Despite the “Dems in disarray” narrative behind the “splintered” and “setback” headlines this morning after Speaker Nancy Pelosi postponed a Thursday vote on Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure package, the House progressive caucus seems very much in array. The media thrives on tension and conflict, so chaos is newsrooms’ go-to storyline.
With a 50-50 Senate, Democrats’ miniscule moderate faction holds a veto over advancing the twin bills stuck in negotiations: the BIF (the bipartisan infrastructure bill) passed by the Senate and awaiting a vote in the House, and the BBB (the Build Back Better social infrastructure reconciliation bill) still unvoted in the Senate. The original deal, progressives are as quick to remind as the moderates are to forget, was for the House to vote on both together. House progressives feared getting rolled by Senate moderates. If the House passed the BIF first, progressives feared moderates would let the BBB die in the Senate. Moderates reinforced that suspicion by insisting that a vote on the BIF take place in the House this week while the BBB remains in limbo in the Senate.
The House progressive caucus is the opposite of disarray. Members stand unified behind passing both arms of the Biden agenda.
All the blazing pixels this morning are an overreaction. The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent tweets, “As expected, the postponement of the vote is being treated as a ‘crushing blow’ and a ‘huge setback’ to Biden’s agenda. Utterly ludicrous. Such things happen all the time with complex legislation.” Commentary like this, Sargent complains, “is the opposite of savvy.”
Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer are playing Jenga, but Thursday’s postponement is not the “harbinger of doom” headlines portray.
Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent wrote on Thursday that there is at least movement from one of the Senate holdouts:
On Thursday, we learned that this summer, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) signed a document that laid out what Manchin would tolerate in the reconciliation bill. It limited spending to $1.5 trillion over ten years rather than the $3.5 trillion supported by President Biden and other Democrats.
Some details are reasonable (“Raise the top rate on income: 39.6%”) and others are disturbing (“Fuel neutral,” which seems to mean Manchin wants the bill to do as much to promote fossil fuels as renewables). It’s galling, to be sure, that someone with these priorities wields such enormous influence over the legislative outcome and, by extension, over our future.
But at the very least, in this Manchin did offer a place to start from. That suggests a deal is possible.
As for the other Senate holdout, well, no one knows what Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona wants, least of all Sinema:
Meanwhile, Sen. Sinema’s office released a curt, defensive statement responding to intensifying criticism of her refusal to specify what she can accept in reconciliation. “Biden and his team, along with Senator Schumer and his team, are fully aware of Senator Sinema’s priorities, concerns, and ideas,” it said, offering no details and adding, “we do not negotiate through the press.”
Here again it’s galling that Sinema is being so snide after stringing everyone along in bad faith for so long. But if what she says is true, it means that very real negotiations are taking place. Put these comments together and we have some reason to believe that we’re moving — albeit slowly — toward the destination of a bill.
That is all the more reason for Pelosi to want progressives to keep up the pressure on the Senate to keep the bills linked. Don’t believe us? Sargent asks. The Punchbowl News team has a similar take on the choreography taking place:
Both pieces of legislation are almost as popular as popular gets with the American public. Pelosi’s office put out a statement ten days ago:
An overwhelming majority of Americans, independents, and even four-in-ten Republicans back President Biden and House Democrats’ plan to cut taxes for the middle class, lower costs for working families, create more jobs, and sustain economic growth for years to come.
New polling from Navigator Research shows high support for the Build Back Better Act with support from:
- 66 percent of Americans
- 61 percent of Independents
- 39 percent of Republicans
Democrats believe we face an urgent choice between keeping an economy that serves the wealthiest and biggest corporations – or finally give middle class families a fair shot. It turns out the American people agree.
Those numbers won’t keep Democrats’ moderates from defying public opinion or their own constituents’ wants and needs. Nor will they keep others from dissing Biden’s and progressives’ go-big approach.
Damon Linker argues at The Week that Democrats’ narrow margins in Congress indicate progressive overreach “in at least partial defiance of public opinion.” This, despite Biden’s 2020 nationwide popular vote majority and Democrats’ statewide vote in states like mine states where Republican gerrymandering prevents expression of the popular will in the House of Representatives. With the statewide vote essentially even in North Carolina in 2020, Republicans hold 8 of 13 House seats. And, of course, there is the unrepresentative makeup of the Senate.
Defiance of public opinion, indeed.