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      ‘Real compromise’ possible on Biden infrastructure plan, key Republican says

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      Negotiations with Joe Biden over a potentially massive infrastructure investment package are inching forward even though disagreements remain over the size and scope of such legislation, Republican senator Shelley Moore Capito said on Sunday.“I think we can get to real compromise, absolutely, because we’re both still in the game,” Capito told Fox News Sunday.Capito leads a group of six Republicans in regular contact with Biden and White House aides over a bill the administration wants to move through Congress promptly.The Republicans have proposed $928bn to improve roads, bridges and other traditional infrastructure projects. Much of the funding would come from money already enacted into law for other purposes.The administration’s latest offer in negotiations is for $1.7tn and would include spending on projects that go beyond traditional infrastructure, such as homecare for the elderly.The transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, told ABC’s This Week: “There’s movement in the right direction, but a lot of concern … We need to make investments over and above what would have happened anyway.” He also highlighted the need for using the infrastructure bill to address climate change and indicated opposition to shifting Covid-19 relief money to infrastructure accounts.Capito said that following a White House meeting which Republicans viewed as productive, Biden aides stepped away from some ideas Republicans pushed.“We have had some back and forth with the staff that sort of pulled back a little bit but I think we’re smoothing out those edges,” said the West Virginia senator, whose state stands to benefit significantly from infrastructure investment.Republicans continued to balk at raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help finance the projects.“I’m not going to vote to overturn those,” Capito said when asked about rolling back some tax cuts enacted during the Trump administration.She also held the line against including new funding for projects that go beyond physical infrastructure, saying those could be considered in other measures.Talks are expected to continue this week even though Congress is on a break, with the Senate returning on 7 June. When lawmakers return to Washington, Biden will be under pressure from Democrats to sidestep Republicans if talks do not show signs of significant progress.Buttigieg told CNN’s State of the Union there needed to be a clear direction on the infrastructure bill. “The president keeps saying ‘Inaction is not an option’ and time is not unlimited here,” he said.The New York Democratic senator Kirsten Gillibrand told CNN: “I think waiting any longer for Republicans to do the right thing is a misstep … I would go forward.”The Senate could use the “reconciliation” process that requires only a simple majority to advance legislation, instead of the usual 60-vote threshold. The Senate is split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris having the power to break deadlocks.It is not clear if all Democrats would go along with such a process. More

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      How Mitch McConnell killed the US Capitol attack commission

