Speaker 1: So Joe Biden is ending negotiations with Republicans over the infrastructure bill
and this now puts the possibility of budget reconciliation in focus.
Joe Biden got off to a relatively fast start immediately signing a bunch of executive orders,
undoing some of the nonsense that Donald Trump did, getting the one point nine trillion dollar
covid stimulus passed not as quickly as we would have liked, but still by Washington
terms relatively quickly and then rolling out a very successful vaccination program.
But what is next?
And we've been talking about, well, if it's not going to be infrastructure, it's got to
be something else that's big.
But infrastructure really seems like the way to go.
Joe Biden has been negotiating with Senator Shelley Moore Capito and some other Republicans
over infrastructure legislation.
And CBS News now reports that it's over.
Joe Biden has said to Senator Cappato that the last Republican proposal doesn't meet
the essential needs of our country to fix roads and bridges.
It doesn't prepare the country for a future that will be reliant on clean energy and it
doesn't create jobs.
And this is according to the White House press secretary.
And so what is now next?
And the answer is, I don't know.
When you look at the details that have been released of this negotiation that Joe Biden
had with with House and Senate lawmakers, the he reduced his plan by over a trillion
dollars.
That's a big concession from Joe Biden already.
And then Republicans came up in new investments by only one hundred and fifty billion.
And this is the prototypical situation where you negotiate and you negotiate and negotiate
with Republicans.
You settle on something in the middle and then they don't vote for it anyway.
So what was all of the negotiation for now?
I am not against Joe Biden doing some discussion.
I think it's fine that he did that because now he can say we gave major concessions,
we sliced a trillion dollars off of this thing, and then they wanted to give us essentially
nothing.
And so we're moving on without them.
I don't think that that's a waste of time.
What will become a waste of time is now if they don't simply make this happen via budget
reconciliation, can they actually do that?
I don't know.
I don't know that Joe Manchin actually wants the bill the way that it is.
And by the way, I mean, from an infrastructure perspective, West Virginia is a disaster.
And by infrastructure, I mean traditional infrastructure like bridges and tunnels and
roads in this type of thing.
But broadband infrastructure, health care, infrastructure, educational infrastructure
and on and on.
If there is anybody in the Senate who should be desperate for the biggest possible infrastructure
package, it actually should be Joe Manchin.
But as we talked about yesterday, I wasn't kidding when I said Joe Manchin was going
to be a problem.
And it's not even clear to me that Democrats have the 50 votes in order to pass this via
budget reconciliation.
If we step back for a second.
I've gotten emails from people saying, is this something that can be done via budget
reconciliation?
Sometimes you'll hear some on the left say Joe Biden should just do Medicare for all
through budget reconciliation.
First of all, Joe Biden doesn't support Medicare for all.
But putting that aside, my best reading of when budget reconciliation can be used would
not allow it to be used for Medicare.
For all that being said, there is no question that budget reconciliation can be used to
pass Joe Biden's infrastructure bill with 50 votes in the Senate rather than the 60
you would normally need.
But that's only if you have all 50 votes from Democratic senators.
And it's not at this point clear that Joe Biden actually does.
The New York Times also reporting on the stalled negotiations not really stalled, ended negotiations,
saying after weeks of failed efforts to bridge deep divides, the president pulled the plug,
turning to a bipartisan group to try to salvage a chance at compromise.
My question is, how long do you keep going at it from this approach?
Because you end up with what are sometimes these Pyrrhic victories where you do so much
damage in the process of negotiating something that Republicans will accept that you are
really compromising on your ability to pass something that substantive.
And with the current Republicans, as we saw with the covid bill, sometimes you spend all
this time negotiating and they all vote against.
It anyway, so my sense is that we're sort of getting to the end here.
The New York Times writes sort of pseudo optimistically, the breakdown did not close off the possibility
of a bipartisan compromise entirely.
And the White House signaled that the president would continue seeking one.
He shifted his focus to a bipartisan group of senators, senators who have been working
separately on an alternative, calling three of them personally to cheer on efforts and
encourage them to work with top White House officials to hammer out a deal.
But even if the group can agree on a plan palatable to Joe Biden, there's no guarantee
enough Republicans would accept it.
That that is exactly the point that needs to be considered.
How much longer are we doing this with Republicans who, you know, it's conceivable that you get,
I don't know, Joe Manchin and Mitt Romney in a room and they come up with something
that they say they would support.
But then do you still have 60 votes or are you put in the position of having to go through
budget reconciliation and then you're just arguing with your own side?
You're arguing with Joe Manchin.
Joe, listen, we have forty nine.
We need 50.
What are you willing to do for us?
And this is the exact I mean, when you talk about the type of partizan gridlock that sometimes
it's bipartisan gridlock, when you talk about the type of partizan gridlock where the American
people just look at it and say, this is why I am I am disillusioned about even voting.
This is why we have voter turnout of 50, 55 percent at midterms, because on the one hand,
we understand that every two years we get to say we don't like the people representing
us in the House of Representatives every four years.
You get to say that about the White House.
Every six years you get to say that about your senator from your particular state.
But then when you see this stuff where Democrats aren't even all on the same page, the things
that Republicans and Democrats agree upon, they don't have support for from the broader
party, or you end up in a situation where even those with the majority, in this case
Democrats, a slim majority, 50 50 with the tie breaking vote, are negotiating against
themselves.
And will Joe Manchin vote for it?
Will Sinema vote for it?
I get being disillusioned with the system.
And this is sort of like the worst of the worst of the worst of American politics.
I don't know whether this thing's going to pass.
If you said, you know, take a bet, I think 55, 45 something passes, how much it will
look like Joe Biden's initial proposal.
I have absolutely no idea.
But I'm interested in hearing from you.
Do you think this will go anywhere?