The Good Package, Con't

Blue Dog Dems in the House are about to destroy both the $1 trillion infrastructure bipartisan package and the $3.5 infrastructure reconciliation package, and unless Nancy Pelosi can get them in line fast, the Biden presidency is over.

Moderate House Democrats say they would sink a crucial fiscal blueprint outlining $3.5 trillion in social and environment spending unless a separate infrastructure bill is approved first, a new complication for the divided party’s drive to enact President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda.

The centrists’ threat directly defies House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announced plans, and she is showing no signs of backing down. It also completes a two-sided squeeze on the California Democrat, who has received similar pressure from her party’s progressives.

Democrats can only pass legislation in the narrowly divided House if they lose no more than three votes. Solid Republican opposition seems certain.

“We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law,” nine centrists wrote in a letter to Pelosi obtained Friday by The Associated Press.

Congressional passage of the budget resolution seems certain because without it, Senate Republicans would be able to use a filibuster, or procedural delays, to kill a follow-up $3.5 trillion measure bolstering social safety net and climate change programs. That measure, not expected until autumn, represents the heart of Biden’s domestic agenda.

Pelosi has repeatedly said the House will not vote on the $1 trillion package of road, rail, water and other infrastructure projects until the Senate sends the House the companion $3.5 trillion bill.

Pelosi has set that sequence because her party’s progressives have worried that if the infrastructure bill is approved first, moderates unhappy with the separate $3.5 trillion measure’s cost would feel free to vote against it, causing its defeat.

A senior House Democratic aide said the party doesn’t have enough votes to pass the infrastructure bill this month. The aide contrasted the nine moderates to the dozens of progressive Democrats who would vote against that measure unless it comes after the House gets the Senate’s $3.5 trillion social and environmental bill.

The aide was not authorized to publicly discuss the party’s internal dynamics and spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I am not freelancing. This is the consensus,” Pelosi told Democrats of her plans in a conference call this week, according to a person familiar with the private call who described it on condition of anonymity. The speaker added: ”“The votes in the House and Senate depend on us having both bills.”

Leaders of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which includes nearly 100 House Democrats, say many of their members have indicated they would vote against the infrastructure bill until the expansive $3.5 trillion legislation has cleared the Senate.

 

So right now, Pelosi lacks the votes to pass either bill. If Democrats wreck this, I don't see how we keep either chamber of Congress in 2022.  This is a disaster brewing, and Nancy Pelosi now has to solve it somehow.

Or we're all toast, and we get nothing.

Now, Pelosi has been in worse situations, and shepherded the Affordable Care Act through, and a hell of a lot more. But we're going to need that magic one more time, it seems. I know she's capable of it, and I'm expecting a deal soon.

We'll see.