Bill Straub: We can’t have bipartisanship when McConnell says his job is to stop the administration

Uncle Joe may very well indeed be a sweet guy. But anyone who believes Addison Mitchell McConnell might willingly go along with any White House initiated package likely to attract public approval – the sort of approval that could ultimately prove popular for Democrats at the ballot box – is delusional, regardless of how beneficial it might prove to be.

We know this because Mitch has said as much himself.

Back in 2010, during former President Barack Obama’s initial term, McConnell rather infamously let the cat out of the bag when he announced, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” As majority leader, he thereafter proceeded to erect barriers to just about every goal Obama sought to achieve.

It didn’t work, of course. Obama won a second term anyway.

Now he’s pulling the same game with Biden, a man with whom he’s supposed to be on friendly terms. Despite the reported pleasantries, and Biden’s vow to hopefully work in a bipartisan manner, McConnell recently told reporters that, “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.”

“We are confronted with severe challenges from the new administration and a narrow majority in the House and a 50-50 Senate to turn American into a socialist country, and that’s 100 percent of my focus,” McConnell said.

In other words, the same old same old. The nation’s roads may be crumbling, the Brent Spence Bridge spanning the Ohio River between Cincinnati and Covington may be woefully decrepit and the nation may continue to deal with the effects wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, but you can always count on the Republican leader to gum up the work of those endeavoring to address those problems.

Biden has offered a $2.25 trillion infrastructure bill that includes a wide-range of initiatives that expand the traditional bricks and mortar definition of infrastructure. It also includes, for instance, $400 billion for care for the elderly and disabled, a concept that would seem difficult to argue against but don’t underestimates Mitch giving it the old college try. The president proposes to pay for most of his ambition by raising the income taxes on those earning more than $400,000 per year along with an increase in corporate taxes.

Defenders, and there are some, will undoubtedly note that McConnell, albeit grudgingly, has sorta, kinda agreed to consider an $800 billion package funded by large extent through user fees like an increase in the gas tax.

Of course, being a Republican, McConnell has drawn a “red line” under any proposed tax increase to pay for the projects, specifically any proposal that amends the ridiculous 2017 tax cut bill that primarily benefitted the wealthy and contributed to an increase in the federal budget deficit, a situation the GOP perpetually feigns agony over except when they control Congress and the White House.

The $800 billion gambit is a McConnell face-saving measure that is both woefully inadequate and a prospective burden on everyone other than high income earners. The GOP leader understands it’s insufficient and there is no way Democrats are going to embrace it. But it provides him with a rationale for opposing a measure that appears, at least, to carry substantial public support.

There hasn’t been a lot of polling on the issue, but a Monmouth University survey released in late April showed that 68 percent of those questioned expressed approval of the White House infrastructure proposal while only 29 percent opposed. For what it’s worth, Monmouth is considered one of the better polling institutions.

And McConnell stands on shaky ground to make any sort of argument, at least to some extent because of his one-sided feud with former President Donald J. Trump, who used to treat him as a good boy but now finds him quite lacking. While Biden, the president making the proposal, has an average 53 percent favorability rating according to RealClear Politics, McConnell is at 28.5 percent. To make matters worse, he also trails his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Charles Schumer, of New York, who is viewed favorably by 34 percent of those questioned, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, who comes in at 39.3 percent.

The debate also provides McConnell with a stick that he is already using to poke Biden. The president, in his inaugural address in January, vowed to operate in a bipartisan manner.

“I pledge this to you: I will be a president for all Americans, all Americans. I will fight as hard for those who did not support me as those who did,” he said. “Let’s start afresh, all of us. Let’s begin to listen to one another again.”

That promise has apparently proved more difficult to keep than he anticipated, although why he ever thought Mitch McConnell might prove cooperative is blowing in the wind. His pandemic recovery package passed the Senate without a single Republican vote. And GOP lawmakers, led by McConnell, have cited that fact as evidence that Biden has gone back on his word.

Of course bipartisanship is an entirely foreign concept to Mitch and his cohorts. Their idea of bipartisanship is Biden and the Democrats totally succumbing to their wishes. Anything short would be a presidential power grab.

Be that as it may, there is a path available for Biden to get much, if not all, that he wants without any Republican support and without the threat of a filibuster through a legislative process known as reconciliation. It will require all 50 Democrats – including Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WVa, to hop on board.

It’s a tall order and Biden can expect no real help from McConnell.

Remember all that the next time you’re driving down the highway and your car falls into a pothole as big as Montana.