Brummett Online

OPINION | JOHN BRUMMETT: Some keeping hope alive

It was a bit of a dream May 13. I began a column on that date by writing that what the country needed was the signing of "an imperfect infrastructure bill at a White House ceremony attended by smiling members of Congress representing--imagine this--both parties."

That would be a needed prescription for what ailed the country, the column asserted. Democrats would come down on their number. Republicans would come up on theirs. Democrats would bring along 10 Republicans and jobs would be created to begin work on making the nation's infrastructure sounder and safer.

The congressional leadership, held hostage by the extremes, would be out-muscled by centrist bipartisan leverage. The people's verdict in the last election--a mixed one resulting in the narrowest of Democratic majorities--would be obliged by compromise for incremental progress.

Government would work amid cynical and divisive politics. The perfect would not be the enemy of the good.

So, here it is June 23 and the dream ... well, it's alive if not exactly well. I'm keeping hope alive.

Negotiations on infrastructure broke down between the Biden White House and Republican U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia. It happened mainly because Capito was an agent of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and not seriously compromising. She came up only a little and said never to the mathematical need to pay for the package with a modest corporate income-tax change that would still be less than it was before the last Republican tax cut.

But then the bipartisan center got busy attending to national need over the partisan one. Twenty-one senators daring to cooperate to lead--11 Republicans, nine Democrats and one independent who caucuses with the Democrats--hammered out the framework of a deal.

It would spend nearly a trillion dollars, more than half of that in new construction not already in the pipeline. There would be money for highways, bridges, transportation centers, water systems, and broadband and cybersecurity.

In its first incarnation it would have raised money by converting the gasoline tax to a variable one based on a price index. But the White House rejected that because Joe Biden is strung out on a campaign promise not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year, just as Republicans are strung out on those no-tax pledges they sign every election cycle so they can survive primaries.

Credible governing would be easier if political races weren't so beset by hamstringing nonsense.

It's the pay-for that's the real problem. But there also is serious disagreement about what constitutes "infrastructure" anymore. Democrats hold out for more climate-change spending than Republicans will accept. But published reports indicate that the Biden administration actually has been working with the 21 center-gathering senators and that, if a pay-for agreement could be reached, would be willing to fade the liberal heat and embrace what the bipartisan group is proposing.

Biden wants to keep the left satisfied, but, on something as basic as infrastructure, he wants to show that he wasn't blowing smoke when he talked of bipartisanship and compromise.

He apparently would vow to the left to work on the rest of it for a second budget-reconciliation package. That's a welcome idea, relying on narrower bills rather than vast ones lit up like Christmas trees with wedge issues and peripheral spending.

Budget reconciliation would require only a majority vote, which would still necessitate the backing of such centrist or maverick Democratic balkers as West Virginia's Joe Manchin and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema.

So, you can't quite see the end game. But you have to figure that, if the Biden White House really wants a deal, these 21 senators--and a similar centrist caucus in the House called the "problem solvers" who get less attention because they don't have a filibuster complication--are making him an offer that will be hard to refuse. Biden will need to be permitted a couple of revisions and the Republican dealmakers will need to accept a little credible revenue-raising math.

While I am chagrined to have to say a good word for motormouth Lindsey Graham, that kind of nose-holding is part of compromise and credit should be given where it's due. Here, then, are the bipartisan negotiators who have gotten us this close:

The Republicans are Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Graham of South Carolina, Jerry Moran of Kansas, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, Mike Rounds of South Dakota, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Todd Young of Indiana.

The Democrats are Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, John Hickenlooper of Colorado, Mark Kelly of Arizona, Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Sinema, Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats and is largely a moderate version of one most days.

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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