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      Days before the Senate voted down the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol attack, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was adamant: he would oppose the bill, regardless of any amendments – and he expected his colleagues to follow suit.The commission that would have likely found Donald Trump and some Republicans responsible for the insurrection posed an existential threat to the GOP ahead of the midterms, he said, and would complicate efforts to regain the majority in Congress.McConnell’s sharp warning at a closed-door meeting had the desired effect on Friday, when Senate Republicans largely opted to stick with the Senate minority leader. All but six of them voted to block the commission and prevent a full accounting into the events of 6 January.But it also underscored the alarm that gripped McConnell and Senate Republican leadership in the fraught political moments leading up to the vote, and how they exploited fears within the GOP of crossing a mercurial former president to galvanize opposition to the commission.The story of how Republicans undermined an inquiry into one of the darkest days for American democracy – five people died as a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and sought to hang Mike Pence – is informed by eight House and Senate aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.The prospect of a commission unravelsSurrounded by shards of broken glass in the Capitol on the night of 6 January, and as House Democrats drew up draft articles of impeachment against Trump, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, made her first outreach to canvas the prospect of a commission to investigate the attack.In the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, Pelosi had reason to be hopeful. Spurred on by the threat felt by many Republicans to their personal safety, a swelling group of lawmakers had started to agitate for an inquiry to reveal how Trump did nothing to stop the riot.But what was once heralded as a necessary step to “investigate and report” on the attack and interference in election proceedings unravelled soon after, with the commission swiftly reduced to an acrimonious point of partisan contention in a deeply divided Capitol.The main objection from House and Senate Republicans, at first, centered on the lopsided structure of Pelosi’s initial proposal, that would have seen a majority of members appointed by Democrats, who would have also held unilateral subpoena power.And only weeks after the riot, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, was already advancing the complaint for his ultimate opposition: that the scope of the commission did not include unrelated far-left violence from last summer, a political priority that stalled talks.With little progress three months after the Capitol attack, Pelosi made a renewed effort to establish a commission on 16 April, floating a revised proposal that mirrored the original 9/11 commission with the panel evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.Pelosi briefed her leadership team that included the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, the House majority whip, Jim Clyburn, the assistant speaker, Katherine Clark, and notably, the chair of the House homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, about the proposal the following Monday.During that meeting, Hoyer first raised the prospect of also extending equal subpoena power to Republicans – a concession that would allow Democrats to meet all of Republicans’ demands about the structure of the commission – which Pelosi adopted a few days later.By the penultimate week of April, Pelosi had deputized Thompson to lead talks as she felt the homeland security committee was an appropriate venue, and because the top Republican on the committee, John Katko, was one of only three House GOP members to impeach Trump.With the House on recess, Thompson made enough progress in negotiations to brief Pelosi and her leadership team on 8 May that he secured a tentative deal on the commission, though Katko wanted to wait on an announcement until Liz Cheney was ousted as GOP conference chair.Tensions within the House Republican conference had reached new highs the previous week after Cheney continued her months-long criticism of Trump’s lies about a stolen election at a party retreat in Florida, and Katko was wary of injecting the commission into the charged moment.“As soon as the vote on Liz Cheney is taken, he will be prepared to do a joint statement,” Thompson said in remarks first reported by CNN.Minutes after House Republicans elevated Elise Stefanik to become the new GOP conference chair on 14 May, Thompson and Katko unveiled their proposal for a bipartisan 9/11-style commission.McConnell cracks down on the billThe ouster of Cheney solidified Tump’s outsize influence on the Republican party, and set the scene for the weeks to come.McCarthy almost immediately sought to distance himself from the commission and was non-committal about offering his endorsement. Asked whether he had signed off on the deal, McCarthy was direct: “No, no, no,” he told reporters in the basement of the Capitol.By the following Tuesday, top House Republicans were urging their colleagues to oppose the commission bill, with McCarthy positioned against an inquiry on the basis that its scope focused narrowly on the Capitol attack.As Hoyer had anticipated when he suggested that Pelosi also offer equal subpoena power to Republicans, McCarthy struggled to demonize the commission, and several House Republicans told the Guardian that they found his complaints about the scope unconvincing.The Senate minority leader, meanwhile, had until then denounced Trump, who he faulted for inciting the insurrection, and publicly seemed open to a commission. But as it became clear the scores of House Republicans would vote for the bill, his calculus quickly changed.Two days after the Senate returned for votes on 17 May McConnell informed Senate Republicans at a private breakfast event that he was opposed to the commission as envisioned by the House, and made clear that he would embark on a concerted campaign to sink the bill.Underpinning McConnell’s alarm was the fact that Democrats needed 10 Senate Republicans to vote in favor of the commission, and seven had already voted to impeach Trump during his second Senate trial – a far more controversial vote than supporting an inquiry into 6 January.Cognizant that Senate Democrats may find three or four more allies in uncertain Republicans, McConnell cracked down.After announcing at the breakfast event that he would oppose the commission, McConnell railed against the bill as being “slanted and unbalanced” on the Senate floor, in biting remarks that represented a clear warning as to his expectations.He kept up the pressure all afternoon on that Wednesday, so that by the evening, McConnell had a major victory when Senator Richard Burr, who voted to impeach Trump only four months before, abruptly reversed course to say that he would reject the commission.In the end, only six Senate Republicans – Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Bill Cassidy, Rob Portman, Lisa Murkowski and Ben Sasse – voted to move forward on the commission.As the final vote hurtled towards its expected finale, the Senate minority whip, John Thune, who also switched his position to side with McConnell, acknowledged McConnell’s arguments about a commission jeopardising Republican chances to retake majorities in the House and Senate.Summarising his concerns, Thune said: “Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 elections I think is a day lost on being able to draw a contrast between us and the Democrats’ very radical leftwing agenda.” More

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      Joe Biden seeks Republican buy-in but how long before patience snaps?

