Well, well, well. Look who pissed in the punch bowl…
Nine Democrats, led by New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, are threatening to vote against the fiscal 2022 budget resolution until the House passes and President Joe Biden signs the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill.
“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,” the Democrats wrote in a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi released publicly Friday.
Besides Gottheimer, the members who signed the letter include Georgia’s Carolyn Bourdeaux, Maine’s Jared Golden, Hawaii’s Ed Case, California’s Jim Costa, Oregon’s Kurt Schrader and Texans Filemon Vela, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez.
If these members don’t relent on this demand, the entire first-year agenda of the Biden administration will go poof. That’s because these centrist Democrats have the numbers to sink the budget reconciliation bill and the progressives will never pass the INVEST Act without having the budget bill locked up. The only possible result is that neither passes.
In a truly great piece that looks back at the Affordable Care Act’s most imperiled days, Josh Marshall assures that we need not worry because Speaker Pelosi will “steamroll the Gottheimers of her caucus with little exertion or concern.”
I truly understand Marshall’s argument here, and I hope he’s right. That’s where I would put my money. But on the face of things, there’s no obvious move for Pelosi to make. One group says they won’t even consider the strategy that she and the Biden administration have worked out, and the other side certainly won’t go along with “the Gottheimers of her caucus.”
I think Pelosi can solve this but I suspect it may take a bit more exertion than Marshall is anticipating.
I’m pretty sure Biden will be exerting plenty of pressure of his own.
Defying a popular president of your own party is exceptionally dumb politics.
I don’t think the Gottheimers have much to go on…”This legislation is so important that we have to pass it right now”…or else we won’t pass it at all? I think another month or two won’t render the infrastructure bill stale, and I don’t think the Gottheimers will relish the role of spoilers.
The “tell” is that Gottheimer could only get eight other centrist Dems to sign onto his letter. That’s less than half of the Blue Dog caucus, and less than 1/10 of the New Democrat caucus. My guess is that Blue Dog co-chairs Stephanie Murphy,Tom O’Halleran, and Abigail Spanberger will end up playing some role in pulling their colleagues back into the fold.