How close are we to the end of the infrastructure road?
While progress is underway in the Senate, NPR sees a “a long, potentially months-long slog ahead.”
On Monday evening, senators voted on three amendments to the bill, Punchbowl reports, but Majority Leader Schumer and Minority Leader McConnell “have yet to reach a larger agreement on the number of amendments that will be allowed and how long the voting will continue before Schumer moves to cut it off.”
But “August in Washington isn’t any senator’s idea of a good time,” Politico writes, and Schumer is “betting it won’t take long for senators to get so tired, and miss enough events back home, to dramatically speed up the Senate’s endgame on the infrastructure bill.”
More importantly, this is the rare occasion where both leaders are aiming for passage. McConnell said Monday, “Infrastructure is exactly the kind of subject that Congress should be able to address across the aisle.”
The hangups will come in the House, where, as NBC Nightly News reported, “some progressive Democrats have criticized [the infrastructure bill] for not being enough” -- even though, as Politico writes, it includes many things progressives want, “from boosting mass transit and high-speed rail to addressing the impacts of climate change to closing socioeconomic divides in clean water and broadband internet service.”
Passing a bipartisan infrastructure bill has been one of President Biden’s main goals, and he is not sitting idly by. The Hill reports, “The White House on Monday sent polling data to congressional Democrats touting the popularity of the bipartisan infrastructure deal.” The memo, citing new data showing “broad support,” follows on a White House memo from last week citing the poll “conducted by HarrisX for the bipartisan group No Labels, that found that 72 percent of voters in battleground congressional districts” back the plan.
The WSJ highlights the bill’s funding “to improve internet access for poor and isolated communities” -- provisions that, Roll Call says, are winning praise from both “telecommunications industry groups and digital equity advocates.”
A NYT headline says it all: “$1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill Pours Money Into Long-Delayed Needs.” Bloomberg columnist Tyler Cowen writes, “In an era supposedly marked by gridlock and polarization, a centrist infrastructure bill is on the verge of passage.”
Now’s the time for supporters of two-party solutions to press the House to get it done.
Also…
· Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Chris Coons (D-DE), who co-chair the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus, will appear in “a livestreamed discussion on the opportunities for bipartisan climate cooperation and the role of the private sector in the energy transition” today at noon, hosted by the Atlantic Center.