For Jamaal Bowman, Bipartisanship Goes Two Ways
Displeased with watered down infrastructure plan, House freshman reminds that GOP passed 2017 tax cut with no Democratic votes
On the one hand, you have President Biden, who is trying to negotiate with congressional Republicans in good faith.
He's already pared billions of dollars off of his own once-in-a-generation American Jobs Plan infrastructure initiative in an attempt to meet Republicans halfway.
And you have much of the media spotlight on the curiously recalcitrant conservative rump of the Senate Democratic majority — Sens Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona — who remain oddly unmoved against filibuster reform despite Manchin's own public display of exasperation last week over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's obstruction of a bipartisan commission to study the events of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol Building on January 6.
Interestingly, however, it is the lawmakers on the other side of equation who don't seem to be getting enough attention — even as they lose their patience themselves.
Just ask Rep. Jamaal Bowman, an upstart freshman New York Democrat clearly looking to get things accomplished.
That includes Biden's massive American Jobs Plan, which the president first unveiled as a $2.3 trillion investment to renovate and revitalize aging and collapsing US infrastructure but ultimately began cutting back in order to try to win Republican votes.
No more, tweeted a clearly frustrated Bowman, elected to represent much of the north Bronx, as well as the southern half of Westchester County.
“If what I’m reading is true, I would have a very hard time voting yes on this bill. $2 trillion was already the compromise,” he said. “@POTUS can’t expect us to vote for an infrastructure deal dictated by the Republican Party.”
Bowman continued to elaborate on his discontent in further tweets: “Republicans have given Democratic governance the middle finger since the day President Biden was inaugurated. We can’t — and won’t — reward them by keeping Donald Trump's corporate tax cuts in place and slashing our infrastructure package in half.”
One tweet from the streets of his district was particularly poignant, relating how “infrastructure” affects average Americans.
One of the major stumbling blocks for approval for Biden's American Jobs Plan is his plan to pay for it with a modest tax increase for corporations and the well-to-do.
Bowman recalled the history of the enactment Donald Trump's tax cut for the wealthy.
“When Donald Trump cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, it wasn't bipartisan. Not a single Democrat voted in favor," he tweeted. "There's no reason that we need to be bipartisan in repealing that tax cut.”
Many on Twitter thanked Bowman for speaking up — but it took one respondent to offer the congressman some necessary political perspective: “talk to Manchin and Sinema - they are the impediments.”