Fork In the Road

Just before President Biden and a group of Democratic and Republican senators (below) reached a bipartisan deal on a compromise infrastructure package, he an the Democrats announced that there would be a reconciliation bill including everything left out of the compromise that the Democrats could pass in the Senate on their own without a filibuster threat.  This is like a magician telling his audience how he does one of his tricks.  And when Biden said that he would veto the compromise deal if the reconciliation bill didn't get passed, that was like a magician showing his audience how he does one of his tricks. 

Although Biden walked back his comments, saying he's still committed to the bipartisan deal, I can't understand how Biden thinks this two-track approach to infrastructure is going to work.  Republicans who may have backed the deal may now be against it because of the reconciliation bill containing items that the GOP did not agree to, such as day care centers and climate action.  But many pundits seem to think that the deal will hold because Republicans need to go back to their constituents to show that they've gotten things done just as much as Democrats do.  The big risk in Biden's gambit is that the Republicans would be happy to torpedo the deal in the Senate and blame its failure on Biden and the Democrats for insisting on a "progressive wish list."  However, Biden's veto threat may not be so much directed against Republicans as against some of his fellow Democrats - the moderate wing, to be precise, the wing that may be reluctant to go for a European-style investment in human capital because of the costs involved.  Biden seems to think that standing firmly behind the so-called "progressive wish list" to get Democratic Senate moderates like Kyrsten Sinema (Joe Manchin is on board with Biden's plan, saying that reconciliation is inevitable) will back the reconciliation measure as a price to pay for getting the bipartisan deal passed to shore up support from their own constituents at home.

There will be more work on the infrastructure package in the weeks ahead as the details are finalized, and anything could happen.  But if Joe Biden somehow manages to get everything he wants with party unity on his side, that would mean he has a magic trick up his sleeve that he's not going to show us.