Restoring Faith in Democracy?
The U.S. Senate is in the midst of a highly unusual undertaking. It has just passed by a vote of 69 to 30 a $1.0 trillion bill (the “Infrastructure and Jobs Act”) to improve the nation’s physical infrastructure. Concurrently, senate Democrats adopted a $3.5 trillion budget resolution intended to lead to a bill encompassing a broad range of additional programs to improve the lives of most Americans and make strides toward improving the nation’s environment and curbing climate change. This second bill is intended to be passed by the “budget reconciliation process” and so far has failed to attract a single Republican vote. What makes this unusual is that these two bills are intended to be passed as a package and House Speaker Pelosi has made it clear that she will not even submit them to a vote until the Senate has passed both bills. This plan of action is curious because there is no apparent reason why the two bills couldn’t have been wrapped up into a single budget resolution.
The ostensible reasoning behind this unusual procedure is that President Biden has been eager to have the Congress come together to enact a significant piece of legislation to prove that it can still function in a bipartisan and collegial manner. This would fulfill one of his principal campaign promises to put an end to the hyper-divisiveness that characterized the Trump presidency. The President also expressed a concern that proceeding in a strictly partisan fashion relying on the budget reconciliation process would ultimately bring an end to the democratic nature of our federal government. This raises two important questions: (1) Could these two pieces of legislation have actually been enacted as a single bill utilizing the budget reconciliation process? and (2) Will the enactment of the bipartisan bill help to restore the democratic nature of the U.S. Congress and the faith of the American people in their federal government?
These actions are being undertaken as our nation is seeking to revitalize its economy from the ravages of the COVID pandemic and from 40 years of inadequate investment in its physical infrastructure, its schools and social programs. At the same time, the nation also needs to cast aside the highly partisan political atmosphere which has been a principal cause of many of its economic problems. The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan enacted in March of this year via the budget reconciliation process was the first step in this process and was largely designed to relieve the economic plight caused by the pandemic to the nation’s state and local governments as well its businesses and citizens. The second step in extricating the nation from its economic problems is embodied in the pair of infrastructure bills that the senate just voted on. While it’s only appropriate that the economic issues be accorded paramount importance, it’s also understandable that President Biden did not wish to further the political malaise that now plagues the U.S. Congress by relying solely upon the budget reconciliation process.
There is always a danger in trying to do too many things at one time. Mitch McConnell and the members of his senate caucus are highly skilled at impeding and torpedoing legislative action. Bifurcating the infrastructure legislation will surely increase the length of time it will take to secure the passage of the two bills. It will also increase the possibility that something might happen that would jeopardize their ultimate enactment. This cannot be a small concern with only a one-vote majority in the senate, three Democratic senators over the age of 80 and the Delta variant causing widespread sickness even among vaccinated individuals. There’s also a question (more fully explored below) whether securing one piece (albeit it a very substantial one) of bipartisan legislation is likely to usher in a new era of bipartisanship in the U.S. Congress. Thus, bifurcation seems like too big a risk to take, especially when you consider that the next few months may be the only opportunity to achieve any substantial legislative victories that might help restore the nation’s economy and faith in its government.
In all likelihood, the use of a bifurcated legislative approach was chosen not simply to restore congressional collegiality and bolster the nation’s faith in democracy. The Democratic Party has always been a mixed bag of political beliefs. Among the members of its senate caucus are a handful of senators representing decidedly conservative states who must weigh their every vote in terms of how it will affect their re-election chances. Every straight party-line vote they cast places them closer to defeat in their next election. Among these senators are Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema and John Tester. It’s probably not a coincidence that all three of them became members of the Gang of Ten that negotiated the terms of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. What is clear is that the Democrats will need the votes of all fifty members of their senate caucus to pass a large reconciliation bill and finding a way to secure the votes of the party’s more politically vulnerable members on was more than a high priority; it may have been an absolute necessity.
Adding to this theory is the fact that Kyrsten Sinema, a freshman senator and the most junior Democratic member of the Gang of Ten, was designated as her party’s lead negotiator. Under the circumstances a tough and seasoned negotiator may have only served to prolong the negotiations and possibly caused them to fail. Instead, what was needed was someone who would be willing to concede contentious issues and keep the negotiations moving. The history of the negotiations and the terms of the legislation they have produced also strongly suggests that achieving a bipartisan bill was more a political necessity than an advertisement for how a democratic government leads to good results.
