Bipartisan infrastructure pact clears key Senate vote after breakthrough in talks

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

Senate Democrats and Republicans banded together on Wednesday to advance a roughly $1 trillion proposal to improve the country’s aging infrastructure, overcoming months of political deadlock on one of President Biden’s signature economic policy priorities. The day of breakthroughs began with news of a deal, as a bipartisan bloc of 10 negotiators coalesced around a package to upgrade the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections. The announcement from some of the group’s leaders, including Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), capped off a series of frenetic talks that nearly collapsed amid behind-the-scenes battles about the new spending and how to pay for it.

With that once-elusive agreement finally in hand, the Senate hours later then took its first formal legislative step. Lawmakers voted 67-32 to put themselves on track to begin debating infrastructure reform this week, clearing the first of many hurdles toward adopting a proposal that the White House has described as historic.The twin developments marked an early victory for lawmakers who have struggled for years to turn their shared enthusiasm for infrastructure into actual investments in the country’s inner-workings. Several past presidents had called for robust, new public-works spending to replace old pipes and fix cracked bridges, yet only on Wednesday did the Senate actually move toward delivering on those promises.

The news sparked jubilation at the White House, where Biden this spring put forward a roughly $2 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan funded largely through tax increases that Republicans swiftly rejected. But the administration’s top aides ultimately proved willing to be flexible in the months that followed in how they pursued some of the president’s priorities. Asked about the deal while traveling in Pennsylvania, Biden sounded a hopeful note, telling reporters: “I feel confident about it.”

Yet the progress still threatened to prove politically fragile in a debate that is only just beginning. Lawmakers must still draft their legislation, which had not been written by Wednesday evening, and calibrate it in a way to survive the narrowly divided Senate. The absence of actual legislative text troubled some Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), who said in a speech on the chamber floor he could not vote to forge ahead Wednesday because the bill is “not ready.”

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/28/senate-infrastructure-deal/

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Here's the roll call on the cloture motion (was curious myself since it was 67 - 32 - 1) - https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=117&session=1&vote=00285

YEAs ---67

Baldwin (D-WI)
Bennet (D-CO)
Blumenthal (D-CT)
Blunt (R-MO)
Booker (D-NJ)
Brown (D-OH)
Burr (R-NC)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Capito (R-WV)
Cardin (D-MD)
Carper (D-DE)
Casey (D-PA)
Cassidy (R-LA)
Collins (R-ME)
Coons (D-DE)
Cortez Masto (D-NV)
Cramer (R-ND)
Crapo (R-ID)
Duckworth (D-IL)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hassan (D-NH)
Heinrich (D-NM)
Hickenlooper (D-CO)
Hirono (D-HI)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Kaine (D-VA)
Kelly (D-AZ)
King (I-ME)
Klobuchar (D-MN)
Leahy (D-VT)
Lujan (D-NM)
Manchin (D-WV)
Markey (D-MA)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murphy (D-CT)
Murray (D-WA)
Ossoff (D-GA)
Padilla (D-CA)
Peters (D-MI)
Portman (R-OH)
Reed (D-RI)
Risch (R-ID)
Romney (R-UT)
Rosen (D-NV)
Sanders (I-VT)
Schatz (D-HI)
Schumer (D-NY)
Shaheen (D-NH)
Sinema (D-AZ)
Smith (D-MN)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Tester (D-MT)
Tillis (R-NC)
Van Hollen (D-MD)
Warner (D-VA)
Warnock (D-GA)
Warren (D-MA)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
Young (R-IN)

NAYs ---32

Barrasso (R-WY)
Blackburn (R-TN)
Boozman (R-AR)
Braun (R-IN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Cotton (R-AR)
Cruz (R-TX)
Daines (R-MT)
Ernst (R-IA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Hagerty (R-TN)
Hawley (R-MO)
Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kennedy (R-LA)
Lankford (R-OK)
Lee (R-UT)
Lummis (R-WY)
Marshall (R-KS)
Moran (R-KS)
Paul (R-KY)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sasse (R-NE)
Scott (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD)
Toomey (R-PA)
Tuberville (R-AL)
Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 1

Rounds (R-SD)

[ColinC]

1. Still hard to believe

But incredible news!

[BumRushDaShow]

3. It's just step 1

to allow it to even be debated! They still have to actually get something to the floor with enough to get 51 votes to pass it.

[karynnj]

6. I think 60 are needed to allow it come to a vote if that.procedural vote is not waved.

Yes,there can be two closure votes as there were on ACA.

[BumRushDaShow]

8. The 60 was needed for one part (which they are doing now)

but the reconciliation piece will only need 51, where obviously the problem is getting all 50 Ds to sign on (and/or some combo of a few Rs to give them at least 50/50 with a Harris tie-breaker or 51+).

What they just did cloture on was an Infrastructure bill that passed the House at the beginning of the month. With them having announced some bipartisan "break-through" thing now, they may end up using that to tack on to the House bill as amendments or as a "substitute" and send it back to the House (since money bills have to originate in the House).

