their pickup trucks can’t put down.
So could we as a polite society avoid this horrific outcome? Yes we can but it will take cooperation from powerful forces in our society. Probably the strongest Ally the poor have are the corporations who collect rent from the poor. The wealthy are collecting their rents through proxy by owning the corporations. But in our system they have little power or say. We have given them say and dictation Powers by the path of money directly to politics. We’ve even tried to cheapen it by making a tax-free. It is that channel either increasing the cost of those contributions or the amount of money flowing that would affect the potential outcome quickly and positively. However some would say that’s unlikely and it is the reason why I place my greatest hopes in the corporate leaders who realize their customers can only be squeezed so far and still pay the rent.