Republicans have rejected a Democratic offer to wrap up outstanding final details on the bipartisan infrastructure package, imperiling promises from the Senate group to have the bill finished by Monday. This week is crucial for moving ahead on the bill, but there are still outstanding issues over things like funding for mass transit.
Republicans in the bipartisan group objected to Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-New York) filing to advance the bill last week, saying that the bill would be ready by Monday. Every Republican in the Senate voted against advancing the bill, making it fall far short of the 60 votes it needed to advance to debate on the floor.
Now, Monday has arrived, and there are still multiple issues that have yet to be hammered out within the group — and the two parties can’t even agree on which issues are still outstanding.
“The ‘global offer’ we received from the White House and Chuck Schumer was discouraging since it attempts to reopen numerous issues the bipartisan group had already agreed to,” a GOP source told CNN. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) said over the weekend that the outstanding issue was on funding for mass transit on the Republican side.
But, according to Democrats familiar with the negotiations, there are more unresolved issues than just mass transit. Funding for crucial infrastructure like highways, water and broadband are still in question. There’s also still disagreement in terms of how much of the leftover COVID stimulus funds can be used to pay for the bill and on a rule called the Davis-Bacon, which says that federal contractors can’t pay employees less than the “prevailing wage” for construction projects.
Senators were optimistic over the weekend that it can be done soon. “We’re down to the last couple of items, and I think you’re going to see a bill Monday afternoon,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia) said on Sunday on Fox News. With Republicans rejecting the Democrats’ last offer, that deadline could very well be missed.
If the senators come to an agreement on the bill soon, then Schumer could call a vote to advance the bill again this week. If it fails to garner the required votes, he’ll have to start the process of filing for cloture all over again, which could delay the bill even further.
Time is of the essence as the Senate is set to leave for recess in two weeks. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) emphasized again over the weekend that she wants the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill to be passed with the infrastructure bill, so this week is crucial for getting the bills moving.
Not only are Republicans in disagreement over what’s left to negotiate, they’ve also expressed frustration with Democrats over the transit issue. They claim to have made fair offers to Democrats on transit, and have threatened to withdraw their support unless the Democrats capitulate to their offers. “Unless Democrats show more flexibility, this deal is unlikely to happen,” a GOP source told Politico.
It isn’t much of a surprise that Republicans again seem to be delaying the infrastructure bill. They’ve held up the bill for months in negotiations, and are still unsatisfied with it despite having whittled it down to nearly an eighth of the original size that President Joe Biden had proposed. And, still, they blamed the delay on Monday on Democrats.
“If this is going to be successful, the White House will need to show more flexibility as Republicans have done and listen to the members of the group that produced this framework,” a GOP source told CNN. But the White House has already capitulated to a wide swath of Republican demands, watering the bill down to what it is today.
Instead, it’s Republicans who bear more responsibility for delaying the bill than Democrats. In the first Senate-wide vote on the measure, they had rejected Schumer’s cloture filing last week despite the fact that final details don’t need to be ironed out in order for the bill to advance to debate on the Senate floor, as the majority leader pointed out.
Democrats and progressives have said repeatedly that the months-long delay is a tactic employed by the GOP to polarize and water down Democratic proposals. They point to the example of the Affordable Care Act under President Barack Obama when Republicans similarly dragged out talks for months only to vote against it anyway. In the process, however, they achieved what they set out to do — politicize and weaken the bill considerably.
“My fear is that we could see a repetition of what we saw with the Affordable Care Act,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) told ABC last week, “where discussions went on and on and on and then never went any place.”
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.