You knew without looking that Politico’s spin on House passage of Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill Friday night would accent the negative. They didn’t disappoint.
At CNN, news of eight people crushed to death and 300 injured by a surging crowd at the Astroworld Festival in Houston pushed to the side passage of the long-awaited $1.2 trillion bill for rebuilding U.S. bridges, pipes, ports, and for expanding broadband internet access.
But the Washington Post places the news up top below the banner:
The bipartisan 228-to-206 vote marked the final milestone for the first of two pieces in the president’s sprawling economic agenda. The outcome sends to Biden’s desk an initiative that promises to deliver its benefits to all 50 states, a manifestation of his 2020 campaign pledge to rejuvenate the economy in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic and “build back better.”
The path to passage proved littered with political conflict, pushing to the limits a fractious party with still-widening ideological fissures. Democrats initially hoped to approve the infrastructure bill on Friday along with a separate, roughly $2 trillion proposal to overhaul the nation’s health care, education, immigration, climate and tax laws. Doing so would have advanced two spending initiatives that have been stalled on Capitol Hill for months.
Thirteen Republicans voted with Democrats on (who knew?) “Joe Biden’s Communist takeover of America.”
Six progressive Democrats voted against the bill, including the four original members of The Squad: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, plus two new members, Jamaal Bowman of New York and Cori Bush of Missouri.
When I first saw the raw count on C-Span, my assumption was that the Democratic dissenters were moderates or conservatives from red districts. Former congressman Heath Shuler from my red district repeatedly voted against his caucus to show his independence for the conservative folks back home when Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a master vote-counter, knew his No vote did not matter for passage. That is what’s happening here, only on the left. Progressives were intent on not voting for the infrastructure package without also voting on the larger Build Back Better reconciliation package, now delayed. This is how prominent progressives demonstrate their displeasure without sinking the bill. So far this morning I spot no statements from the group.
Economist Michael Hudson wrote late Thursday that the Democratic Party is unreformable, echoing complaints from many on the left who believe the party hopelessly in thrall to corporate money. He cites what has been cut from the original BBB bill to satisfy “neoliberal Clintonite centrists” the likes of Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
“The Democratic role is to protect the Republican party from challenges from the left,” he writes. “The fear is that the bipartisan $1 trillion business-friendly infrastructure bill will be passed, leaving the BBB’s social programs abandoned.” The first happened Friday night, and the second may yet happen.
But Hudson adds, “The failure to solve this problem seems to be a duplicitous ploy of President Biden and the Democrats’ quasi-Republican Clintonite core.”
Really? First, as I’ve noted before, there is no The Democrats. Manchin and Sinema notwithstanding, that Democrats secretly want to sink Joe Biden’s signature legislation is drifting into conspiracy territory, no matter how many on the left have convinced themselves that’s what’s actually at work. It’s stunning that with how tenuous Democrats’ control of Congress is — and with zero margin for error in the Senate — some of us still expect the caucuses can magically strongarm people like Manchin and Sinema into submission. If the first premise reflects conspiracy thinking, this second is magical thinking. And using Democrats’ failure to work the magic as confirmation of the first premise confirms the fact that conspiracy theories are not the sole province of QAnon. As Anat Shenker-Osorio said recently, “Motivated cognition is a hell of a drug.”
Those duplicitous House Democrats delivered Biden’s infrastructure package Friday night.
Pelosi had enough votes to pass to allow The Squad to make its statement of protest without screwing the rest of the caucus. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York won’t have that luxury when it’s time in the Senate to vote on BBB.