And no, the ACA didn't have 2 cloture votes - just the one after Dems passed Part 1 in December 2009, but then lost a special election seat in MA to Scott Brown, dropping them down to 59 Ds in the Senate. That meant they were forced to "fix" Pt. 1's additional funding/stipulations through reconciliation as a Pt. 2, and at that point, they only needed a simple majority (which they still had with all Rs voting against it).

[karynnj]

9. In 2009, there was a cloture vote to proceed to debate the ACA and later a cloture vote before

The final vote to pass the bill in the Senate. The Senate bill passed on December 24. Scott Brown was elected in January 2010.

When Scott Brown won, it meant the normal process of a Conference bill that could then pass both houses wouldn't work because no cloture vote would succeed.The House then passed the already passed Senate bill and that bill was signed by Obama. At the same time, a separate bill was passed in both houses that fixed a few things in the just passed ACA bill and made changes to the student loan process.

The intent now is to pass this bipartisan bill under regular process meaning they will need 60 votes again at the end. The plan is a seperate Democratic bill that the Senate Budget committee is working on will also pass under reconciliation which requires 50 votes.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. I watched the hearings, the markups, the amendments, the debates, and all the votes

from Obama's first "Health Care Summit" meeting in February 2009 with stakeholders, through to final passage of the reconciliation in March 2010 (after Democrats had to deal with their own who were part of the "Stupak 17", who threatened to kill the whole thing due to their problems with the reproductive health & abortion, since they didn't even feel that the Hyde Amendment was enough).

So we are basically saying the same thing but we're also talking about 2 different sets of circumstances (based on the Senate's party breakdown), 2 different pieces of legislation, and a pile of very different sets of actions.

For what eventually became the PP-ACA, there were something like 6 Committees across both chambers working on their own versions of "the bill", although the way the media was portraying it was as if each Committee's markup in either chamber would be the "final" version, causing DU to continually freak out all summer long, and into the fall during that sausage-making process.

There were a number of "cloture" votes during the Senate Amendment process once they initially voted on cloture to consider the House's version "as is", which they then amended profusely.

Since both chambers had passed or modified their own bills and they were obviously different, a joint Conference Committee was formed to reconcile the different versions, and then use THAT version for their respective chambers for consideration (with stipulations on limiting amendments, etc) and a final vote. The media had a field day once more on "the bill... the bill... the bill".

There was a final cloture vote in the Senate on THAT (joint) version, and THAT is what originally passed in December, and went to the House for final passage.

The result was missing some critical features that needed fixes added, but by then, Democrats lost a super-majority to thwart a cloture on the fixes legislation, so their "fix" had to be done in a 2nd piece of legislation as reconciliation.

THAT is the "2nd cloture" issue that I'm talking about (not the internal motions to proceed/clotures that are part of the normal Senate Amendment process).

The 2 bills were these -

H.R.3590 - Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

H.R.4872 - Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

The floor action for all of this is here - https://www.congress.gov/bill/111th-congress/house-bill/3590/all-actions?overview=closed#tabs

Yes I am a CSPAN junky and followed this (along with my mom who was a CSPAN junky) and experienced the summer drama with Al Franken finally being seated and my own Senator Arlen Specter switching parties to give Democrats the 60 votes needed to not have to worry about cloture.

Regarding the infrastructure bill - they have no choice but to have to use reconciliation for some part of it, due to being forced to whittle stuff down to get the 60 votes for the main bill (which is something that was never an issue for the ACA until they realized they needed a fix for it but then lost the ability to do it under regular order).

[karynnj]

17. I also watched everything in 2009/2010 - probably more completely in the Senate than in the House

I watched most of the Finance committee and the HELP committees hearings. The point I was making was that both a cloture bill to enter debate and one to vote were needed - as well as many other procedural votes by the Republicans to make the passage as difficult as possible.

I agree that the circumstances were very different -- this IS a bipartisan bill, while ACA had no Republican support, even from people like Olympia Snowe who had supported similar things for years. They had no choice to get a comprehensive healthcare bill other than to pass the bill already passed in the Senate in the House - even with flaws.

We actually did have to worry about cloture even in the approximately 4 months with 60 Senators. This meant that we still needed to make sure Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, and Landrieu were on board. Letting people 60 to 65 buy into Medicare was not an option because of Lieberman and they could not get the public option.

I was posting because someone posted that all they needed now for passing this bill were 50 votes. In fact, they will have to survive at least one more cloture vote to pass the Senate.

[BumRushDaShow]

18. I think we are still saying the same thing

but I have been emphasizing that at some point, a reconciliation bill needs to happen because to get closer to what the House wants than what this current bill is probably going to evolve into, would never get 60.

And regarding the ACA (or anything that requires money) - they will take a House bill that has already been passed and sent their way (whether directly related to the desired legislation or close to it), and if they don't plan to do a simple up or down vote on it without any changes, they will use that bill to amend, including even amending their own version of the bill to the House one "as a substitute", and then vote on it, and finally send it back to the House.

