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Republicans at Odds Over Infrastructure Bill as Vote Approaches

With a bipartisan infrastructure bill set for a Thursday vote in the House, a campaign by business groups and some Senate Republicans to secure G.O.P. support may be the measure’s last hope.

The infrastructure bill would provide $110 billion for roads, bridges and other projects.Credit...Joe Raedle/Getty Images

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WASHINGTON — Business groups and some Senate Republicans — working at cross-purposes with Republican leaders in the House — have mounted an all-out drive to secure G.O.P. votes for a bipartisan infrastructure bill ahead of a final vote on Thursday.

Although the measure is the product of a compromise among moderates in both parties, House Republican leaders are leaning on their members to reject the $1 trillion infrastructure bill by disparaging its contents and arguing that it will only pave the way for Democrats to push through their far larger climate change and social policy bill.

Their opposition has put Speaker Nancy Pelosi in a bind. With progressive Democrats promising to withhold their support for the infrastructure package until Congress acts on that broader bill, she will most likely need dozens of Republicans to stave off an embarrassing defeat.

And some Republican senators who helped write the bill, along with influential business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, are trying to help, with a countereffort to persuade House Republicans to back the legislation.

“It’s a good bill; it’s right there for the country, so I’m encouraging Republicans to support it,” said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio and one of the bill’s negotiators, who said he was working the phones hard. “There’ll be some that have told me they will, but they’re under a lot of pressure.”

“I’d say the bill is likely to pass, but it’s going to be a squeaker,” Neil Bradley, an executive vice president and the chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who once worked for the House Republican leadership, said on Tuesday.

While attention has focused on Democratic divisions, the cracks in Republican ranks are notable, especially to those Republicans who have campaigned as moderate consensus builders.

“For all the focus about substantive and tactical divisions among the Democrats, which I understand, more attention should be paid to the fact that almost the entirety of the Republican Party is going to vote against a bipartisan highway bill,” said Representative Tom Malinowski, Democrat of New Jersey and a member of the House Problem Solvers Caucus, which ostensibly stands for bipartisanship. “That’s how far we have gotten in the direction of crazy.”

But Republicans of all stripes are facing fierce pressure from their leaders to oppose the bill. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, who runs his party’s vote-pressuring operation in the House, is closely tracking which Republicans intend to vote yes.

“We’re working to keep that number as low as we possibly can,” he said.

A few House Republicans who are members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus have announced their support for the measure, including Representatives Tom Reed of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Don Bacon of Nebraska.

On Monday, Representative Don Young, Republican of Alaska and the longest-serving member of the House, announced his support with an impassioned speech on the House floor.

Another member of the Problem Solvers Caucus, Representative John Katko, Republican of New York, said on Wednesday that he, too, would vote for the bill.

“To me, it’s inherently bipartisan, it’s good policy, and we should all vote for it,” he said.

But so far, such declarations are few. On Wednesday, Third Way, a centrist Democratic group with corporate backing, released a testy letter its president had written to 26 Republican “Problem Solvers” demanding they live up to their name.

“You have run for office and raised campaign funds on the promise that you are there to solve the nation’s problems and put country over party,” wrote Third Way’s president, Jonathan Cowan. “Anything other than declaring your support now and voting for the bill, in turn, would signal clearly to your constituents that you support nothing more than faux bipartisanship.”

Representative Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat who is part of the Problem Solvers Caucus, has pressured her leadership to trim back the social policy bill. She was fuming on Wednesday over how the Republicans in the caucus were not similarly bucking their leaders. Asked about where those Republicans were on the bill, she responded, “That is an excellent question.”

Moderate Democrats say as many as 20 Republican votes could materialize if Ms. Pelosi can win over enough liberals to keep it close. But Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a leader of the effort to keep liberals from voting for the bill, said Wednesday that would not happen.

Representative Peter Meijer, a freshman Republican from Michigan and a Problem Solvers Caucus member, said he had heard from Republicans on both sides of the issue, and “the consensus is: better both fail.”

