Senator Schumer’s Balancing Act: How the Majority Leader Leveraged Divisions in his Party to Pass Historic Infrastructure Legislation

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer holds a press conference alongside fellow Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock. Photo by Senate Democrats via Wikimedia.

In the U.S Senate, the month of August is usually reserved for a well-needed break. Senators look forward to this time as an opportunity to return home, campaign, fundraise and meet with constituents. But in the summer of 2021, the chamber lights didn’t go off at the end of July. Instead, Senators entered into two weeks of an exhausting marathon session. The chamber was kept open under the orders of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who had committed to passing two distinct pieces of infrastructure legislation earlier in the summer. 

Despite the seemingly never-ending obstacles this legislation faced, the Senate passed both bills by mid-August. As infrastructure legislation is a major part of President Biden’s Build Back Better Plan, the passage of these bills was celebrated as the first step toward a major win for the President and his party. 

But the events that occurred during the months-long debate on the infrastructure bills reveals a much deeper story of the divide between the two sides of the Democratic Party, and how the Democratic Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer leveraged these divisions to lead his party to a legislative victory with only the simplest of majorities. 

In June, Senator Schumer announced his “two-track” infrastructure process that included both a bipartisan physical infrastructure bill and a much larger partisan spending package focused on social programs. This announcement kicked off “The Summer of Infrastructure”: three months of marathon sessions, painstaking negotiations, and party infighting. 

The bipartisan bill was born out of the determination of Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema to prove that bipartisanship is alive and well in the Senate. She, alongside moderate Republican Senator Rob Portman, led a bipartisan group of the senators to negotiate a bill that would include $550 billion for traditional, physical infrastructure. After months of negotiations, the bill was finally introduced on the Senate floor in early August. Because it had enough Republican support to meet the necessary 60 vote threshold and overcome a partisan filibuster, the bill was passed on August 10, 2021. 

During these negotiations, another project was taking shape. The second part of Leader Schumer’s plan was a $3.5 trillion spending bill focused on “human infrastructure.” Progressives in the Senate were not satisfied with the bipartisan bill, stating that it did not go far enough to support social programs. Schumer worked with progressive Democrats to create a framework for a bill that included funding for social programs like universal community college, education, and eldercare. Led by Senator Bernie Sanders, Senate progressives went to work.

Unsurprisingly, they received no Republican support for their proposal. This lack of support from Republicans was of little relevance, as Democrats used the reconciliation process, a senate procedural loophole that allows legislation to be passed with only a simple majority of 50 votes rather than the 60 vote filibuster-proof majority required for nearly all other pieces of legislation as long as the legislation is related to the federal budget. 

In his June announcement, Schumer committed to achieving the first step of the reconciliation process, the passage of the budget resolution, by the end of the summer. This would allow the budget committee to work on the contents of the bill in the fall. With exactly 50 members of the Democratic Caucus and exactly 50 votes needed for passage, Senator Schumer and his progressive colleagues had to get every single member of the caucus on board. This meant accounting for both policy and procedural disagreements within the party. 

Since Moderates like Sinema prefer to work on a bipartisan basis, they were initially opposed to the partisan reconciliation package because it was explicitly designed to circumvent the filibuster. Progressives assert that the Senate filibuster has been overused by opposition parties to kill meaningful pieces of legislation. Fueled by the conviction that rules like the filibuster preserve bipartisan compromise, moderates favor the preservation of these traditional Senate rules. 

However, once moderates went to work on their bipartisan bill, they realized that they came to understand that they would need progressive support for its passage. Democrats have very slim majorities in both chambers, and although Sinema’s bill had some Republican support, that support was limited. Sinema and the moderates needed full support from their own caucus. In order to garner the support of Senate progressives, moderates agreed to support the progressive’s spending package. 

For Schumer, party unity was not the solution. Rather, he leveraged the divisions in his party to force support for both pieces of legislation. Had he left the physical and social infrastructure legislation together as one bill, he would have not received near enough moderate support and the bill would have failed. Splitting up the legislation meant Schumer would appease the moderates by allowing them to show the power of bipartisanship, and also satisfy the progressives who wanted to pass a much larger spending package for social programs. Through this delicate balance, Senator Schumer was able to get the bipartisan bill and the budget resolution passed by mid-August. 

The bipartisan physical infrastructure bill became law in November after its passage in the House with a signature from President Biden. The fate of the spending bill is still unknown as moderates continue to wield power in the Senate as the deciding votes. Moderate Senator Joe Manchin has opposed specific pieces of the package including allocations for paid family leave. Senator Sinema has also voiced concern over the $3.5 trillion price tag. Progressives continue to hope that moderates will hold up their end of the deal, but for now, negotiations continue as the next vote has been punted to mid-November. 

As conversations between moderates and progressives continue, the divisions in the Democratic party are clearer than ever. Even with these debates still ongoing, it should not be forgotten how Schumer was able to miraculously leverage the two sides of his deeply divided party to get both pieces of legislation over the first hurdle. Rather than striving for unachievable party unity, Schumer built a legislative house of cards: if one bill died, both bills died. This strategy is a delicate one, but it is that fragility that gives it power. 

Layne Donovan, a junior at Barnard College, is studying American history with an interest in the U.S Congress. She is from Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.