Following along with what’s happening in Congress, it’s easy to see how someone could have a panic attack. It’s like one of those dreams where you realize that all your schoolwork is due by the end of the week and then you have a bunch of exams, but you haven’t even gotten started. There’s too much at stake, and too much work to do in too little time.
I try to figure this stuff out for a living, and I’m just lost. Speaker Pelosi is now saying that she may delay the scheduled vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIB) even though she made a commitment to centrist Democrats that the vote would be held on Monday. This doesn’t surprise me, nor does her reasoning she provided to ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday: “I’m never bringing to the floor a bill that doesn’t have the votes.”
She doesn’t have the votes because progressives are demanding that the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill be ready to go before they’ll give the centrists their best leverage. There are some House Republicans who intend to vote for the BIB but not enough of them, apparently, that it will make up for progressive holdouts.
Pelosi could hold the vote anyway just to put everyone on the record, but she doesn’t operate like that. She still insists that the BIB will pass this week, but I suspect that’s more bluster than actual confidence.
As for the budget reconciliation bill, the House Rules Committee approved the $3.5 trillion number on Saturday, but Pelosi acknowledged on Sunday for the first time that the number will be lower:
Pelosi said it “seems self-evident” the price tag for that larger bill could drop in negotiations with concessions.
“We’ll see how the number comes down and what we need in that regard, but we have agreed on an array of pay-fors in the legislation,” Pelosi said. “This will be paid for.”
“Obviously with negotiations there will have to be some changes with that, the sooner the better so that we can build our consensus to go forward, and we will do that,” she also said.
It’s a bit late in the game to have so little clarity on how this will work out. And this isn’t the end of the Democrats’ problems. As the New York Times puts it:
Nobody said it would be easy, but the multiple tasks piling up for Mr. Schumer and Ms. Pelosi present a particularly daunting set of challenges: A $1 trillion infrastructure bill awaits consideration in the House on Monday, a $3.5 trillion social policy and climate change measure is still being stitched together, and a possible government shutdown looms on Friday followed by a potential debt crisis next month.
That’s right. It’s all coming to a head at the same time. A government shutdown and national credit default need to be averted, and the Republicans are refusing to offer any help even though 10 Republican senators are needed to overcome a filibuster.
The only thing keeping me sane is the idea that the consequences of failure are so dire that Pelosi will eventually get the votes she needs. As for the Senate, it could be that the Democrats have to rip up the filibuster rules to prevent a credit default. That might be the only threat that could persuade all 50 of them to go along with such a power move.
For now, I’m not sleeping very well. This is a minefield.
This is why, for the last few days, I have purposely avoided following all of this. It’s just too mind-numbingly exhausting, not to mention severely taxing on my mental health, so I have to step back a little. There’s not a damn thing I can do to change the course of things, and that fact just makes the decision a little easier. Knowing the odds are pretty damn good that when we get to the end of this process we will have lost, at a minimum, a political limb or two, just adds to the stress of it all. The course of history might well be charted with what happens in these coming days, and that’s almost too much for me to manage in my head and my heart, on top of all the other stresses of just living right now.
On a Twitter thread the other day, when it came to matters such as this, I was accused of being “too pessimistic to be real ‘resister’ “, I have always said that my view can often be boiled down to, “if you always anticipate the worst, you’ll never be disappointed, only pleasantly surprised”. I think I am going to have to apply that philosophy in this case, too.
