McConnell is now demanding that Democrats delink the infrastructure deal and a reconciliation bill, which really just means Democrats can add infrastructure provisions to their reconciliation deal and deny the GOP any leverage or credit.
Before long, we will find out if the Great Bipartisan Infrastructure Negotiations of 2021 will prove any more fruitful than all the infrastructure talk of the Trump administration. Right now, for all the celebration of a deal between a group of senators and the president last week, it’s looking shaky. First, some Republicans in the bipartisan “gang” threatened to abandon the deal if Biden didn’t walk back an implicit threat to veto an infrastructure bill if it didn’t move “in tandem” with a budget reconciliation bill including the rest of his 2021 agenda. Biden complied over the weekend, saying it was “not my intent” to link the two bills so explicitly. But this hardly solved the underlying problem for Republicans. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have their own version of the veto: control of the House and Senate floor, and the reality that a majority of House and Senate Democrats have zero interest in an infrastructure bill unless the Democrats participating in the “deal” — particularly Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — have already signed onto at least a clear outline of an infrastructure bill.
