Senate Works on Infrastructure ‘the Old-Fashioned Way’: Painfully Slow

The bipartisan bill has resurrected the lost art of freewheeling legislative debate in the usually gridlocked chamber. It takes forever.

WASHINGTON — As senators spent the first Sunday of what was supposed to be their summer break casting evening votes on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill whose passage now seems all but assured, it was hard not to notice the frustration setting in. An unfamiliar activity was afoot in the usually paralyzed Senate: A bipartisan bill had actually made it to the floor, and a freewheeling debate on it was underway. But as the process plodded into its second week, the glacial pace of legislating was on vivid display. It was taking forever.