“President Biden saddling infrastructure with this $3.5 trillion albatross around its neck was a poison pill for those of us who wanted a bipartisan solution,” he said.

The infrastructure bill is an unusual phenomenon in a starkly polarized Congress: a truly bipartisan and significant bill, hammered out by Democrats and Republicans before it passed the Senate last month with 69 votes, 19 of them Republican, including that of the minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

With $550 billion in new federal spending, the measure would provide $65 billion to expand high-speed internet access; $110 billion for roads, bridges and other projects; $25 billion for airports; and the most funding for Amtrak since the passenger rail service was founded in 1971. It would also renew and revamp existing infrastructure and transportation programs set to expire on Friday.

But because House Democratic leaders have at least verbally packaged it with a larger, $3.5 trillion climate change and social policy bill, it has been caught in the politics of that measure — and broader Republican efforts to thwart President Biden’s agenda.

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Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, second from left, and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, left, are discouraging their fellow Republicans from voting for the infrastructure bill.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

And with Democrats publicly feuding, senior Republicans have little interest in rescuing Ms. Pelosi.

“The legislative crisis that’s before her is one of her own creation that she needs the progressives to bail her out of,” said Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee.

Supporters of the infrastructure bill are trying to stay cleareyed about the bill’s merits.

“It’s true people have been rhetorically linking the two, but really they aren’t,” said Mr. Bradley, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce executive. “If that vote passes, the bill goes to the president for his signature.”

The infrastructure measure’s supporters argue that House Republicans are making the wrong political calculation about the bill. G.O.P. leaders have warned that it is a Trojan horse whose passage would only increase the chances of Democrats passing the more costly plan that Mr. Biden calls his Build Back Better agenda, which is packed with expansions of social safety net programs, initiatives to combat climate change and tax increases on corporations and the wealthy.

Instead, they say enactment of the infrastructure bill could give moderate Democrats the win they want and allow them to peel away from the larger bill.

Joshua Bolten, a former White House chief of staff for George W. Bush who is president of the Business Roundtable, said the chief executives’ organization was pushing for the bill’s passage, running radio and social media ads in Republican districts and pressing for meetings with lawmakers.

“This is a really good bill. It’s urgently needed. It will have a dramatic effect on the productivity of U.S. economy. It’s investment really well spent,” he said on Tuesday. “Pass it now and have the fight over the other bill later.”

Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, said he had lobbied every member of his state’s delegation to support the measure.

“I can’t predict where they will end up, but I’m certainly encouraging people to consider the merits of the bill as opposed to worrying about what outside observers have to say,” he said.

Against that are the arguments of Republican leaders who have disparaged the infrastructure bill as bloated with spending that they argue goes far beyond its stated purpose, like funding for electric vehicle recharging stations, lead pipe replacement and electricity grid fortification. And they predict that moderate Democrats who have pressed for its passage will be angered enough by its demise that they will exact revenge by bringing down the social policy bill.

“This is a desperate administration looking for a win to distract Americans from the Biden-caused crises, both home and abroad, while opening the floodgates to trillions more in spending to come,” said Representative Beth Van Duyne, Republican of Texas.

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, another Republican supporter of the infrastructure plan, said a defeat on Thursday of a bill that passed the Senate with such bipartisan fanfare would have more significance than depriving the nation of roads, bridges and rail lines.

“It’s not just the benefits of the policy we’re putting in place and the build-out of needed infrastructure; it’s also the message being sent that at a time when so much is dysfunctional in the Congress, you can build bipartisan initiatives that are going to be enduring,” she said, adding, “If it should fail, I think that in and of itself sends a pretty tough message.”

Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

Jonathan Weisman is a congressional correspondent, veteran Washington journalist and author of the novel “No. 4 Imperial Lane” and the nonfiction book “(((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump.” His career in journalism stretches back 30 years. More about Jonathan Weisman

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: Some Senate Republicans, Ignoring Leadership, Press Infrastructure Bill. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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