Tougher battles ahead for Joe Biden after Senate approval of sweeping infrastructure bill
- President Biden celebrates Senate passage of his infrastructure package.
- Hard work is just beginning on other tough issues, such as COVID-19, voting rights and police reform.
- Bipartisan support for infrastructure unlikely to carry over into other issues.
WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden scored a crucial victory when the Senate voted Tuesday to pass his ambitious plan to spend roughly $1 trillion to modernize the nation's crumbling roads and bridges and deal with other infrastructure needs.
Now the hard work begins.
Biden had made the infrastructure package a pillar of his presidency, saying he came into office to get things done. Though the bill that cleared the Senate is a dramatically scaled-back version of what he had envisioned, its passage on a bipartisan vote allows him to make the case that he is delivering on that promise.
"With this bill, we proved that we can still come together to do big things, important things for the American people," Biden said from the White House East Room after the vote.
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But the fight is far from over. The bill now heads to the House, where its passage is not guaranteed.
Progressive Democrats have threatened to withhold their support without an assurance from their leaders that lawmakers will pass a separate budget package that would open the door to spending trillions on health care, education and social programs. Democrats hold a slim majority in the chamber, so the defection of even a few Democrats could endanger the infrastructure legislation.
Tough decisions on other issues will further test Biden’s powers of persuasion and his ability to enact his agenda.
The administration is struggling to contain a surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the highly contagious delta variant and by the reluctance of millions of Americans to get the vaccine health experts say will help get the pandemic under control. The White House said Friday that it is holding early talks about using federal powers to push COVID-19 vaccines among nursing home workers and domestic travelers.
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A legal battle is looming over Biden’s 60-day extension of an eviction moratorium to keep Americans who have fallen behind on their rent from being booted from their homes.
Partisan brawls also are on the horizon in Congress over voting rights, police reform, spending on health care and other social programs, raising the limit on government borrowing and even who should head the Federal Reserve when the term of the current chairman, Jerome Powell, expires early next year.
Biden referenced the coming battles during his White House remarks on Tuesday.
“I have no doubt that you will disagree with me on many issues," he said, speaking directly to congressional Republicans. "But where we can agree, we should."
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Compromise is hard, he said, but "it's important and necessary for democracy to function."
The Senate’s passage of Biden’s infrastructure bill will provide him with much-needed momentum heading into those battles, political analysts said.
“Biden needed this win,” said Kent Syler, a political scientist at Middle Tennessee State University and a former Democratic congressional aide.
“It would have been harder to pass anything if he couldn’t pass this,” Syler said. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell would have sensed blood in the water and worked even harder to stop the Biden agenda and gain an advantage” in the upcoming midterm elections.
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Bipartisan support unlikely on other issues
While the infrastructure package made it through the Senate with the backing of 19 Republicans, Biden cannot count on bipartisan support for other parts of his agenda, said David McLennan, a political scientist at Meredith College in Raleigh, N.C.
“Bipartisan support for legislation will be rarer after the infrastructure bill,” McLennan said. “Police reform, a scaled-down voting rights bill and raising the debt ceiling may garner enough Republican votes to pass, but even those are questionable.”
Biden’s push to spend trillions of dollars on health care, education and social programs – the second part of his overall infrastructure plan – is unlikely to get any Republican votes and could face trouble even from some members of his own party, McLennan said.
“The health care and social safety net programs that are being discussed will test the ability of Joe Biden to negotiate between the progressive and moderate wings of the Democratic caucus in both chambers,” he said.
Biden appears to have public opinion on his side on many of these issues, McLennan said. Health care, for example, is something most Americans want to see improved, such as by lowering the age to qualify for Medicare or by expanding Medicare benefits.
Biden also seems to have picked up the support of Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who chairs the powerful Senate Budget Committee, on improving health care and the social safety net, which will help win over progressives in both chambers, McLennan said.
“It is moderates like (West Virginia’s) Joe Manchin and (Arizona’s) Kyrsten Sinema that may be more problematic,” he said.
Manchin, who hails from a coal-producing state, has raised concerns about climate change provisions in the legislation, while Sinema has said she opposes the bill’s $3.5 trillion price tag.
Republicans won’t support the bill because they oppose even modest tax increases on corporations or high-income earners to pay for the program, analysts said.
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Upcoming elections complicate debate
Also threatening to complicate the debate: The GOP will be hesitant to give Biden another victory heading into next year’s midterm congressional elections.
“It’s important to remember that the central theme in midterm elections since Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican revolution has been that government is broken,” Syler said. “In a nation of angry voters, the messaging battle has centered on who is to blame. I expect 2022 to be no different. Republicans are going to be very reluctant to hand Biden too many wins.”
In an ironic twist, the upcoming election may actually boost chances of raising the limit on government borrowing.
Congress voted in 2019 to suspend the debt ceiling for two years, but that suspension expired at the end of July. Lawmakers must now either raise the borrowing limit or suspend it again by October or the federal government will run out of money to pay its bills.
The federal government has never defaulted on its debts, and despite some Republicans’ insistence that they won’t vote to raise the borrowing limit again, Biden and the Democrats should be able to negotiate a deal, analysts said.
“Except for the extreme Republicans, most in Congress realize that the economy is fragile, especially with the delta variant causing increased COVID hospitalizations and deaths,” McLennan said. “The debt ceiling increase should pass with bipartisan support because sanity will reign, and no one wants to see a major shock to the U.S. economy.”
Especially not with an election just around the corner.
Syler said Democrats should remind Republicans of what happened when Gingrich, the House speaker at the time, threatened not to raise the debt ceiling during a budget battle with President Bill Clinton in 1995. Polls showed most voters blamed the GOP when the standoff led to a lengthy government shutdown.
“In a nation of angry voters looking for someone to hold responsible in the midterms, that could be a compelling argument,” Syler said.
Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on Twitter @mcollinsNEWS.