I see that cats and dogs are living together and have produced a bipartisan infrastructure bill. I figure they did this just to annoy me, but I hold no grudges. I just want to know how they're going to pay for it:
The new agreement also included significant changes to how the infrastructure spending will be paid for, after Republicans resisted supporting a pillar of the original framework: increased revenues from an I.R.S. crackdown on tax cheats, which was to have supplied nearly one-fifth of the funding for the plan.
In place of those lost revenues, negotiators agreed to repurpose more than $250 billion from previous pandemic aid legislation, including $50 billion from expanded unemployment benefits that have been canceled prematurely this summer by two dozen Republican governors, according to a fact sheet reviewed by The New York Times. That is more than double the repurposed money in the original deal.
As I recall, the previous version of this "$1 trillion" bill actually represented $600 billion in new spending. With this new funding in place, it looks like the $1 trillion bill is now a $350 billion bill. In other words, starting with the very first proposal from the Biden administration, the amount of new spending has gone from $2 trillion to $1 trillion to $600 billion to $350 billion. I think. This gets kind of tricky. In any case, it sure seems like Republicans got a helluva good deal here.
“We still have a long way to go before we get to the finish line, but this was a vitally important first step,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the lawmakers who helped broker the deal, at a press conference after a vote.
That sounds mighty familiar, doesn't it? For one thing, it turns out there's still no actual legislative text. I'm sure that's not a problem, though. Stay tuned.
POSTSCRIPT: Of course, coming up next is the gazillion-dollar Democratic bill that, among other things, will sweep up anything that Republicans refused to agree to in the bipartisan bill. That should be fun.
I base this on nothing more than my gut political instincts from following several decades of goings on in our nation's capital, but I suspect passage of this (watered down) bill — if it does get to Biden's desk — makes the enactment of the reconciliation bill less, not more, likely. I have a hunch Manchin and Sinema will believe their support of this initial, bipartisan piece of the president's legislative agenda will partially inoculate them from charges of disloyalty to the Democratic Party. Which will free them up to follow their love for "mavricky" headlines, and join Republicans in kvetching about deficits and "big spending." And needless to say, Republicans will marshal every ounce of Murdochian firepower to help this process along.
(Another possibility is nothing passes. A lot depends on the timing: it's possible the House won't take up a bipartisan bill unless it's accompanied by a reconciliation bill. But would Pelosi really employ such scorched earth tactics and deny Biden even half a loaf? Color me skeptical).
The bottom line for me is Democrats don't have fifty senators. They have forty-eight.
Manchin supports the reconciliation bill, in no small measure due to being able to channel Robert Byrd & get some bucks for West VA.
It's chaos agent Naderite Sinema who is trying to take the Democrat Party down from the inside to spur a Glorious Green Revolution, twenty years late.
I guess what I am saying is Kyrsten Sinema is the ex-Mormon Always on Camera. Or maybe, since KS arrived on scene first, Always on Camera is the Boricua Kyrsten Sinema.
Well, we'll see. And I did read a worrying headline about Sinema* today. So there's that. I agree Democrats are more likely to lose her vote than Manchin's, but I don't know his vote is a foregone conclusion, either, no matter what he may have said in the recent past.
*I truly hope she's not as politically inept as she appears to perhaps be, and that in reality her showboating is designed to elicit a concession -- a shiny bauble -- she can point to when she runs for reelection. Because if it is indeed she who spikes the reconciliation bill, Democrats should (and I suspect will) come after her with everything at their disposal to deny her the nomination. (Which, even if said effort fails, would hurt her odds in the general election). I mean, it's one thing to be the target of a few hostile AOC tweets. But the reconciliation bill translates into jobs, money and resources for working families in Arizona.
I think her quest for mavericky headlines, while course, crude and not particularly polished or skillful, is at least understandable given the state she represents. But actually killing a cornerstone piece of her party's legislative agenda would truly be political malpractice.
