Seventeen Republicans joined all Senate Democrats in a procedural vote on an infrastructure bill Wednesday, after an agreement was announced earlier in the day. The deal could still collapse — if Minority Leader Mitch McConnell decides to be outraged at how Majority Leader Chuck Schumer smiled after the vote (and, at least over on C-SPAN 2, he really did look giddy) or finds some other excuse to sustain a filibuster, he would surely take some others with him. Perhaps even enough to sink the deal.
Most likely, however, this is going to pass the Senate. And Matt Yglesias here at Bloomberg Opinion has an
excellent item explaining why Republicans should agree to a deal — or, if you want the shorter version, former Senator Al Franken
put it this way: “Congrats but no surprise on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. GOP knew if they stopped it, Dems would add it in reconciliation & GOP would get zero credit for all the new jobs & infrastructure.”
And yet, while Yglesias and Franken are correct, quite a few people were absolutely convinced that no bipartisan deal was possible. McConnell, the theory went, had one overriding belief when Democrats were in the White House: Never strike a deal, because as long as the out-party opposes any bill it will automatically be seen as controversial, lose popularity and therefore fail to deliver any electoral rewards for the president’s party.
I’ve never thought this was an accurate description of how elections and legislation work. But there were two additional reasons to expect Republican rejectionism. One was that they followed this formula in 2009-2010, and to a lesser extent in 1993-1994, and they attributed their big wins in 2010 and 1994 to the strategy. Another was that most Republicans appeared to have a strong aversion to compromise per se — and have been willing to accept substantial policy losses to avoid cutting a deal. The logic that Yglesias and Franken identify is the basic logic of policy making in the U.S. Similar incentives pushed Democrats to cut deals with President George W. Bush over taxes, Medicare expansion and education. But Republicans haven’t seemed to want to do that.
What changed? Maybe infrastructure is just different; it’s harder for Republicans to practice flat-out rejectionism when they don’t really care about the underlying policy than it is when the topic is, say, health care. Or perhaps McConnell is trying to defeat the bill after all. How? If the bipartisan bill passes easily, perhaps Senator Bernie Sanders and one or two other Democrats will oppose it once their votes aren’t needed. That, in turn, could make the bill vulnerable if Republicans in the House oppose it unanimously while a handful of the most liberal representatives consider it a sell-out and ultimately vote against it. Likely? No, but given the deal, it may be McConnell’s best chance.
The other possibility? Yglesias suggests that Republicans risk strengthening the most liberal group in intra-Democratic fights, but there’s a more serious danger they may be worried about. We really have no idea how close Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema might be to tossing out the filibuster altogether, which would not only allow for a larger infrastructure bill but would also enable large parts of the rest of the Democratic agenda. Spiking the bipartisan deal might well have pushed Manchin and Sinema closer to the edge; passing it with a solid majority may be enough to keep the filibuster safe for now. That’s just speculation — but it’s possible that McConnell and other Republicans have picked up hints that have them more worried about the filibuster than they’ve let on.
Of course, Democrats still need to negotiate a reconciliation bill, and they need to reach an agreement all 50 senators (and just about all House Democrats) can live with. But while we can expect some fireworks, that certainly seems doable once Manchin and Sinema get the bipartisan bill they demanded as the price for the second bill. In other words? This thing has a very real chance of passing.
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