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      It’s become a familiar process in the Joe Biden era.Biden and Democrats say they will work with Republicans. Republicans say they want a seat at the negotiating table. Then the prospect of Democrats going alone begins to hover over the negotiations.As Biden tries to pass an ambitious and transformative agenda as part of America’s recovery from the pandemic, he has repeatedly said he wants to bring Republicans over to his side. Yet at the same time he has tried to draw a line in the sand beyond which compromise is impossible.It has been like that on how the Biden administration has approached tackling a coronavirus relief package. It’s been like that on confirming some of Biden’s cabinet secretaries. And it’s how Biden has approached his next set of major initiatives, which range from upgrading roads and bridges to helping Americans with childcare.The jury on whether the White House’s political strategy will work is still out. Biden and his team have not yet walked away from talks with Republicans on major legislative proposals. But they have also actively kept the go-it-alone option alive.Case in point: on Thursday the Republican group charged with negotiating an infrastructure deal with the Biden administration rolled out its latest counter offer, a $928bn plan with about $257bn in new spending.When those Republican senators unveiled their latest proposal the divide between the White House’s new infrastructure spending and Republicans’ was about $1.4tn. It’s a gap that would seem like the last straw.Less than a week before this latest proposal, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the lead Republican negotiator, left a meeting at the White House and released a statement from her team saying “the groups seem further apart after two meetings with White House staff than they were after one meeting with President Biden.”But on the day Capito’s team revealed the newest offer, the senator was optimistic. She briefly spoke with Biden later on Thursday. She described the call as “very positive”.But if there was any agreement on Thursday it was that these discussions would not last endlessly.“He’s said this consistently and I think I feel this way too – you don’t want to drag this on for ever,” Capito added.Biden himself said as much the same day.“We’re going to have to close this down soon,” he said.At stake is hundreds of billions of dollars for not just the common types of improvements an infrastructure bill would cover – like roads and bridges – but also incentives for setting up a national grid for electric vehicles, significant investments in the education system, updating research and development and improving the US supply chain.But the sense of urgency is not unique to infrastructure negotiations. Even with Democrats controlling the presidency, Senate and the House of Representatives they have to grapple with the filibuster legislative mechanism in the Senate and slim majorities in both chambers.As a result, there’s always a threat. With infrastructure, Democrats have allowed the possibility of passing some kind of package through a budgetary maneuver called reconciliation. And with other priorities, like a voting rights overhaul or setting up a bipartisan commission to investigate the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Democrats have increasingly shaken their fists and said something must be done if Republicans won’t compromise.On Thursday Republicans showed just how far their interest in compromising went. The Senate failed to move forward on the 6 January commission after the bipartisan panel fell short of the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold, with just six Republican senators joining Democrats in a 54-35 vote.Some Republicans had argued that a commission was unnecessary. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said on Thursday that while he supported investigations into the 6 January mob attack, he saw no reason for the type of committee Democrats have been pushing.Democrats have argued that congressional gridlock on the commission and a voting rights bill could lead even the final filibuster reform holdouts to throw up their hands.Democrats have argued that the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold is too often impossible to achieve and effectively stalls almost all legislating in the Senate.“There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything they’ve asked for,” the Democratic senator Joe Manchin said on Thursday. “Mitch McConnell has made this his political position, thinking it will help his 2022 elections. They do not believe the truth will set you free, so they continue to live in fear.”On infrastructure, Biden and his advisers have signaled a willingness to keep negotiating with Republicans for a few more weeks, longer than they had previously said. But Democrats’ patience is dwindling.On Wednesday Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia stressed the importance of passing some kind of voting rights bill soon.“I think we’ve got to get something done in time to do something about voter suppression bills that have already passed,” Warnock said. More

