SC to get $6B from the infrastructure bill. How Jim Clyburn got it to Biden’s desk
Congressman Jim Clyburn was confident he would secure enough votes to pass President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill after a day of arm twisting, which put Democrats on the precipice of their most important legislative victory since the party reclaimed the White House.
But there were a handful of holdouts who Clyburn, the chief vote counter for House Democrats, had outstanding concerns about heading into the Friday evening vote.
The South Carolina congressman and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gathered with staff just off the House floor in a small, gilded, gold room that had little more than a printer, chairs and a monitor that displays vote totals. Pelosi was speaking to the president on her cell phone and asked Clyburn to update Biden on the status of negotiations.
“I need you to talk to him, to explain to him where we are,” Clyburn recalled Pelosi telling him. “So I told the president that I thought that we were in a good place. That we could pass a bill. But I thought that he needed to get on the phone with several people.”
Clyburn said he gave Biden the names of four or five lawmakers he said the Democrat should call.
In an interview, Clyburn said he told Biden the lawmakers — whose names he declined to share with McClatchy — could be convinced, “but that he had to do it.”
“And I told him I thought he just needed to let them know that it’s time to pass this bill, and we need to do it tonight. And he did. He got on the phone with those people,” Clyburn said.
Within an hour of midnight last Friday, the House passed the $1 trillion infrastructure package — a much-needed legislative win for Biden, who for months had pushed lawmakers in the deadlocked chamber to move on his agenda.
The episode illustrates the power that Clyburn, who has served as majority whip twice and assistant Democratic leader when his party was in the minority, has amassed in the nearly 30 years he has served in Congress. His influence in Washington has only continued to grow with Biden in the nation’s highest office.
Clyburn’s endorsement of Biden in South Carolina’s 2020 presidential primary is credited with helping to shift the trajectory of the Democratic contest. Within days of Biden’s victory in the state, most of his remaining competitors dropped out of the race.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison, who was Clyburn’s floor director when he first became party whip, said that Clyburn’s pragmatism and focus commands respect from lawmakers in his party and from Democrats across the country.
“I think Jim Clyburn is part of the last great statesmen that we have in politics, and I think Joe Biden is cut from that cloth,” Harrison said. “They have a level of understanding and a level of mutual respect for each other.”
Biden, Harrison continued, “knows that Jim Clyburn is not trying to take his job, and Jim Clyburn knows that he is safe in his skin and knows what he can do and what he can’t do.”
The congressman’s daughter, Jennifer Clyburn Reed, said members trust her father, pointing to legislative wins he has racked up in his almost three decades in Congress.
“He negotiates through conversation, common sense and common ground,” Reed said in an email to McClatchy. “You may not get everything you want in one (fell) swoop. ... His experiences have shown him that making incremental changes work to reach the goal.”
Clyburn and Biden have known each other for 40 years, and while they do not always agree, they share similar objectives, Reed said.
“When you’ve had a relationship with someone who’s been in the trenches with you time and time again; someone who’s never steered you in the wrong direction, you tend to give that person courteous regard,” Reed said.
Biden credited Clyburn by name in White House remarks the morning after the infrastructure bill passed.
He said he would have a signing ceremony later, “but, for now, I want to quickly thank members of the House who worked so hard to get some of this done: Speaker Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Jim Clyburn, progressive leaders, moderate leaders, Democrats, Republicans — they, in fact, worked together.”
A tight vote meets ‘dark art’
Biden will sign the bipartisan infrastructure package Monday that the House passed earlier this month in a late-night vote, 228-206, with the help of 13 Republicans.
Six progressive Democrats, part of the so-called “squad,” voted against the compromise legislation over its priority on the House floor before a social spending bill that would also pay for initiatives to fight climate change.
The legislation that includes money for roads, bridges, ports, broadband internet and other infrastructure projects — which includes $6 billion earmarked for South Carolina — looked as if it might not pass last week before lawmakers departed Washington for a week-long recess.
The party’s factions — progressives, moderates, conservatives and liberals — were standing firm in their positions, months after the Senate had already passed the bill.
Clyburn’s job as whip was to find out whether Pelosi had sufficient support for the bill and identify the lawmakers whose votes they still needed to earn.
That task can prove difficult.
But Clyburn said the connections that Democratic lawmakers from the four ideological corners of the party have to each other through groups such as the Black, Hispanic and Asian Pacific American caucuses played a critical role in the infrastructure legislation passing the House.
“You have got these tremendous overlaps that people seem not to be conscious of, but I am conscious of those overlaps all day, every day,” said Clyburn, who is the third-ranking Democrat in the House and the highest-ranking Black lawmaker.
The infrastructure law Biden will sign will result in an estimated $6 billion in federal cash for the Palmetto State.
It includes $4.6 billion to maintain federal highways, $274 million to replace and repair bridges, $510 million to improve water infrastructure, $366 million to improve public transportation and $70 million to add electric vehicle charging stations.
The legislation also creates an Affordability Connectivity Program to allow financially needy households to get monthly discounted internet bills. The program would benefit 1.5 million South Carolinians.
And it includes money for broadband internet expansion, with $100 million expected to come to South Carolina. Expanding broadband to rural areas, a need magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic, is a priority for Clyburn, who has compared it to the electrification of rural areas after the New Deal.
“Congressman Clyburn played an integral role in bringing everyone to the table on infrastructure. He worked closely with the President to ensure all voices were heard and it’s because of his efforts that Americans in South Carolina and across the country will now have access to millions of jobs, high-speed internet, clean water, improved public transit and so much more,” Louisa Terrell, director of legislative affairs at the White House, said in a statement.
“It was important for the President to thank him publicly on Saturday and he looks forward to continuing their working relationship to get important legislation passed on behalf of the American people,” Terrell said.
Clyburn’s ability to move lawmakers from undecided and no to yes and recognize when lawmakers are unwilling to shift their vote because of the politics in their districts “is sort of like a dark art,” Harrison said.
“That is where the magic really happens with Jim Clyburn,” he added.
Former GOP South Carolina Congressman Mark Sanford said it would have been difficult for anyone to balance the needs of moderates and progressives and convince the two sides to take some of what they want, rather than to hold out for everything that they want, during the infrastructure vote.
“That’s a wide gulf and anybody who could navigate those political waters is pretty impressive,” Sanford said.
Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina, said Clyburn’s experience and acumen could be especially helpful with lining up the votes of young Democrats in the caucus.
“I’ve never known him to be a yeller or a screamer or a threatener, but I think he’s a person who lays out his case forcefully, but cordially,” Sanford said, “and asks people to do what they have to do to support the vote in question.”
That is why, Harrison argues, there has never been a more influential politician in South Carolina.
“When Jim Clyburn decides to step down, he is going to have some shoes that I don’t think anybody can fill,” he said. “And I believe here in South Carolina, he will go down as one of the most impactful figures in South Carolina’s history.”
This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 11:18 AM.
