President Joe Biden and members of the bipartisan group of 21 senators met Thursday morning to discuss the tentative agreement those lawmakers and the White House reached Wednesday on an infrastructure package. Wednesday evening, Republican senators in the group were quick to declare a deal was all but inked. "Republicans and Democrats have come together along with the White House, we’ve agreed on the framework and we're going to be heading to the White House tomorrow," Sen. Mitt Romney told reporters. "I'm optimistic that we’ve had a breakthrough," Sen. Susan Collins said.
A Democrat helped pump up the idea. "We came to an agreement on the plan that we have, and it's just a matter of trying to wrap it up tomorrow," said Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. He's not saying who "we" is because that doesn't seem to include the White House, and it doesn't mean there's actually a plan. That's the case if you listen to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who was far more circumspect, saying they had "made progress towards an outline of a potential agreement." That's enough to keep talking on, but most definitely not a deal. "The president has invited the group to come to the White House tomorrow to discuss this in person," Psaki continued.
The deal, as far as anyone has told reporters, is $559 billion in new spending, down from $579 billion that leaked in a two-page list of bullet points that was disavowed by senators when it leaked last week but now seems to be what they were talking about the whole time. They've "repurposed" $20 billion they had directed toward broadband to cut that total. No other details have been released thus far.
This is a massive trimming of Biden's original proposal—$4 trillion in hard infrastructure that upgraded roads and bridges and invested in combatting climate change, as well as an investment in the "care economy," providing funding for home health aid for seniors and the disabled. That's out of this deal. After prolonged discussions with Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, Biden had shrunk the offer to about $1.7 trillion in new spending.
White House officials met with Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Leader Chuck Schumer later Wednesday, and the two leaders said they support the bipartisan effort in concept but intend to continue on with a second track of budget reconciliation that can pass with just Democratic votes and would include the priorities that aren't in the bipartisan agreement. Pelosi reiterated that Thursday morning in a call with her members.
There’re plenty of hurdles on that bipartisan package, should it really come together, on both sides of the political divide. Some Democratic senators are working hard to point that out.
"We have made our position clear, that the possibility of a bipartisan deal depends on a commitment to move forward on reconciliation," Sen. Brian Schatz a Democrat from Hawaii promised earlier in the week.
Meanwhile, Republicans who aren't in that bipartisan group have coalesced around a talking point: Biden doesn't really want a deal. Sen. John Thune, Mitch McConnell's second-in-command, kicked off the talking point, saying, “Where there's a will there's a way. If the White House really wants a deal, there's a deal to be had there." That signaled the the Republicans to pile on.
"It makes me wonder how badly the White House even wants a bipartisan deal at all," North Dakota's Sen. Kevin Cramer told Politico. "I'm a little frustrated by how intransigent they've been."
"I don't know why they keep taking things off the table," Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, chimed in. "Clearly they wanted a tax increase, and we took that off the table, but all along the hardest part about this is the pay-for. People sort of treat that as an afterthought when that should be the first thing we address."
"Republicans are trying to suggest things, but you wouldn't think this administration would be against a user tax," Iowa's Chuck Grassley said. "They're saying that's a tax on low-income people? It probably is a regressive tax, but people don't have to use it if they don't want to." That would be news to Grassley's rural neighbors. He lives in Iowa. People are going to walk to the grocery store from their farms?
What Republican have achieved is eating up about three months’ worth of legislating time that could have gone toward getting these packages pushed through. They've also achieved the ability to say "we negotiated in good faith and now they're reneging" when Biden and congressional Democrats push the reconciliation bill. That's inevitable. As will be their efforts to continue to drive a wedge between the Democrats who participated in this bipartisan charade and the rest of their caucus, peeling any votes they can away from a reconciliation bill.