NPR trumpets the Senate’s passing of an infrastructure bill yesterday:
The Senate voted 69-30 Tuesday to approve a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, a historic piece of legislation that could reshape American lives for decades.
The measure fulfills a call from President Biden for the two major parties to work together to deliver one of his top priorities, but it faces an uncertain fate in the House of Representatives as progressive Democrats press for even greater spending.
The obvious question is What happens next? The bill goes to the House of Representatives; the House Democrats decide if they like it as-is, or if it must be changed to keep the left-wing happy. If it’s changed, then it goes back to the Senate, where the Senators will either change it in a conference with the House, or simply approve it – or if former President Trump, who has been frantically against this legislation from the beginning, can bully those Republican who assented this time into not assenting again.
And if no changes are made by the House while approving it, or the Senate approves House-authored changes or a bill composed in conference, it goes to President Biden for his signature and, incidentally, his victory lap. Which will gall Trump no end.
But the truly important question is whether this is an inflection point, even a U-turn junction, for the Republicans’ political path – or merely a survival twitch? Nineteen Republicans voted for this legislation in one of the largest mass defections of Republicans to a Democratic cause celebre in quite a long time. I mean, decades. The group even includes Minority Leader and infamous Senator “No” Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
So how does this play out for the rest of this session of Congress? It can…
Be a survival twitch. The Republicans who defected realized the American Rescue Plan, passed earlier this year with nary a Republican vote, is reportedly tremendously popular, and credits goes almost exclusively to the Democrats. Given their general incompetence, this has to make them uncomfortably aware of the degraded Republican reputation. The antics of such Governors as Noem (R-SD), DeSantis (R-FL), Abbott (R-TX), and others does not help their situation.
But this realization doesn’t mean there’s a permanent change. An enraged Republican base would destroy their reelection chances as well, and their base will not tolerate compromise in general. They may even be taking a chance with this vote. But I think they had to go there. As a plus, it strengthens the hands of Senators Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ), as they can point at this as proof that bipartisanship does work, weakening Democratic unity.
Be an inflection point. This would be a major turning point in American political history in which a significant number of Republican officials have broken with the former President, as well as his base. This suggests that they’ll finally turn to governing, whether it’s because they realize that simple contrariness is not a valid political strategy, or that the current challenges take precedence over the simplistic gamesmanship we see today.
I think this is unlikely. They imperil their reelection chances and they have not begun to provide the leadership through which they’d teach their constituents to understand why we compromise as leaders – at least so far as I’ve heard.
But time will tell. Keep an eye on the future maneuvering of the Republicans who voted for this legislation.
And watch Trump for laughs.