Negotiations of infrastructure legislation actually began in the early spring between the Biden administration and a small group of Republican senators led by Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. The administration was seeking a $2.6 trillion bill covering a wide range of investments in the nation’s physical infrastructure. Senator Capito, however, made it clear that the Republican caucus was only interested in a much smaller bill that had to be fully paid for. She also objected to the administration’s proposal that the proposed investments be financed with increases in income tax on corporations and wealthy individuals. These negotiations soon broke off and the Gang of Ten seemingly miraculously sprung into existence to continue the negotiations.
From the very outset it was understood that their negotiations would be more aligned with the positions previously voiced by Senator Capito. Cutting the Biden administration’s proposal by more than 50%, the Democratic negotiators proposed a bill with over $1 trillion in new investments. The Republicans quickly cut that demand almost in half, limiting new investments to $575 billion. They would continue to call it a $1.1 billion proposal by incorporating $450 billion of previously authorized infrastructure improvements. These proposals were accepted by the Democratic negotiators evidencing that obtaining a bipartisan bill was their principal objective. Once these general parameters were agreed upon, the negotiators determined that the new investments would consist of the following items:
· $110 billion --Roads and bridges;
· $73 billion – Electric power infrastructure;
· $66 billion -- Passenger and freight rail;
· $65 billion – Broadband;
· $55 billion –Clean drinking water;
· $50 billion –Western water storage;
· $64 billion – Public transit;
· $25 billion – Airports;
· $21 billion –Environmental remediation;
· $17 billion – Ports and waterway infrastructure;
· $11 billion – Transportation safety programs;
· $7.5 billion – Electric vehicles;
· $7.5 billion – Low-emission busses and ferries; and
· $1 billion – Reconnecting communities that had been divided by prior infrastructure projects.
The Gang of Ten, however, soon ran into a problem when they discussed how the new expenditures would be financed. Increases in income taxes having been taken off the table, the Republican negotiators, led by Rob Portman a seasoned politician who had served as the Director of Management and Budget during the George W. Bush administration, suggested that tolls and other user taxes be the source of financing. That proposal was rejected because they would have placed the financing burden principally on low income Americans. As an alternative, the Gang’s Democratic members proposed that the bill include a $100 million increase in the IRS’s enforcement budget which might have generated a multiple of that amount in additional tax revenues. That too was rejected by the Gang’s Republican members who cut the IRS’s budget increase to $30 million which they insisted could only be used to pursue tax cheats using cryptocurrencies to hide their incomes.
In a further search for financing the Gang of Ten fixed upon roughly $155 billion that had been appropriated for COVID relief in the 2021 American Rescue Plan which had yet to be expended. The principal problem with this tidy piece of legerdemain is that the federal government’s total COVID relief expenditures had already vastly exceeded the aggregate amount of monies that had been previously appropriated for this purpose. Nor was the Gang of Ten concerned that the Delta variant which epidemiologists were warning would cause a new surge in COVID cases might create a need for additional COIVD relief funding.
The negotiators further decided that monies appropriated for federal unemployment subsidies could be terminated three months early and the roughly $53 billion in resulting savings could be redeployed to finance the infrastructure investments. Again, the Gang of Ten didn’t consider that the growing threat of the Delta variant might also precipitate an increase in unemployment claims. The Gang also projected that the infrastructure developments themselves would place additional monies in the hands of construction workers and that would generate an another $56 billion in tax revenues. In projecting these revenues, the Gang’s members were apparently not bothered by the fact that they were assuming ten years of future revenues to finance five years of projected spending.
When the bill was preliminarily scored by the Congressional Budget Office, its projected revenues came in $25 billion short and that was addressed by the Gang of Ten, not by imposing taxes, but rather by further cutting projected new expenditures from $575 billion to $550 billion. In particular, the negotiators resolved this problem by reducing mass transit expenditures, a cut which would mostly affect major metropolitan areas largely inhabited by Democrats. Last Thursday the CBO delivered its final scoring of the bill and found that far from being revenue neutral, the bill would contribute $256 billion to the nation’s deficit. This finding, while supported by similar pronouncements of other non-partisan groups, did not deter the Gang of Ten or prevent the senate’s passage of the bill.
