Why did thirteen house republicans vote for Biden’s infrastructure bill?

Why did some members of the GOP give Biden the win he wanted?

Lauren Elizabeth
4 min readNov 6, 2021

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AP Photo/Alex Brandon

As we all know, the house of representatives voted to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

I’m still pausing to reflect and collect my thoughts when it comes to the fact that the overwhelming majority of members of the so called progressive caucus handed away any and all leverage they had for the passage of an already-scaled-back reconciliation bill to Joe Manchin. As though that wasn’t painful enough, the only reason they had for doing so was Biden’s “word”, in spite of the fact that Manchin himself publicly expressed that he was not committed. All that being said, there was another aspect of the vote on this bill in particular that caught my attention:

Thirteen Republican congressmen and women had decided they were going to vote for the bill, unexpectedly giving Nancy Pelosi and the President the votes they needed.

It seems safe to assume that barring some unforeseen circumstances that would bar him from doing so, Donald Trump has every intention of running for President once again in 2024. He is still the leader of the Republican party, and there are no signs of that changing any time soon. Of course, considering how the godfather himself is certainly not going to want his puppets riding his coattails to hand his opponent a legislative win. And yet, 13 Republicans defied their party leadership and voted for the bill to get it over the finish line.

But, why? What factors were at play that would convince some of these legislators to defy their party and supposedly humiliate leadership?

In America, one need only consider the money.

The ‘bipartisan infrastructure bill’ is a corporate giveaway if there ever was one. It quite literally hands over public infrastructure to private companies, serving as yet another transfer of wealth from the bottom right back up to the top. Taxpayer investment handed right over to corporations that will charge them to use the roads that they paid to build. Would it really be surprising if the donor class decided they were getting tired of the negotiations, and just wanted the bill to pass? Would it really be…

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Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx