South Dakota Republican Mike Rounds didn’t cast a vote on the INVEST in America Act on Tuesday, and 30 of his GOP Senate colleagues were opposed, but it passed anyway with a healthy and bipartisan 69-vote majority. It’s worth taking a look at the breadth of President Biden’s victory.
In the South, the INVEST Act obviously won the support of Democratic senators in Georgia and Virginia, but it also was approved by both Republican senators from North Carolina and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It won a vote from Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.
In the Midwest, it was supported by Republicans Roy Blunt of Missouri, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Rob Portman of Ohio. It earned votes in the Plains states, including both senators from North Dakota, one from South Dakota, and one from Nebraska. The Mountain states were highly enthusiastic, with Idaho senators Risch and Crapo, as well as Mitt Romney of Utah, joining with all the region’s Democrats to vote in the affirmative. Both of Alaska’s Republican senators were in favor, as well as Susan Collins of Maine, the sole GOP representative from New England. Even Senator Capito of West Virginia was on board, and her state cast 69 percent of its votes from Trump in 2020. And let’s not forget that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said ‘aye’ for the first time in living memory.
There were also two Republican senators who were part of the bipartisan team that negotiated the bill but who were too scared of a primary challenge to follow through and cast a vote for it. I’m talking about Todd Young of Indiana and Jerry Moran of Kansas. They may have chickened out in the end, but they were a constructive part of the process.
One thing is obvious. There’s less of a taboo about working with Joe Biden than there was about working with Barack Obama. That may be mostly about race, and Obama certainly put in the effort in 2009, but we also have to give Biden’s team credit for finding a way when most people thought it was a hopeless and naive task.
It’s all the more remarkable because the Birther controversy that dogged Obama never brought his legitimacy as a president into serious question, but half of Republican voters seem to believe that Biden stole the election and shouldn’t be in office at all. Again, this may highlight how much race played a role in “delegitimizing” Obama, but it also represents a high hurdle that Biden somehow cleared with ease.
I’ll follow up with some discussion of the future of the INVEST Act as it heads to the House of Representatives, as well as the significance of the legislation which is very substantial. For now, I just want to make sure we note that Biden just did something that a lot of people justifiably believed was impossible, and he should get credit for it.
Totally about race where it concerns Obama. Don’t ever forget that Republicans fear and hate the “other.” Total hatred of blacks is the reason why the lynching of black men is still happening in Mississippi today. Do not let these racists off the hook.
Hearty congratulations are due to the president and the many others who helped put this together. But now we move from the appetizer to the main course— the 3.5 Trillion reconciliation package. I have seen it written in a few places that democratic leadership support for the infrastructure bill was conditioned on a promise by Manchin and Sinema that they would vote aye on the larger package, since they were both heavily invested in the passage of the smaller bill. I wonder if anyone knows any details about that that they’d care to share. Let’s see now if the two of them follow through on that promise. It’s going to be interesting to say the least.
This is Jesus with the loaves and fishes. Not a big, flashy miracle, not curing a leper, but a genuine legislative miracle nonetheless. Lincoln, FDR, Obama and Biden all walked into messes, wars, depression, near-depression, insurrection.The first three did well in their turn, and now Mr. Biden may be joining them in the lemons-to-lemonade club. Early days, still, but I think we got ourselves a good one.
I disagree. I think they voted to pass this because the threat to put it all in the reconciliation package was real, and this is their best leverage to reduce the total amount of spending. It reduces the intensity to remove/reform the filibuster. And perhaps the final reconciliation bill is smaller as a result of this passage.
All I know is that I’d have advised them to pass this if they wanted to reduce Biden’s overall agenda. It was the best play when you know it may have passed regardless.
Thanks for your comment. As our gracious host noted in a recent post, Biden and the Democrats had to do this bipartisan bill *not* because of the Republicans but because some of their own members (Manchin, Sinema) *insisted* on it as the price of their support for a reconciliation bill. No “bipartisan infrastructure bill”; no reconciliation bill.
And Republicans will have no say in the size of the reconciliation bill. That’s entirely a negotiation within the Democratic caucus. And again, centrists like Manchin and Sinema will have undue influence on the size and scope of the reconciliation bill because they’re the ones most willing to walk away from passing the legislation.
McConnell & company may be attempting some 11 dimensional chess move by voting for the bipartisan bill in the hopes that they’ll have more influence on Manchin and Sinema in the upcoming negotiations over the reconciliation bill, but that’s pretty clearly a fallback/second-best strategy for the GOP. McConnell’s clear preference has been to do to Biden what he did to Obama—stonewall and obstruct at every turn so as to give Republicans the best shot at winning the 2022 elections…regardless of the harm it does to the country.
Chalk this one up as a win for Biden. His victory prize? He gets to move on to the even more difficult intraparty negotiations over the reconciliation bill.
If McConnell obstructed it all and prevented passage of bipartisan package, then the calculations of Sinema and Manchin change. He couldn’t string it along forever like he did in 2009 with Chuck Grassley promising Max Baucus he’ll deliver the votes any day now (and any day now is still into the fall past August recess). Without that history, McConnell would have tried that again, but with it he could never have hoped for success. His only play was to go as long as possible, and before August recess is about as long as possible.
And of course it could potentially influence Manchin and Sinema. He has the argument that “hard” infrastructure is passed and that’s what they value more (maybe Manchin does, maybe he doesn’t; he seems pretty concerned with drug overdoses, and “care work” would fit that umbrella). But now the sails have been trimmed. And the dance goes on regardless.
This post comes after Martin’s latest, and as he spells it out, this was definitely part of the calculation.