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      Republicans’ blocking of the Capitol commission shows how deep the rot is

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      The question now is not so much whether the Republican party can be saved any time in the foreseeable future. It is what Joe Biden and the Democrats should do when faced with a party determined to subvert democracy through any means necessary, including violence.On Friday Republicans in the Senate torpedoed an effort to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the deadly insurrection by Donald Trump’s supporters at the US Capitol on 6 January, deploying the procedural move known as the filibuster to stop it even being debated.Fearful perhaps of what such a commission might uncover about their own role as co-conspirators, most brushed aside personal pleas by Gladys Sicknick, the mother of a police officer who was that day sprayed with a chemical, collapsed and later had a stroke and died.“A country that cannot even agree to investigate an assault on its Capitol is in big trouble, indeed,” observed Susan Glasser in the New Yorker magazine.Tellingly Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who previously condemned Trump’s role in the riot, reportedly asked senators to nix the commission as a “personal favour”. It was a sign that the rot now goes deeper than a cult of personality into the foundations of the Grand Old Party (GOP).It is a party that still has room for Matt Gaetz, a Florida congressman under investigation over sex trafficking allegations, who this week appeared to incite supporters to take up arms. “We have a second amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it,” he said.Gaetz was speaking in Georgia on his “America First” tour alongside local congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently compared coronavirus mask mandates to the Holocaust. The pair of mini-Trumps are taking his playbook of attention-grabbing outrage to new extremes.Bill Kristol, director of the Defending Democracy Together advocacy organisation, tweeted on Friday morning: “Marjorie Taylor Greene bragged yesterday that she and Matt Gaetz are taking over the GOP. Today Senate Republicans are set to block a January 6th commission that could make that somewhat more difficult. Violence and authoritarianism has enablers as well as instigators.”One of America’s two major parties now falls outside the democratic mainstream – think “far right” in European terms. But are Democrats taking the existential threat sufficiently seriously or sleepwalking towards disaster in the next election cycle?Joe Manchin, a moderate senator from West Virginia, had said Republicans have “no excuse” to oppose the commission. Yet he also repeated his refusal to contemplate abolishing the filibuster, effectively giving Republicans carte blanche to block infrastructure spending, voting rights legislation, statehood for the District of Columbia and more.Minutes after Friday’s vote, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, seemed to get it, arguing that Republicans acted out of “out of fear or fealty” to Trump and made his false claim of a stolen election their official policy. “Trump’s big lie is now the defining principle of what was once the party of Lincoln,” Schumer said. “Republican state legislatures, seizing on the big lie, are conducting the greatest assault on voting rights since the beginning of Jim Crow.”But national voting rights legislation that would counter such steps is in deep trouble on Capitol Hill. Biden’s deadline for a police reform law named after George Floyd has come and gone due to Republican objections. His ambitious infrastructure investment is stalling as Republicans seek to shave billions off.Whatever the president’s head tells him, his heart has always favoured bipartisan compromise. He may also feel obliged to make a show of reaching across the aisle to satisfy moderates such as Manchin. Yet Democratic majorities are painfully narrow and each day brings the midterm elections closer.Fred Wellman, a military veteran who is executive director of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, tweeted: “We need to fight for our Republic. I don’t understand at all what the Democratic leadership is thinking. Stop fucking around. Stop letting McConnell walk all over you. For God’s sake act like you are the majority. We are all out here fighting. Where are you?”That question just became even more urgent and the case for abolishing the filibuster, passing Biden’s agenda and acknowledging that the Republican party has gone rogue just became stronger. More

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      Senate Republicans will likely sink Democrats’ bid to set up Capitol attack commission