When they are doing that type of finagling, to save time, they try to work the Rules (through the Rules Committee) so that they can limit amendments and debate on the modified bill once it gets back to the House so they can reduce (or even eliminate) the back and forth stuff (when possible).

And don't forget one of the biggest jackasses prancing around from our side watering stuff down as Chair of the Senate Finance Committee - Max Baucus.

[karynnj]

21. I completely agree

I think Baucus got played by the bipartisan group that wasted 4 or so months -- months that in retrospect became more and more valuable. I suspect that Obama may have been in agreement with him wanting some Republican votes - as in year one they may not have realized that that would not happen.

[The Mouth]

15. WE should take this and come back later

I know there will be the 'purity' idiots who say "I WANT EVERYTHING OR NOBODY GETS ANYTHING". They are as much of a blight on the USA as the Rethugs sometimes. No, you never get everything you want in politics without solid control of both houses and the presidency.

Let's get the infrastructure, the HARD, physical infrastructure funded and planned, and then drive for the 'soft' stuff; otherwise, we get nothing and OUR fanatics will be as much to blame as theirs.

I want fully funded healthcare for all, daycare for every family, renewable energy, and, of course, economic and social justice as much as anyone, but we have to get bridges, roads, water, and connectivity up to par while we can do this, in case we get screwed in the mid-terms. If we increase our majority in '22 we can work on the rest.

Politics is the art of the possible; half a pie is better than none.

[abqtommy]

2. I don't want this thing to pass. I don't think the reTHUGS want it either but they really don't

want the full, fully funded partisan bill at all.

[yaesu]

4. 1 trillion for 8 years is tRump change, what a disgrace, especially after handing wall street $10T n

[OneCrazyDiamond]

5. Isn't this dead in The House,

Until the 3.5T reconciliation bill gets passed? I thought Speaker Pelosi made that a requirement. Seems like should work on that.

[BumRushDaShow]

7. There are 2 parts for they want to do and this was one of them, which already passed the House

H.R.3684 - INVEST in America Act - https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684

(remember that since the power of the purse resides in the House, all money bills have to originate (or appear to originate) from the House)

NOW the Senate is going to debate it (now that they invoked cloture) and will probably amend it and if they do, it will have to go back to the House again for consideration.

ETA - they will probably use that House bill to amend their version onto it as a "substitute" and send it back to the House (again to preserve the Constitutional requirement that money bills originate from the House)

[Calista241]

10. I don't see Pelosi sitting on this bill for months after it passes the Senate.

Sinema said she would be working on reconciliation “in the coming months.”

I know Pelosi has said the house wouldn’t take it up until they also get a reconciliation bill, but if it passes the Senate, the pressure will be enormous to get it signed by the President.

I also suspect the Repubs got a promise from one or a few of the Dems on the size of the reconciliation package. I’d be surprised if the reconciliation bill is anywhere close to the $3.5t Bernie wants. I’d guess it’ll be about the same size as the bipartisan bill (so another $1t or so).

[drray23]

11. if she get its passed we will never get sinema, manchin etc.. to sign on the reconciliation bill

they will declare that the bipartisan bill does enough and refuse to vote for the other.

[BumRushDaShow]

13. Reconciliation can only be done ONCE in a fiscal year

There are 3 types of bills that are eligible for using the reconciliation budgetary process - one that deals with revenue (taxes), one that deals with spending, and one that deals with the debt. Each of these 3 types can only be used once each FY, and can be standalone or combined into 1 or 2 separate pieces of legislation.

They have already used the "spending" reconciliation option this fiscal year for the "American Rescue Plan" (the stimulus thing that was signed into law at the end of April of this year).

Therefore they can't use that option again for the Infrastructure bill this fiscal year. They have to wait until next fiscal year (FY22), which literally starts October 1st, 2021.

So that is why the talk about "months and months".

August starts this Sunday and so you have the whole month of August and the whole month of September before you can even introduce something like that. And even then, since September 30 is the end of the FY and there is a need for funding the government for FY22, they are going to be tied up in that process of probably doing a CR (continuing resolution), potentially resulting in a Ted Carnival Cruise-syle government shutdown.

So they want to get some base package drafted (that requires cloture) and then see what is needed later to do any supplemental funding instructions for it using a 2nd package through reconciliation (which is the PITA due to Manchin, Sinema, and probably some others who don't do circus floor shows for attention like Chris Coons).

Because the power of the purse resides with the House, the Senate has to do all of this using some House-passed legislation, and then they work the amendments on it as a "substitute" and have the House accept that as "their version".

[Lasher]

16. Good insight.

Thanks, Bum

[OneCrazyDiamond]

14. She sounded pretty serious.

"There ain't gonna be no bipartisan bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill," she said. "As I said, there won't be an infrastructure bill, unless we have a reconciliation bill. Plain and simple. In fact, I use the word ain't. There ain't going to be an infrastructure bill, unless we have the reconciliation bill passed by the United States Senate,"

[Sapient Donkey]

19. Has NewsMax suggested this is evidence of Biden's tyrannical rule yet?

[BumRushDaShow]

20. SnoozeFux can go pound sand