Going into this Congressional session and a new Presidential administration, I realized that there were no good scenarios – only bad ones. The best bad scenario is one in which the White House manages to clean up one hell of a mess, since pretty much any Federal agency and set of processes we can imagine had been thoroughly trashed, and one in which we got control of both legislative chambers – even if only nominal control – as that would allow a few tangibly beneficial bills to get passed via reconciliation. That a bipartisan infrastructure bill got passed in the Senate was a minor miracle. I did not expect that to work out. One or both extreme camps within the Democratic House caucus could tank the whole thing, and that is probably a safe bet, and in the process tank the attempted reconciliation infrastructure bill. That latter infrastructure bill will end up far smaller than wished for, but if by some miracle it manages to get passed and on Biden’s desk for a signature, I will be pleasantly surprised. The safer bet is that the moderates or progressives force the party into a circular firing squad. And then there’s the debt ceiling. The GOP seems unified in committing to following the lead of Trump and defaulting on debt obligations. Seems fitting. Getting the Dems in the Senate unified in nuking the filibuster for the purpose of paying those debt obligations is not assured. I’m prepared for the worst. I do hope for the best. That, too makes me open to accusations of being too pessimistic. I’m just a realist. Under the circumstances, there are limits to what wafer thin majorities can accomplish, and only so much one can expect of an Executive Branch that inherited multiple crises and no playbook. That does not play well with the Squad stans.
Too pessimistic you say? The world is tumbling to a shooting war around here and we should be cheering the lies.
5
5
I keep asking myself how in the world did we get to this place? It seems the world is coming apart. The republicans know what happens if we default on the debt but they are the purveyors of the big lie, Trump won the election never mind there is not a scintilla of evidence of that and even the fraud audit in Arizona dared not say so. And the democrats insist the republicans must help them fix the debt ceiling. Right let’s just sit around waiting for that.
Meanwhile Nancy figures the $3.5 Trillion reconciliation is a walk in the park –until just now apparently. Why not lower that to say $1.5 Trillion and include the debt ceiling in it. I don’t know for sure but I do know no one has been able to change Manchin’s mind on anything. Speaking of our erstwhile “friend” can anyone convince him that voting rights are sorta kinda important here too and it would be just great if he voted to kill the filibuster for a few days. And pass the infrastructure bill while you can.
The republicans are bad but Nancy and the democrats ain’t got nothing over them I want to brag about at the moment.
The question I would like an answer to is: “Why in f***ing hell is Manchin still Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and why does he still have his other committee assignments?”
He and Sinema have guns aimed at us and so we have no affect on them. They are little presidents.
What consistently polls popular with democratic voters – child care, lower prescription drug prices, expansion of social security and health care, $15/minimum wage, for starters, are considered “extreme” by implication because they are championed by progressives, “the far left.” “Moderates” are against all of it because they are paid by lobbyists to make sure these initiatives never pass. The media frame and narratives positively cast the opposition of moderates as “principled” vs. the negative frame of progressives as “the far left” without ever getting into the question at a substantive level of why moderates oppose what’s popular among democratic voters, and in many cases, all voters. For example, the media has effectively given moderate dems a pass on explaining why they are against prescription drug prices, while not giving progressives credit for standing up for what the majority of voters want.
Even with “democrats in power” McConnell’s job of stopping democratic initiatives has never been easier. Democrats do the dirty work of being out front on stopping democratic initiatives.
And if this is depressing, if the GOP gains control of the Senate thanks to all this, the very first thing he’ll have his caucus do is get rid of the filibuster, laughing in the fact of those who call him out.
In some ways this is a pretty simple and straightforward situation: Dems cut whatever deal necessary to win Manchin and Sinema’s votes on the reconciliation bill. In return, Manchin and Sinema get their bipartisan infrastructure bill.
It’s not a fun situation, but if Manchin and Sinema say, for example, they’ll only vote for a $1.5 trillion reconciliation bill, then that’s what’s winnable in the real world and Dems (imho) should take it.
The worst case scenario is that Manchin (less likely) and/or Sinema (more likely) isn’t negotiating, and won’t vote for any reconciliation bill. In that case, (again imho) Dems should just blow up both bills. No rewards for Dems who won’t negotiate in good faith.
Manchin refuses to say a number. He wants his infrastructure bill passed first. Rep Cueller is on TV now and refused to answer. He was asked if $1.5 Trillion would do and refuses to say he would, but he over talks Camerota. He reminds me of a very good republican. He throws it back to Manchin. But this guy is just full of S**t, excuse my french. I am very pessimistic at the moment. But damn, make it $1 Trillion and raise the debt limit. Do something, anything. This is stupidity and they will lose the next election in 2022 and here comes Trump in 2024.