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      Senate Republicans were poised on Thursday to kill an attempt by Democrats to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the 6 January attack on the Capitol in which a pro-Trump mob ransacked the building in an attempt to disrupt the formalization of Joe Biden’s winning of the presidency.The bill was intended to set up a 9/11-style commission that would examine its causes and impact and exactly who was involved.Donald Trump is still powerful in the Republican party and has reacted angrily to the idea of such a commission. Observers believe that many top Republicans are fearful of antagonizing Trump and his loyal followers and also worried about what such a commission might uncover, including potential links between Republican lawmakers and some of those who invaded the building.The Thursday vote would mark the first successful use of a filibuster in the Biden presidency to halt Senate legislative action, and is likely to boost pressure on the president to get rid of the Senate tradition that requires a vote by 60 of the 100 senators to cut off debate and advance a bill.With the Senate evenly split 50-50, Democrats needed the support of 10 Republicans to move to the commission bill, sparking fresh debate over whether the time has come to change the rules and lower the threshold to 51 votes to take up legislation.The House had already approved the measure with 35 Republican votes. Democrats have warned that if Republicans are willing to use the filibuster to stop an arguably popular measure, it shows the limits of trying to broker compromises, particularly on bills related to election reforms or other aspects of the Democrats’ agenda.“There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission,” said Senator Joe Manchin before the vote though the centrist Democrat still made it clear that he would not support efforts to do away with the filibuster. “I’m not ready to destroy our government,” Manchin said.Before the vote, Gladys Sicknick, the mother of the late Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick, along with Sicknick’s girlfriend Sandra Garza and two officers who fought the protesters that day, met with several Republican senators to try to persuade them to act.Sicknick was among many officers protecting the building, some seen in videos in hand-to-hand combat with the mob. He collapsed immediately after engaging with the rioters and died the next day.In a statement Wednesday, Gladys Sicknick was more blunt: “I suggest that all congressmen and senators who are against this bill visit my son’s grave in Arlington national cemetery and, while there, think about what their hurtful decisions will do to those officers who will be there for them going forward.”Republican opposition to the commission, however, was carefully marshaled by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who has declared the bill a “purely political exercise”, since Senate committees are already looking into security shortfalls during the Capitol attack.McConnell, who once said Trump was responsible for “provoking” the attack on the Capitol, now says of Democrats: “They’d like to continue to litigate the former president, into the future.” More

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      ‘A ticking timebomb’: Democrats’ push for voting rights law faces tortuous path

