It's do or die time for the Democrats on infrastructure

Democrats.
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Much to the surprise of many, it appears President Biden and members of Congress have come to a bipartisan agreement on an infrastructure package. The details of the plan have not yet been released, but it is widely expected to be pretty bad from progressives' point of view — probably with some privatization of assets, highway funding paid for with regressive user fees, and so forth.

However, that's not the end of the story. The rest of the Democratic Party is demanding another infrastructure bill, this one passed through the reconciliation process so it cannot be filibustered by Senate Republicans. As Greg Sargent writes at The Washington Post, the idea is to go through with a bipartisan deal to appease moderates like Sen. Joe Manchin (W. Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), and then have Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) pass the rest of the party's agenda with a reconciliation bill organized by the Senate Budget Committee (which he chairs).

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.