Republicans Are At Each Other’s Throats After Biden Gets Everything In Infrastructure Deal

I cannot emphasize this enough: Republicans would be absolutely idiotic to agree to a infrastructure deal without an ironclad assurance that Democrats won't turn around & pass a reconciliation bill with the rest of the $trillions that the GOP just fought to remove from this deal.

— Brian Riedl 🧀 (@Brian_Riedl) June 24, 2021

Five Republicans negotiated the deal, but here are enough Republicans in the whole bipartisan group to pass the deal combined with Democrats, even if the rest of the Republican Senate caucus votes against it.

The problem is that Republicans were never going to get Democrats to agree to just pass a single bill. There would have been no talks at all if Republicans had taken a one-bill-and-done posture.

The bigger issue is that Republicans don’t have the votes to enforce such a demand. Republicans could have told Democrats and the White House that they would only agree to one bill, but since they don’t have a majority in the Senate, Democrats have the power to do whatever they choose as long as all 50 of them agree.

Years of Mitch McConnell’s obstruction have sent the message that bipartisanship is weakness.

Biden got every single thing that he wanted out of the first phase of the infrastructure deal, and he can get most of the rest without any Republican votes by using reconciliation.

Republicans had a choice. They could take the deal, or they could get nothing. Expect the outrage over this deal and the fact that it allowed Biden to fulfill a campaign promise on bipartisanship while keeping his principles to only grow in the days and weeks to come.

Mr. Easley is the managing editor, who is White House Press Pool, and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association