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      After six months of aggressive Republican efforts to restrict voting access, Democrats are facing new questions about how they will actually pass voting rights reforms through Congress.The most recent hand-wringing comes as Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democratic senator, made clear earlier this month he still is not on board with the For the People Act, which would require early voting, automatic and same-day registration, and prevent the severe manipulation of district boundaries for partisan gain.Senate Democrats, including Manchin, met privately on Wednesday to map out a path forward on the bill, which has already passed the US House. They were mostly mum about the discussions of that meeting but overall resolute that some kind of voting rights bill has to pass. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said: “It was a really productive meeting.”Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia said: “I think members of the caucus understand the urgency and we’re focused on getting something passed. We have an obligation to the American people to find a way to protect our democracy.”Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterManchin’s opposition comes at a critical moment when there is escalating concern about aggressive state Republican efforts to curtail access to the ballot. Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Montana have all put new restrictions in place this year. Many see this as an existential moment for the Democratic party and fear that Republicans will permanently reap the benefits of a distorted electoral system if Democrats cannot pass federal legislation. There is heightened urgency to act quickly so that crucial protections can be in place when the once-per-decade redistricting process gets under way later this year.“There is a ticking timebomb,” said Wendy Weiser, the director of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, which supports the bill. “It will be a significant failure if [Congress] doesn’t pass these two pieces of major voting legislation. It will be a significant failure for the country, for the American people … I don’t think Joe Manchin wants that on himself.”Manchin is concerned the bill still does not have enough Republican buy-in, and favors an alternative piece of legislation that would reauthorize the Voting Rights Act and require election changes to be pre-approved by the federal government. Some observers say that solely passing that bill, named the John R Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, would be inadequate to undo the suppressive laws that have gone into effect and that trying to get bipartisan support for the measure is a fool’s errand, given the Republican party’s embrace of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. Senator Mitch McConnell has also taken a personal interest in trying to sink the bill, saying it would be devastating to Republicans, McClatchy reported earlier this month.The West Virginia senator’s concern highlights an even bigger question looming over the Democratic party – how to pass any priority legislation with only, at best, 51 votes in the Senate. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, has set August as a deadline for passing a voting rights bill – a deadline the White House has embraced.Schumer has repeatedly said “failure is not an option”. But absent a shift on eliminating the filibuster, a procedural rule in the Senate that requires 60 votes to advance legislation, failure seems to be the most likely option, the Washington Post reported. Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, another Democrat who does not support eliminating the filibuster, bluntly asked the caucus what the plan on the legislation was earlier this month.“The goal of the authors is to get it signed into law. I don’t see a path,” one Democratic senator vented to Politico.In the past few months it seemed like a showdown over the filibuster would come on a voting rights bill. Now, though, some Democrats think that showdown may come over a vote on a 6 January commission to investigate the mob attack on the Capitol. In both cases Democrats don’t seem to have the votes to overcome a filibuster which would spur a showdown.“Part of what I’ve heard is let’s not race to abolish or even reform the filibuster rule because frankly there hasn’t been a ‘casualty on the floor of the Senate’,” said Senator Alex Padilla of California, a former top elections official in his home state. “There’s no bill this session that has died because of the filibuster rule. So what might it be that breaks the filibuster’s back? Is it the infrastructure package? Is it the voting rights bill? Is it a climate change bill?”Manchin’s comments are being closely watched because Democrats cannot afford to lose his vote – or that of any other senator – since they control only 50 seats in the Senate. Manchin has said he does not favor getting rid of the filibuster.But outside groups supporting the For the People Act say they are unfazed by Manchin’s recalcitrance. They remain optimistic that he will eventually come around to support it.“Reports of the bill’s death are very premature. It is still the priority for Democrats in Congress,” Weiser said.“We remain optimistic about the path forward for this bill,” said Tiffany Muller, the president and executive director of End Citizens United/Let America Vote, which is backing a $30m effort to support the bill.Manchin has pointed to a reauthorization of preclearance requirements as a better way to protect voting rights than a sweeping voting bill. Last week, he released a letter with the Republican senator Lisa Murkowski calling on Congress to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, including the preclearance provision gutted by the US supreme court in 2013. “Inaction is not an option,” they wrote.That letter was a “glimmer of hope”, said Padilla.“All the more reason to continue to make the case not just in Senate chambers but in the court of public opinion across the country,” he added, stressing that Democratic efforts to engage in genuine debate would address Manchin’s concern that a real attempt at bipartisanship should be made.Voting groups say it would be a mistake to only pass a voting rights reauthorization. While current proposals would only require certain places with documented evidence of voting discrimination to be subject to preclearance, Manchin told ABC he thinks every state should have to get its voting changes preapproved. Republicans are unlikely to support such an idea. “That’s just not actually in the cards,” Weiser said.“It’s a false choice. It has to be both,” said Stephen Spaulding, senior counsel for public policy and government affairs at Common Cause, a government watchdog group. “They’re both critically important pieces of legislation and it’s a false choice to say I’m for the other and not for this. Because only together will we fully rebalance the state of voting in America to favor access.”Four House Democrats sent a letter to colleagues last week making a similar argument. Advocates are heartened by polling that shows the measure is extremely popular and the fact that Democrats have held together so far and brought the bill to the verge of a Senate floor vote despite some grumbling from their own caucus.“What you’re seeing is a commitment to a floor vote and getting people on record,” Spaulding said.If Democrats went into the 2022 midterms without doing anything to protect voting rights, it would be disastrous, advocates said.“Voters showed up in record numbers to choose new leadership. There were commitments made across multiple Congresses on both bills and so saying ‘we tried’ isn’t going to work,” Spaulding said.“If these bills weren’t to go to President Biden’s desk, they’d have … to articulate why they did nothing when they had the power to do so.” More