As I said below, you got more problems than those 2. Try harder.
Promise Sinema more water for Arizona out of the Colorado river and she would probably vote for almost anything. Making good on that promise might be kind of tough. You would think you could get 50 Republican votes in the Senate for a pipeline from the Great Lakes to the west, but they only seem to love pipelines that carry petroleum products.
Was going to write the same as Jasper. “Of course, coming up next is the gazillion-dollar Democratic bill that, among other things, will sweep up anything that Republicans refused to agree to in the bipartisan bill.” Except that Sinema has already said she’s squeamish about Dems staying in power after 2022… er, excuse me… passing such a “large” spending bill full of things that most of the nation supports and/or has needed for decades. And I’m sure Manchin will not want to materially help his WV constituents too much, lest they actually start thinking the Democratic Party is better than the GOP, so he’s probably also going to harumph about the reconciliation bill.
Bud, you got more problems than sequestered spending. Not all that spending has support. Some looks rather useless falling into the capitalist sinkhole.You got more problems then 2 Senators, but most likely 20, with different backgrounds and needs.
Presented in your usual evidence-based way with cites and links, I see. Say hi to the worm for me.
Well, this is a compromise and it is not very favorable to Democratic objectives. This is why Republicans have agreed (for the moment). If it makes is less likely for Manchin and other blue dogs to support the real spending bill using reconciliation it is a major loss for Democrats, although the prospects for that bill have always been slim.
Here's a genuine question: why are they trying so hard to get a bipartisan bill? I get that both Senators and pundits love to pretend to care about bipartisanship. But this isn't the ACA or some big initiative where you want to show broad support. It's an infrastructure spending bill. Nobody cares. This is not something that average voters follow carefully. Most of them will barely be aware that it passed, and fewer will know what was in it or how it passed.
I can't see that how the 2021 Infrastructure Bill was passed will be a major issue in 2022 or 2024, and any campaign attacks on Democratic partisanship or spending will be made regardless of how this is passed.
I just don't see what the win is for Democrats.
I don't really get it either. Presumably Biden think it helps him burnish his "reasonable, centrist" credentials and/or he's getting pressure from Joe Manchin to go down this road?
Just to note--no bill has been passed yet.
It may have bypassed the filibuster now--but the Republicans can still pull out at the last minute and run to the fainting couch over some perceived slight.
Right. As I implied above, I think that might work out best for Dems in the long run by making it easier to get a reconciliation bill to Biden. Republicans will look unreasonable if they kill a bill even quite a few of their own supported; which may provide political cover to Sinema/Manchin. Dems would be able to say "The obstructionist Republicans gave us no other option."
I would certainly hope in that case they'd be sensible enough to fold some of the infrastructure components into the reconciliation bill.
So now, despite the misleading both sides headlines, it's really a $350 billion bill. To quote Lando Calrissian, "This deal is getting worse all the time." Thanks Joe and Kyrsten.
Nope, it's about a trillion dollar deal.
Schumer wanted to pass the bill before the August recess. That now seems unlikely. So this looks like just another stalling tactic by Republicans, and the clock is ticking. Because the Dem "backup" plan of Reconcilliation has to pass by end September or October at the latest because of the debt ceiling vote. So Republicans figure if they can just stall and delay till then they can kill both bills.
I had heard that Sen. Schumer will hold the Senate in session through all of August, if necessary, to get this thing passed.
And if Republicans try a walkout, a la Tejas or Wisconsin, it'll be just great: quorum in the Senate is a bare majority. They'll need to have at least one member present to oppose all bills, and with the 50 Dems, that makes quorum.
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Drum, how many times do you need to get it?? That is 350 billion for the first 5 to years and 600 billion in extra money for the next 5..Biden's original plan had 1.3 trillion over 10 years and only 600 billion through the first 5. Seriously, get some hearing aids
And which Synema has already opposed.