There are a lot of moving parts and I’m not going to get into the details since everything is in flux. But I think Greg Sargent makes an excellent point here about how the situation is being reported:
The latest standoff concerns the process by which House Democrats will pass the $1 trillion bipartisan “hard” infrastructure bill that passed the Senate, and the $3.5 trillion “human” infrastructure reconciliation bill.
Politico reports on the latest threat from centrist House Democrats:A group of five to 10 House moderates have signaled to leadership that they would be willing to let the infrastructure bill fail rather than be held hostage by liberals over the broader spending bill. It’s a more attractive alternative to them than having to vote for painful tax increases to pay for an unrestrained social safety net expansion, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has made similar threats. Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) wants a reconciliation “pause.”
This is likely posturing. Centrists want to reduce the spending and taxes in the reconciliation package, and want Democrats to pass the infrastructure bill on Sept. 27 — as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has agreed to try to do. But progressives are vowing to vote down that bill, until the Senate completes a reconciliation one. So such centrist threats seem designed to increase leverage.
The centrists’ story here is that they piously want to get something done. But they are being held “hostage” by progressives in thrall to in-the-clouds ideological fantasies so radical that voting for this would be worse politically for them than imploding Biden’s entire agenda.
This is, to put it mildly, horseshit:
This situation largely flows from the fact that centrists such as Manchin and Sinema insisted on pursuing a bipartisan infrastructure bill in the Senate. Progressives opposed this, believing (correctly) that it would squander valuable time, and because Democrats always could pass everything by reconciliation alone.
But progressives essentially accepted this outcome. Remember: Back in March, progressives reached a general understanding with the White House. They would swallow the need for moderates to try for Republican support on infrastructure, on the understanding that progressive priorities would pass by reconciliation later.
So progressives made accommodations at the outset. The “two track” strategy arose to ensure that the two sides would exert leverage on one another, holding the party together. But a small band of centrists threatened to oppose a procedural vote to start the reconciliation process, forcing Democratic leaders to rupture the two tracks with a planned Sept. 27 infrastructure vote.
There was never any serious rationale for that, but regardless, it is in response to that move that progressives are threatening to vote no. In so doing, progressives are just trying to maintain the original two-track strategy, which is rooted in a hardheaded appraisal of both factions’ needs.
By no means have progressives been blameless. They’re often too quick to accuse moderates of being squishy sellouts. And it’s still unclear whether progressives will accept reductions in the reconciliation bill needed to keep centrists on board. But on balance, progressives have been the true realists here.
Progressives have been compromising all along while the “centrists” do what centrists do and rush in at the end with some pearl clutching about debt and markets and gum up the works. It’s what they do. But it is irresponsible for the media to treat this as a bunch of crazy hippies insisting on the moon.Unless you think Joe Biden and Jon Tester are crazy hippies, this is the Democratic agenda and this “moderate” posturing is putting it all at risk for their own egos.
As usual.