I’m having an increasingly hard time figuring out what Republicans get from the deal they’ve been working on with Biden. Which, by the way, is official as of this afternoon according to the president himself:

“We have a deal.”

President Biden announced a bipartisan infrastructure agreement after meeting with Democratic and GOP senators at the White House. pic.twitter.com/GNGN47wZA7

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 24, 2021

Ed wrote earlier about the strange posture here. If the GOP had managed to negotiate Biden down to a much less expensive infrastructure bill with no tax hikes, that might be a worthy compromise. But they haven’t. There are two parts to the Democrats’ infrastructure plan, one a bipartisan bill that deals with roads and bridges and the other a party-line reconciliation bill that covers “human infrastructure” like climate-change spending, paid leave, and so on. Spending that doesn’t end up in the bipartisan bill will likely just be lateraled over to the reconciliation bill, which means Republicans aren’t achieving much in terms of spending. Essentially they’re pressing on one end of a water balloon, shrinking that end but causing the other end to swell as the water is displaced.

The volume of the balloon is the same whether they’re pressing or not, it’s purely a matter of distribution. And frankly, if that’s the case, maybe Republicans should have done the opposite of what they did, arguing to put more money into the true roads-and-bridges infrastructure component and thereby (hopefully) shrinking the “human infrastructure” reconciliation bill. That would have been risky since Democrats can pass a “human infrastructure” bill of whatever size they like irrespective of how big the true infrastructure bill gets. But maybe if the latter were bigger Joe Manchin would get nervous about blowout spending and be more inclined to shrink the other component.

Biden and Pelosi are both nervous about being double-crossed by Manchin, who’s been dogged about trying to compromise with Republicans. If we do the bipartisan roads-and-bridges bill first, they’re thinking, then after it passes Manchin could turn around and say, “Sorry, changed my mind about the ‘human infrastructure’ bill. No dice.” So today both the president and the Speaker issued an ultimatum. Unless and until both bills pass the Senate, they’re not moving on the bipartisan bill. That bill, the roads-and-bridges one, will essentially be held hostage to make sure Manchin plays nice on reconciliation.

President Biden promises he will not sign the bipartisan infrastructure bill without a Democratic reconciliation bill along with it:

“If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing.” pic.twitter.com/XuBPfqMpbH

— The Recount (@therecount) June 24, 2021

.@SpeakerPelosi on #infrastructure: "We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill."

Full video here: https://t.co/mYeH43suPW pic.twitter.com/ulwMjpBQ6Y

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 24, 2021

Now you’re thinking, “Wait, Manchin doesn’t take orders in Washington. He gives them. He should tell Biden and Pelosi that if they don’t pass the roads-and-bridges bill first he won’t even consider the ‘human infrastructure’ bill. He’s in charge here, not them.” True, except … Manchin wants the “human infrastructure” bill to pass.

Manchin also said he’s "open" to a reconciliation bill that changes the 2017 GOP tax law to raise taxes to pay for new spending programs. He said that "reconciliation is inevitable" because of Republican opposition to raising taxes.

"I'm open to that," he said.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 24, 2021

MANCHIN tells me of the two-track strategy for infrastructure: "It's the only strategy we have, is two track…"

"Reconciliation is inevitable," he said, "There's going to be a reconciliation bill, we just don't know what size it's going to be…"

— Frank Thorp V (@frankthorp) June 24, 2021

He may be a centrist Democrat, but he’s still a Democrat.

This weird two-track infrastructure process appears to have been entirely orchestrated by Manchin for purposes of pandering to his mostly Republican base back home. He’s going to pass a blowout infrastructure package and he’s going to cut the GOP out to do it, but he wants them to be in on part of it at least so that he can say to his conservative constituents, “Look at me, fighting to make sure Republicans have a place at the table.” What I can’t figure out is why the GOP would play along with him. They have some leverage too here, after all. They could have told Manchin, “Okay, we’ll compromise with you on roads-and-bridges but if and only if you agree to oppose the ‘human infrastructure’ stuff during reconciliation.” Why didn’t they?

Maybe Manchin would have told them no and done the entire infrastructure package via reconciliation — but that’s an outcome he was trying hard to avoid, again so as not to alienate his Republican supporters in West Virginia. He really, really wanted GOP buy-in here. And … they gave it to him, for some reason.

I guess Republicans figured it could only help them in the midterms to have struck at least one big bargain with Biden, knowing how Dems will accuse them of being mindless obstructionists who need to be voted out in order for Washington to get anything done. But midterm voters are usually okay with obstruction; it’s why the out-party typically wins, because they promise to put a brake on the president’s agenda. And it’s just frankly out of character for Senate GOPers to care about being seen as bipartisan. Sure, there are the Susan Collinses and Lisa Murkowskis who worry about that sort of thing, but what’s Bill Cassidy doing as part of these negotiations? Why is retiring Rob Portman eager to get something done on infrastructure, knowing that Manchin can and (probably) would pass a big roads-and-bridges package via reconciliation anyway if the GOP refused to deal? Senate Republicans’ constituents would still get infrastructure goodies, in other words. It’s purely a question of whether the GOP would get to take even a little credit for it.

Manchin obviously gets a political win out of this deal. Biden gets one too since now he and his party aren’t on the hook for all of the spending in the blockbuster infrastructure bill to come. I’m not clear on what Republicans get, though, apart from being able to claim that they’re capable of bipartisanship — which their base, and a whole lot of swing voters, don’t seem anxious about. And the price of that bipartisanship is that they’ll no longer be able to attack the infrastructure bill as a case of Democratic spending run amok. The GOP will bear some responsibility for that spending now.

I’ll leave you with this, which is weird even by Biden standards.

This is nuts pic.twitter.com/L592KeVXaZ

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) June 24, 2021