WHITE HOUSE
Infrastructure Year: Dems brace for brutal slog
to pass Biden’s $2.5T plan
Republicans are already balking and preparing a
messaging campaign against the package.
By MARIANNE
LEVINE, SARAH FERRIS and MELANIE ZANONA
03/31/2021
07:14 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/31/infrastructure-problems-biden-478785
President
Joe Biden’s first big legislative package sped through Congress. The next one
could take at least half a year to pass — if it can get to his desk.
Biden and
Hill Democrats on Wednesday began a months-long sprint to pass a $2.5 trillion
bill to shore up the nation’s physical infrastructure, paid for by hiking taxes
on corporations. Republicans are already balking, dismissing Biden’s attempted
outreach as disingenuous, and preparing a messaging campaign against the
package that will almost certainly force Democrats to go it alone as they
juggle competing wish lists from their members across the ideological spectrum.
Absent a
seismic political shift, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck
Schumer will have to draft a sprawling bill that can only afford to lose three
Democratic votes in the House and zero in the Senate. Because Democrats are
expecting to use their budget powers to steer the bill past a Senate
filibuster, Biden’s infrastructure plan would also need to survive a slew of
procedural hurdles that could further split the party.
“Three
votes. Three votes," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) said in an interview.
“It's tough in the House with how tight things are, but I think it will be
approved. ... I don't mean it will be approved easily and people will be laying
outside on the grass while the vote's going on, sipping on iced tea. It's going
to be hard work."
The
infrastructure debate amounts to a political ultra-marathon for Biden and his
Democratic-led Congress, a stark contrast with the mostly breezy path to
approving Biden’s $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill. Party leaders will be
under immense pressure from their base to deliver, while also protecting the
political future of their most endangered members, some of whom are already
anxious about GOP attacks on proposed tax hikes, ahead of the midterm
elections.
Pelosi has
privately told her caucus that she aims to get the package through the House by
the Fourth of July — an aggressive timeline that would give leadership roughly
six weeks in session to finish assembling the package and secure the votes.
Some senior Democrats are already warning that timeline could slip.
“The bigger
it is, the more finesse you’ve got to have,” centrist Rep. Henry Cuellar
(D-Texas) said in an interview. “Highways, infrastructure? Easy. Water
projects? Easy. How you pay for it? Let’s take a look. And if you start adding
climate? Well, what exactly are you talking about?”
Democrats
so far have mostly praised the package, though some are already itching to put
their own stamp on the bill. And with local projects at the center of the
package, virtually every lawmaker will become a de facto lobbyist for their
home-state priorities, from the $10 billion-plus Gateway Tunnel in New York to
the $2.5 billion replacement for Cincinnati's Brent Spence Bridge.
"I’m
sure I’m like a lot of Democrats: I want to make sure that Virginia’s needs are
taken care of in a package like this," said Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
"Every Democrat will be asking about the same thing.”
Senate
Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) pointed to Biden's proposal to
expand broadband access as one area he wanted to see accelerated. But, he
stressed, lawmakers need to act as quickly as possible: “I believe that
Congress needs to get it done this year."
Biden’s
rollout appeared designed to appeal to the GOP, and the president called Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ahead of the formal unveiling. But Republicans
say the White House is just paying lip service to Biden's bipartisanship pledge
— or trying to redefine it altogether. The president's party muscled its Covid
relief bill through Congress without a single GOP vote, marketing the package
as bipartisan because it polled well with 75 percent of voters.
Democrats
haven't fully given up on getting GOP votes for the infrastructure effort;
several, including Kaine, said they would keep trying. But even if Schumer uses
the filibuster-proof protections of the budget process to pass the massive
bill, Senate rules may stop him from getting Biden's complete proposal to a
floor vote.
Perhaps the
biggest elbow Biden’s infrastructure package throws at Republicans is its move
to pay for new spending on roads, bridges and clean energy by partly undoing
their 2017 tax cut bill, their signature legislative accomplishment in the
Trump era. Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the House Ways and Means Committee's top GOP
member, said the proposed business tax hikes are a non-starter for Republicans
and only served as more proof that Biden isn’t serious about attracting their
support.
“Democrats
don’t give a flip discussing infrastructure with Republicans,” Brady said in an
interview, or else they “would not have proposed a business rate that is worse
than China and equal to Syria and France.”
“It is a
major economic blunder,” he added.
Democrats
defended Biden’s plan to pay for the package as only a partial easing of the
corporate tax cuts the GOP passed. The White House's proposal would raise rates
to a level that's still lower than the 35 percent corporate tax that
Republicans slashed in 2017.
“If you talk
to many of those in corporate America ... I think the 28 percent corporate tax
structure does not take away their competitiveness on a global scale,” Rep.
Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) said in an interview, noting that the tax rate set under
Trump was “far too low.”
But it's
not just the proposal's tax hikes that frustrate the GOP. Wyoming Sen. John
Barrasso, the top Republican on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee,
called the plan an “out-of-control socialist spending spree” and urged Biden to
look at a bipartisan highway bill instead.
Biden’s
first legislative rollout focused on the $2.5 trillion infrastructure plan,
though his administration has told lawmakers that it will unveil the second
phase in two weeks. That follow-up measure will include an expansion of
healthcare access, including the Affordable Care Act, and other social welfare
programs. Democrats have not yet decided whether to combine those two plans
into a single package on the floor, though some Democratic Hill sources said
it's likely his best chance to get both priorities passed.
Bringing
every Democrat aboard such a legislative ocean liner won't be easy, and some
fissures within the party are already beginning to surface.
The head of
the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), said the
bill fell short and called for it to be “substantially larger in size and
scope.” But across the Capitol, an aide to a progressive senator noted that the
package includes several priorities for the left, including child care, the
electrification of vehicles and the corporate tax hike.
Repealing
the Trump-era limit on state and local tax deduction — known as the SALT
deduction — could also be a point of contention for a handful of blue-state
House Democrats.
Rank-and-file
Democrats are especially eager to flex their muscles in the upcoming
infrastructure debate, after a largely top-heavy process to assemble the Covid
relief bill. After Biden took office, Democrats faced immense pressure to fall
in line so they could deliver his first legislative victory while also
providing much-needed pandemic aid to the country. But the dynamic is different
this time around, some lawmakers said.
“The first
package was obviously a pandemic, an emergency. It was his first ask. It was
wildly popular,” said one Democratic lawmaker, who spoke candidly on condition
of anonymity. “This one, it’s different territory.”
Biden has
dramatically stepped up his outreach to the Hill ahead of his formal unveiling
on Wednesday night.
A cadre of
White House officials — economic adviser Brian Deese, along with Housing and
Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Commerce
Secretary Gina Raimondo, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg andEnergy
Secretary Jennifer Granholm — all briefed lawmakers Wednesday on the plan. The
Biden administration held a separate briefing for a bipartisan group of
moderates in the House and Senate.
And while
Democrats are aiming to make substantial progress by the summer, even White
House aides acknowledged that getting the plan shaped into law will take time.
“We’re
willing to go through the process and have conversations on the Hill,” said
White House Deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre. “We’re just going to see
how it goes.”
Laura
Barrón-López and Nicholas Wu contributed reporting.