Even though Donald Trump condemned the bill as “a terrible deal that makes Republicans look weak,” 17 Republican senators disregarded Trump’s directive not to support the bill when it faced a cloture motion and 19 voted for it when it was presented for final passage. One has to wonder why those 19 senators from a party of economic conservatives who regularly voice their disapproval of deficit spending and who routinely vote as a block would have voted to approve this bill. The obvious answer is that the infrastructure improvements embodied in the bill enjoy broad popular support including the approval of approximately 56% of registered Republican voters. In addition, as can be seen from the above description of the negotiations, the resulting bill represents almost everything the Republican negotiators wanted and little of what the Democrats were seeking, including monies for high-speed rail transportation that would service the nation’s densely populated northeast corridor. Even more importantly, the bill does not entail any additional taxes on their donor base. Thus, approval of the bill offered them a substantial talking point for seeking their voters’ continued support.
Another motivating factor was that the Democrats had announced their determination to pass a much larger infrastructure bill in which the elements of the “bipartisan” bill would be included if it were not passed separately. Thus, by voting in favor of this smaller “bipartisan” bill they could at least claim some credit for enhancing the nation’s infrastructure without having to approve the bill containing a host of provisions that their donor base would find objectionable. On top of that, there remained a possibility that the Democrats would not be able to engineer the passage of the larger reconciliation bill in which event both bills would die at the hands of the Democrats, leaving Republicans to still be able to boast about their having enabled the passage of the “bipartisan” bill.
Considering all of these factors, the more interesting question is why did 30 Republican senators vote against it. One possible explanation is that there was good reason to believe that the bill would cause a substantial increase in the national debt. Their support for Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, however, makes clear that those senators only voice that view when considering expenditures proposed by Democrats. Another possible explanation is that they had become accustomed to voting against any bill that might be viewed as a Democratic legislative victory and that their vote against this bill was cast simply out of habit. That explanation also flies in the face of the fact that had all 50 Republican senators voted in favor of the bill, they might have justifiably characterized it as a Republican victory for having caused the Democrats to accept a bill the terms of which had essentially been dictated by their Republican colleagues.
The most likely reason why the overwhelming majority of Republican senators voted against the bill was because Donald Trump had denounced it and had vowed to oppose the re-election of any Republican senator who voted in favor of it. Although Trump’s popularity is slowly waning, he was nevertheless successful in effecting the victory of his chosen candidate in a recent Republican congressional primary election through the injection of a $350,000 campaign contribution. Senate Republicans are certainly also aware that Trump is currently sitting on $100 million which he can deploy against them in their next primary election.
The question remains why Democratic senators would support a bill which is simply a Republican wish-list that achieves only a small fraction of the traditional infrastructure projects embodied in the President’s original $2.6 billion proposal. The short answer is because this bill does not preclude items omitted in the bipartisan bill from being incorporated in the much larger bill they propose to pass using the budget reconciliation process. More importantly, there is good reason to believe that passage of a “bipartisan” bill may have been a requisite condition set down by Senators Manchin, Tester and Sinema for their votes in favor the the reconciliation bill.
While it’s still premature to conclude that the Democrats’ two infrastructure bills will ever be enacted, it’s reasonably clear that this unusual legislative ploy will do little to move the clock back three decades to a time when members of the U.S. Congress regularly worked together to address the nation’s problems. This seems obvious from the way Republican politicians have responded to the Biden administration’s efforts to combat the spread of the Delta variant (see, “Confronting the Delta Variant”) and the fact that 30 Republican senators failed to support a bill that was a Republican “wish list.” Nor is it likely that Donald Trump’s ultimate retreat from politics will trigger a new era of legislative cooperation as opposition against Democratic legislative initiatives has been one of the fundamental facets of Republican political strategy for the past thirty years (see, “Partisan Politics”). For the same reason it seems unlikely that the enactment of the bipartisan infrastructure bill will help Americans believe that the U.S. Congress has been restored to health.
At the very least the enactment of the two infrastructure bills will certainly improve the lives of the vast majority of Americans and help restore some of their lost faith in our federal government. Conversely, the failure of these bills to be enacted will be a terrible disappointment and will only deepen the doubts of most Americans about the viability of a democratic government. No matter the outcome of the legislation, other nations are likely to see the bifurcated legislative strategy as a sign that the world’s oldest and largest democracy is now on life support and is resorting to desperate measures to sustain itself.