Infrastructure bill will test Biden
The struggle over an infrastructure bill in Congress may have a way to go. But rest assured, there’s a professional in the White House who’s determined to see it across the finish line.
In the first eight months of his presidency, Joe Biden has shown the value of having an experienced politician in charge of things. Long service in the Senate and eight years as vice president taught Biden a thing or two about the Washington Ferris wheel: first you’re up and then you’re down, and the wheel never stops.
One challenge slams into another, and there are no final victories.
Take infrastructure. During his four years in office, President Trump regularly trotted out the prospect of infrastructure legislation. No such legislation ever made its way from the White House to Capitol Hill, however.
Enter Joe Biden. On the heels of passing a large and beneficial coronavirus rescue plan, the president entered into discussions with West Virginia’s Shelley Moore Capito, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, about an infrastructure plan.
Simultaneously, administration officials were in contact with another group of Republican senators also interested in infrastructure.
When discussions with Capito broke down, the president and members of the Cabinet moved on to this group composed of the likes of Republicans Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Rob Portman of Ohio, and Mitt Romney of Utah.
The result, several weeks ago, was a White House presser during which Biden announced that a $1 trillion infrastructure deal was at hand.
Surrounded by a bipartisan group of senators, it was one of Biden’s finest moments. Then, to show how tricky politics is, the president almost blew the deal up by remarks he made at a formal press conference later in the day.
As reported by the Washington Post’s Senng Min Kim, Biden was quickly on the telephone to patch things up with the Republican members of the bipartisan group, who thought they had been sucker punched by the White House.
One of the senators Biden turned to was Portman, who, having announced that he would forego reelection in 2022, may no longer feel the need to kowtow to Trump and the Trump crazies’ abhorrence of Biden. Kim reported on Thursday that the president asked Portman what he might do to calm the waters.
Meanwhile, presidential aide Steven Ricchetti was on “virtual speed dial” with the other Republican negotiators.
The outcome was victory – for bipartisan and for Biden, the champion of bipartisanship.
Whether it was a small victory or a big one will be determined in the weeks and months ahead. This time Biden will be haggling with members of his own party, especially perhaps House progressives. AOC – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – and company want a Senate guarantee of a second “human” infrastructure package, projected at $3.5 trillion, to go along with the traditional infrastructure deal struck by the White House with Republican moderates.
Buoyed by the administration’s recent reversal on ending a federal rent moratorium – the reversal seems to have been by sparked by Rep. Cori Bush, a former social activist who, in order to highlight the issue, spent several nights sleeping on the Capitol steps – House progressives appear ready to confront the administration on behalf of the full infrastructure monty.
“We are prepared to leverage our energy and our activism in close coordination with the grassroots,” Bush, elected to the House in 2020, warned the political pro in the White House.
Meanwhile, moderate House Democrats, feeling a need to deliver tangible results for constituents clamoring both for action and for bipartisanship, announced they were eager for an immediate vote on the compromise deal.
All of which casts in sharp relief an insight expressed recently by Bill Galston of the Brookings Institute: “The core tension of the Biden presidency is that he is trying to unite the Democratic Party at the same time trying to unite the country. It’s not clear whether these can be done simultaneously.”
With Biden, there’s a chance. He is clearly up to the task. Despite what Trumpies believe (or say they believe), the president is mentally sharp: at the age of 78, he’s neither stuck in the past nor bewildered by the present. He is alive both to the possibilities of now and to the call of history.
For sure, he has work to do. But the end result of the infrastructure tap dance promises tangible benefits, and not just in jobs and newer (and presumably better) roads, bridges, airports, train and electrical service, and the like.
Biden has made a point of saying that democracy itself is on the line. Can a divided Washington still deliver? Can our badly frayed polity be put back together? Can the dysfunctional become functional?
The country has a lot to gain.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.