Infrastructure spending should be consensus-driven

One of the enduring truths of politics is that campaigning and governing are two distinctly different things. Campaigning draws on partisan passions; governing requires a willingness to put partisanship aside in order to fulfill our duties as legislators.

When I served in the House Republican majority in the 112th Congress, we negotiated with the Senate Democratic majority and the Obama administration to ensure the United States would not default on its sovereign debt. Without bipartisan cooperation — a term more optimistic than “compromise,” because when we cooperate everyone wins — we could have engendered a catastrophic default.

Today’s Democrats, with their exceedingly narrow advantage over their counterparts on the other side of the aisle, seem to have forgotten that bipartisanship in governing is not only a virtue but a necessity.

A global pandemic has hobbled our economy, and one of the ways both Republicans and Democrats agree would accelerate recovery is to build and restore crucial and ailing infrastructure.

Democrats are aligned behind a package that would require a massive $1.7 trillion expenditure. Republicans, with an eye to fiscal prudence, have offered several alternatives that seek to put guardrails on the inflation-inducing spending spree by limiting the definition of “infrastructure” in ways Democrats contend are outdated.

In a laudable effort to break the deadlock, a growing bipartisan group of senators have offered a $1.2 trillion package. Regrettably, the majority of Democrats who are not among those reaching across the aisle are pressing the White House to move ahead with their much-larger package, rolling Republicans via the Senate’s reconciliation process.

Going it alone six months into the new administration would be a mistake.

Compromise is the essence of responsible democracy, but no one said it was easy. Regular-order legislating through bipartisanship is difficult given the polarization of our politics, but it is the surest path to achieving durable and effective policies. The alternative is gridlock — in Congress and on the road.

Infrastructure offers the best chance to demonstrate that Democrats and Republicans can work together.

If there’s a hero in this story so far, it’s Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. The wise and capable West Virginia Republican has traveled repeatedly between Capitol Hill and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue trying to reach a compromise with President Biden.

Capito, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environmental Public Works Committee, deserves credit for her steadfast commitment to a deal. She has brought much-needed realism to the talks, including raising concerns about the effect of unfettered spending on future generations. Capito and her fellow Republicans have a point: the U.S. Treasury is anything but an endless fountain of wealth.

The federal government has spent more than $5 trillion to try to sustain the economy since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, including the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package Biden pushed through his first month in office. In all, Congress has appropriated five times the amount of taxpayer money since last March than it did in response to the 2009 Great Recession, and now it’s time to return to rationality.

A growing economy and a healthy environment go hand-in-hand. Smart investment in modernizing America’s infrastructure — the kind of projects that improve the flow of goods and services, update our power system, increase efficiencies, and expand opportunities for everyone — make sense and pay dividends for decades. But policymakers must also be good stewards of the public checkbook.

The good news is that Congress has already shown this year that it can craft consensus spending packages by following the traditional, committee-centered process. Regular order promotes transparency, deliberation, and wide participation of members in creating consensus policies.

Capito and her Republican colleagues are right to insist that the work done at the committee level on the annual spending bills count toward the overall investment in infrastructure and job creation. Those bills were built with bipartisan support, including a surface transportation bill approved by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee by a 20-0 vote.

Democrats appear committed to their strategy of using the budget reconciliation process to go it alone on infrastructure — should they succeed, it would be a Pyrrhic victory with disastrous long-term consequences.

The president and his congressional colleagues stand a better chance of achieving durable policy on the economy and climate change if they accept the three-quarters of a loaf that Republican are offering rather than greedily demanding the whole thing.

The Honorable Nan Hayworth, M.D., represented the 19th District of New York in the 112th Congress, and she is now the chair of ConservAmerica, a conservative conservation advocacy group that works with Congress to develop and implement market-oriented approaches to protecting the environment, promoting cleaner forms of energy production, and outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing.