A bipartisan group of senators has reached an infrastructure deal. Zzzzzzzzz.

But wait — there’s a bait and switch, double crossing, and intrigue to go with it. #Unity.

We’ve recounted in recent months that Democrats are bent on using the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to continue building in more of their big-spending agenda to the federal budget. Just because they’d really like to spend your money for votes, they slap the “infrastructure” label on it and demand agreement from Republicans.

So, what disgraceful suckers are the five Republican senators who thought Joe Biden was serious about unity?

Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Rob Portman, and Bill Cassidy ought to be feeling like complete dupes. After glad-handing and popping champagne corks with five Democrats and President Biden for having artfully crafted a “Washington is back” deal to spend $1.2 trillion on infrastructure, along comes Biden literally two hours later to pull the rug out from under them.

“In my years in the Senate,” Biden opined, “the single greatest currency you have is your word — keeping your word.” That just moments before he completely reneged on his word.

“What we agreed on … is what we could agree on — the physical infrastructure. There’s no agreement on the rest,” Biden said. “If this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.” He added, “I’m not just signing the bipartisan bill and forgetting about the rest that I proposed.”

In other words, he’s making this bipartisan deal conditional on passing another $3 trillion in Democrat priorities.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined him by saying, “We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation bill.”

Patriot Post readers know full well that Joe Biden’s 50-year reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker was phony all along. We’d like to think this would prove the fraud for at least some people who voted for him because they thought he’d bring good-natured agreement back to our nation’s capital. But we can’t trust the mainstream media to really report just what he’s doing here.

That said, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal elucidates it perfectly well:

Most politicians at least wait a decent interval to pull a double cross. But Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden are trying to prevent a revolt on the left. So they are now holding a bipartisan deal hostage to the left’s demands. This is political blackmail aimed at Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema who are part of the bipartisan Senate Gang of 10: Unless they sign on to all of the progressive tax-and-spend agenda, they won’t get their bipartisan deal. And Mr. Biden and progressives will blame them for the failure.

This is remarkable bad faith even for Washington.

Nevertheless, we expect these five Republicans — along with Manchin and Sinema — to say, “Thank you, sir, may I have another?” and keep on playing the same Beltway game.

For those keeping score, the $1.2 trillion “deal” is about half of what Democrats wanted, and about twice what Republicans counter-offered. The national debt is $28.4 trillion and counting. Isn’t Washington great?

Update 6/28: Biden’s handlers apparently realized that he made quite the mess, and they sent him out to walk back his veto threat. “That statement understandably upset some Republicans, who do not see the two plans as linked,” the president said. “My comments also created the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to, which was certainly not my intent.” Nevertheless, he’s counting on Democrat majorities in Congress to accomplish his wish list, and he’s banking on a few Republicans going along to get along.