As Republicans scuffled with Democrats and the White House over the massively watered-down bipartisan infrastructure package on Monday, former President Donald Trump issued a statement pressuring the GOP to drop the negotiations entirely.
Trump said that the negotiations make the Republicans look weak and criticized Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) for capitulating to Democrats’ demands on the infrastructure bill, even though McConnell isn’t part of the bipartisan group forming the package. It’s McConnell, too, who has been unforgivingly critical of the Democrats’ proposals on infrastructure.
The former president also said that the Republicans should wait until 2022 to pass an infrastructure package, when he thinks “proper election results” — Republican-favoring results — could come in.
“Don’t do the infrastructure deal, wait until after we get proper election results in 2022 or otherwise, and regain a strong negotiating stance,” Trump said. “Republicans, don’t let the Radical Left play you for weak fools and losers!”
Trump’s statement comes as Republican senators are blaming Democrats for yet another delay in the process, despite the fact that it’s the GOP that has dragged the infrastructure talks on for months. The statement from the former president, not known to mince words as much as his Republican colleagues, is also a show of the Republican mindset on the bill.
President Joe Biden and Democrats have already agreed to massive cuts to the infrastructure bill. The topline new spending has come down from $4 trillion to $579 billion, shedding many of the climate and socioeconomic measures from Biden’s original proposal along the way. Republicans have also had their way with the pay-fors on the bill, successfully cutting provisions to tax corporations and the wealthy and even nixing a proposal to fund the Internal Revenue Service to enforce existing tax laws on the rich.
For Republicans, cutting nearly all of the transformative measures from the bill evidently isn’t enough. Democrats sent Republicans an offer on Sunday to wrap up outstanding disagreements on the bill, which Republicans not only rejected but also branded as an insult, saying that the items on the Democrats’ offer were already decided.
The debacle is laying bare what appears to be the Republican strategy on negotiating for the bill, and elsewhere: Force Democrats to capitulate, or else threaten to withdraw GOP support altogether, thus imperiling the passage of the bill itself. It’s also possible that the Republicans, forever dangling the bipartisanship carrot in front of Democrats, were always planning to make good on their threats to kill the legislation in the end and make Democrats look weak.
Now Trump telling Republicans to withdraw their support reinforces that message. Republicans have largely gotten everything they wanted; the total figure for new spending in the bipartisan bill, $579 billion, is far closer to the GOP-only infrastructure offer of $257 billion from May, than Biden’s original proposal of $2.25 trillion.
Allowing Republicans to delay and weaken the bill over the course of several months is precisely what progressives were warning against early in the process for the bill. In May, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) warned the White House against negotiating with the Republicans, saying, “the bottom line is the American people want results.”
The public doesn’t always consider whether or not a bill was bipartisan when they see tangible positive results, Sanders said. “Frankly, when people got a, you know, $1,400 check or $5,600 check for their family, they didn’t say, ‘Oh, I can’t cash this check because it was done without any Republican votes,’” said the senator, referring to the direct relief payments passed in the American Rescue package.
Sanders warned later that month that Democrats could lose Congress in the midterm elections if they push too hard for bipartisanship with the party that has a stated disinterest in the practice. Progressives in Congress also put pressure on the White House to stop giving in to Republican demands on infrastructure, saying that they would withdraw their support for the bill if it omitted crucial proposals to address the climate crisis.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 231 new monthly donors in the next 2 days.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy