Dear America,
Just when we thought that bipartisanship was a possibility, both parties--and both parties claim to be in favor of bipartisanship--demonstrated that they weren't really up for it. This dénouement didn't even miss a beat after the announcement of the "bipartisan infrastructure deal" agreed to by our president and a group of legislators from both parties and both houses of congress. Almost concomitant with President Biden stamping his imprimatur on the deal, he announced very publicly that if a bill to authorized the additional spending that his original, pre-bipartisan-compromise bill included...a few trillion dollars worth of social infrastructure spending intended to remedy logistical problems suffered by the middle class, to be specific...he would veto the compromise when it reached his desk. Mere seconds passed before Republicans bellowed foul, and I have to say, their discomfiture seemed quite fair. Either it was a bipartisan deal or it wasn't. Saying that it was no more than a preface to giving President Biden and the Democrats what they wanted and the Republicans refused to agree to was saying that in reality, there was no deal at all, and Biden saw immediately that he had to recant his intransigence. Within a day he announced, again very publicly, that he didn't really mean it; he offered some dubious explanation for reneging on the bi-partisan deal, and we were back on track toward getting some repair and construction work underway, work that had been clamored for in the halls of power for about four decades since the Mianus River Bridge collapse in 1983, when it became clear that there was something rotten in America, and we drive over it every day. It took people dieing on Interstate 95 in Connecticut to get everyone's attention, but still...other than specific repairs in certain places, nothing redemptive was done by our politicians until this week.
But within hours, the Republicans drew their foot-shooting pistol as they are wont to do and started firing away. The Democrats had agreed, in the name of bipartisan compromise, to the actual infrastructure components of their bill, and to pursue the other parts separately, by reconciliation if necessary. Reconciliation is a legislative process for budgetary measures that allows a bill, once passed by The House, to be passed by The Senate with only 51 votes and to eschew the near certainty of a lethal obstruction by the Republicans. Both parties have used it, and it has gained a kind of pragmatic legitimacy by virtue of its utility in thwarting the sheer Arcanum of The Senate's self-serving protection from having to vote against something that the people might like out of party loyalty: the filibuster. So, while not particularly savory, the Democrats' presaged tactic was legitimate, but the Republicans couldn't just let it lie. They howled that the Democrats self-disclosed intentions were violative of the bi-partisan deal, even though the two were no longer linked...even though the log rolling intended by the Democrats to ensure that infrastructure could only be part of a package deal including measures that were very popular among voters but not Republican politicians had ceased. Now, the Republicans were howling like a stuck elephant again, stating that they wouldn't vote for the compromise bill if the other bill got sent over by the Democrats. But this time they were as far in the wrong as our president had been. The notion that a bill to address crucial infrastructure needs could only be passed if the Democrats never tried to pass what they had wanted before is preposterous. In fact, the only purpose that a bipartisan infrastructure bill could have served was to get its provisions signed into law regardless of other issues, not to their exclusion as possibilities. The two parties had obviated mutual destruction of their respective good intentions, but after that bill was passed, it was back to internecine legislative practice again, and there was never any reason to believe that one bipartisan bill would make both houses of Congress bipartisan for keeps.
The irony in all this is that we seem to be back where we started. Despite an actual bipartisan process to address our nations infrastructure needs without partisan dramatics having succeeded, neither party could just let it happen. Both parties have stated an intention to wreck what is the first good big thing Congress has done in years. They finally earned their paychecks, but in the end, they just couldn't bring themselves to do the right thing, and we're back to business as usual; nothing will get done. The Republicans could save the deal by just voting for it and doing their worst relative to the reconciliation that's in the offing. That was always how the deal was intended to work, but they won't. Unfortunately, we can't get their paychecks back, but that would surely be what they deserved...all of them. What we can do however is vote.
Your friend,
Mike
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