National Review Online
Thursday, June 24, 2021
Last month, we warned Republicans about the pitfalls of indulging
President Biden’s infrastructure fantasies. The bipartisan framework announced
Thursday isn’t causing us to change our mind.
There is much to dislike about the so-called compromise
proposal (even putting aside the minor detail that the nation’s infrastructure is not, in fact, in dire need of
repair). The deal negotiated by a group of five Republicans and five
Democrats would mean $579 billion in new spending that, when slapped on top of
what the federal government is already slated to spend on infrastructure, could
mean $1.2 trillion in outlays over the next eight years. In a year when the
White House expects U.S. debt as a share of the economy to be the highest in American history, the plan is vague about
how everything will be paid for. A White House “fact sheet” touting the plan has a line-by-line breakdown
of the various new spending initiatives along with descriptions, but only
bullet points on the proposed financing mechanisms, without any dollar amounts.
Those bullet points include lines such as, “State and local investment in
broadband infrastructure” and “Repurpose unused relief funds from 2020
emergency relief legislation.” Additionally, the plan lists “Reduce the IRS tax
gap” and “Unemployment insurance integrity.” In other words, they couldn’t get
the numbers to add up, so they went for the old Washington standby of combating
waste, fraud, and abuse.
While this framework deserves to be rejected on the
substance alone, it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter, which is that this
entire process is a charade. Democrats have made their plans very clear. They
want to move the bipartisan plan through the Senate on a parallel track with a
reconciliation bill stuffed with liberal wish-list items that will be rammed
through on a pure party-line basis.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said both bills
would be moved through the Senate next month, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the
House would not even consider acting on the bipartisan bill unless the far-left
one also passes the Senate.
That brings us to the ringleader — Biden himself.
Appearing in front of the White House with the group of
senators on Thursday, Biden was all smiles, touting the amazing bipartisan
achievement. He spoke about how he had to give up some of the things that he
wanted, such as the “human infrastructure” of subsidized child care, to reach
an agreement.
“They have my word,” Biden said. “I’ll stick with what
we’ve proposed, and they’ve given me their word as well,” he said. He earlier
claimed, “A lot of us go back a long way, where we’re used to doing one thing —
give each other our word, and that’s the end.”
But that is not the end.
Later in the day, Biden told reporters that he would not
in fact sign the bipartisan infrastructure deal unless it came to his desk
together with the Democrats-only reconciliation package. He said, of the
bipartisan bill, “if only one comes to me, this is the only one that comes to
me, I’m not signing it. It’s in tandem.”
Given that Democrats are treating the two bills as a
package deal, why should Republicans view them any other way? Biden is not in
fact giving up any ground by signing on to some provisions with Republicans if
he’s going to get everything he wants anyway via a partisan parliamentary
maneuver. All that Republicans would be giving Biden would be the veneer of
bipartisan cover. Imagine if, in 2017, Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell
announced a bipartisan deal with Democrats on some tax-reform provisions they
agreed with, then passed the rest of the Republican tax bill anyway and called
it bipartisan tax reform. It would be viewed as absurd, and rightly so. Such is
the case this time around.
Republicans should reject this patently ridiculous and inaptly named “compromise.”
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