Biden’s personal touch and GOP retirements: How the bipartisan infrastructure bill beat the odds

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s decades of experience in the Senate and his personal faith in compromise were rewarded Tuesday, when his $1 trillion infrastructure bill passed the Senate in a rare bipartisan vote of approval.

The vote was the culmination of months of intense work by the White House and a bipartisan group of 10 senators, who negotiated a dizzying series of compromises that maneuvered the bill through a deeply divided Senate. 

In the end, 19 Republicans crossed party lines Tuesday and joined all 50 Democrats in voting for massive new investments in roads, bridges, broadband access, public transit and green energy.  

The vote was a massive vindication for Biden’s belief that despite its arcane rules, the Senate still fundamentally works as it was intended to — a belief not shared by many of Biden’s fellow Democrats.

To make it work, however, a remarkable set of circumstances had to come together in the past few months, a perfect storm of politics and policy. 

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Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/10/how-biden-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-beat-the-odds.html