Schumer defends tight infrastructure deadline as GOP threatens major vote

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (R) (New York State) speaks to the media during a weekly news briefing on Capitol Hill on May 18, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Mandel Ngan | AFP | Getty Images

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday rejected Republican calls to slow the process of moving a bipartisan infrastructure plan through his House.

Instead, the New York Democrat increased pressure on senators to reach a final agreement on the legislation, and said he had no plans to delay a vote for or down on Wednesday to move forward with a discussion of the plan.

Schumer argued that Wednesday’s procedural vote to advance a House transportation bill that would form part of the final infrastructure package was not a deadline for finishing the more difficult parts of the legislation, but merely a starting point for a formal discussion on what the law should contain.

“It’s not a cynical ploy. It’s not a moment of hunting or baiting. It’s not an attempt to confuse anyone,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday morning.

“It’s just a sign that the Senate is ready to start the process – something the Senate has routinely done on other bipartisan bills this year,” the majority leader said.

Schumer said that once the Shell bill is approved, he will include bipartisan infrastructure language in it on Thursday if a deal is reached by then.

If no agreement is reached by Thursday, but the dummy bill ends up exceeding the 60-vote threshold, Schumer said he would include language from several smaller bills already approved either by Senate committees or the full Senate: Water bill, highway bill, railway and transit bill, energy bill.

Schumer made an original proposal to move the House bill forward Monday night, he said, with the goal of swapping the text of the Senate infrastructure legislation once it’s in writing.

Wednesday’s vote will simply start a debate that Schumer said could take several more weeks – “no more, no less.”

“We’ve waited a month. It’s time to move on,” he said, referring to President Joe Biden’s June 24 announcement at the White House that a bipartisan group of about two dozen senators had reached an agreement.

However, even as Schumer downplayed the importance of Wednesday’s vote, Republican opposition to moving forward with the bill has been hardening in recent days.

As soon as news of Schumer’s plan emerged, Republicans negotiating the infrastructure package shouted and demanded more time to wind down the network of funding sources to push for $579 billion in new infrastructure investment.

“We can’t support a stroke for something we haven’t done yet,” Ohio Senator Rob Portman, the Republican chief negotiator, said Monday night. “It’s ridiculous to go ahead with a vote on something that hasn’t been drafted yet.”

“It doesn’t make sense to try to rush the vote,” Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

“If the majority leader agrees to delay the vote until early next week, make it the first vote on Monday, then I think we’ll have language to show our colleagues, and be able to move forward,” Collins said.

Some Republicans accuse Schumer of forcing a vote on Wednesday that he knows will fail, in order to take it as evidence that Republicans are just stalling the infrastructure bill, never to pass it.

Schumer “wants this vote to fail, because he really wants to go the partisan way,” Republican Texas Senator John Cornyn said Tuesday on the Senate floor.

Cornyn predicted that once the infrastructure bill failed, Democrats would use that as an opportunity to pass a laundry list of progressive agenda items in the budget bill on the party’s direct voting line.

This is an evolving story. Check again for updates.

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