Chuck Schumer Just Crushed Mitch McConnell’s Plot To Block Biden’s Agenda

3 years ago 506

Majority Leader Schumer dealt a death blow to McConnell’s attempt to block Biden’s agenda on the Senate floor.

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Senate Majority Leader Schumer said:

So we are pursuing multiple paths. We are making two tracks. The first legislative track is bipartisan. The second track will incorporate elements of the American Jobs and Families plan and will be done through the budget process, which must pass even if it is not bipartisan.

There has been significant progress this week on both tracks.

Yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators announced they had reached an agreement in concept for a bipartisan infrastructure proposal. And I have encouraged them to move forward, but I have made it explicit to every one of them—together and separately—that we have to pass both tracks together.

….

These two efforts are tied together. Let me make that clear. The bipartisan infrastructure bill and the budget resolution are tied together. If the Senate is going to move forward with a bipartisan infrastructure bill, we must also move forward on a budget resolution as well.

I have discussed this with President Biden directly on several occasions, and he agrees that we cannot do one without the other, and he has let the participants know that. Speaker Pelosi agrees that we cannot do one without the other. All parties understand that we won’t get enough votes to pass either unless we have enough votes to pass both.

Mitch McConnell’s plan was to get President Biden to take a smaller infrastructure billand then block the rest of his agenda by not allowing a second bill to pass. McConnell gambled that Democrats wouldn’t have the votes or the stomach to use reconciliation to pass such a large package on their own.

McConnell was wrong.

By misreading the lay of the political land, McConnell gave President Biden everything that he wanted. Biden gets a bipartisan deal on infrastructureand also gets to make the lives of the American people better through the reconciliation process.

Biden and Schumer knew what McConnell was going to do, so they devised a way around him and left the Senate Minority Leader powerless to stop the popular Democratic president.

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