Congress is about to do something big in a bipartisan fashion: agree to allocate $1 trillion to revamp the nation’s aging infrastructure. The Senate could approve the bill as soon as Tuesday morning, with all Senate Democrats and a sizable chunk of Senate Republicans — nearly 20 — willing to vote yes on it.
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That means improving the nation’s infrastructure will soon be the first bipartisan win of the Biden administration, and it will be the first major bipartisan legislation to pass since the 2020 coronavirus relief packages. (For those, partisanship was suspended rather than bipartisanship fostered.)
Infrastructure stymied Washington for years even though it was a Trump administration priority and Republicans at the time had bigger majorities in Congress. The bill still needs to move through the House, where it could face opposition from both fringes of the political spectrum, although the Democratic majority there isn’t expected to derail it.
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Here are the specific dynamics that are helping the bill move through Congress (relatively) seamlessly and that could be instructive for how lawmakers do more bipartisan work in the future.
Rebuilding infrastructure is popular. Counterintuitively, bipartisan agreements in Congress are more common than we think, says Molly Reynolds, a congressional analyst with the Brookings Institution. But the really big stuff gets stuck in the mud — think immigration and police reform. Those issues are extremely controversial. Some 70 percent of Americans approve of spending money on infrastructure, a recent Monmouth University poll found, making this President Biden’s most popular spending priority.
It doesn’t have any major enemies. Gun-control advocates will point out that expanded background checks is extremely popular, too. But there are hardcore opponents of limiting how Americans buy and use guns. By contrast, the only major opponents of spending money to build up roads and bridges and broadband connectivity are debt hawks. Those folks just weren’t a major player in this debate, in part because they’ve waned in influence and passion in recent years and in part because negotiators tried to find as many ways as possible to pay for the investments.
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Plus, to many in Congress and voters back home, this was arguably money worth spending. Two polls, from Monmouth and Quinnipiac universities. found that there is narrow Republican opposition to the infrastructure bill but that some 40 percent of Republicans support it. “We need the investment,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio). “Let’s be honest.”
It lands at strategically the right time for both parties. Control of both chambers of Congress is up for grabs next year. While elections tend to make both retreat to partisan safety, there is also something to be said for campaigning on being able to break the gridlock in Washington.
Perhaps for that reason, Republicans did an about-face from wanting to block Biden’s agenda to supporting this major win for the president. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) recently characterized this legislation as “a bipartisan success story for the country,” even though he said a few months ago that “100 percent of our focus is on stopping this new administration.”
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Biden played a (quiet) role. When any president gets involved with congressional negotiations, it tends to cause both sides to dig in more rather than loosen up, Reynolds said.
But Biden pitched himself on the campaign trail as someone who would try to work with Republicans to get things done. On this, at least, there’s evidence he did.
“Biden repeatedly made it clear in conversations with Republicans that he was serious about achieving a bipartisan deal,” reported The Washington Post’s Seung Min Kim. Biden’s quiet diplomacy seemed like a strategic decision on his part to avoid firing up partisans. (And actually, the one time he commented publicly on what kind of bill he would sign, it actually almost derailed everything by scaring off some moderate Republicans.)
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Donald Trump was a significantly smaller player in drawing Republicans to the right. From his perch in Florida, the former president urged Republicans to oppose this bill, despite the fact that when he was in office, he lobbied for an even more expensive infrastructure proposal. But the 18 Senate Republicans supporting this didn’t seem to hear him, or care much, if they did.
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There is a way for liberals to get what they want, too. The infrastructure bill is a compromise, which by definition means it’s too small for a number of liberals and too big for a number of conservatives. Almost all House Republicans still oppose it. But Democrats plan to use their majorities in both chambers to try to pass yet another spending bill, a massive $3.5 trillion one, full of liberal Democratic priorities and led by the likes of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). They’ll do this over Republicans’ objections through a process called reconciliation, which lets them avoid a filibuster on spending-related legislation.
Arguably, bipartisanship is an easier (yes, easier) way to get stuff done. Political scientists James Curry and Frances Lee found that most of the majority-party wins in recent years came from working with the minority rather than overpowering it.
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One obvious reason is that you just have more votes to work with if you include both parties. Biden’s other big legislative win came in March when Democrats more or less pushed Republicans to the side and passed a coronavirus relief bill with just 50 votes. Vice President Harris had to serve as the tiebreaker.
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Similarly, Trump’s effort at repealing Obamacare failed even though his party had total control of Washington. Sen. John McCain of Arizona surprised everyone with a no vote and sunk the proposal, because Republicans had worked with just their own party and had no votes to spare.
By contrast, this bipartisan infrastructure legislation could pass with as many as 68 votes in the Senate by the time the final voting is done this week.
Scott Clement contributed to this report.