I've been derelict in covering the day-to-day news out of Washington, so let's catch up with what Democrats are up to.
First off, there's the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. Thanks to help from Republicans it passed in the Senate last month with 69 votes, well over the 60 needed. It is now waiting for action in the House. Centrists love this bill.
Second, there's the $3.5 trillion omnibus spending bill, which hasn't yet passed anywhere. It's a reconciliation bill, which means it needs only 51 votes, so Democrats can pass it all by themselves. Unfortunately, two Democrats, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, aren't on board. Even more unfortunately, neither Manchin nor Sinema has made it clear just what changes they want to the bill. This is very odd, but that's where we stand.
Progressives love the $3.5 trillion bill. Centrists are not so keen on it.
But hey—at least the infrastructure bill will get passed, right? That's less clear than you'd think. Right now, Nancy Pelosi is holding it up because she wants to pass both bills as a package. She's afraid that if the infrastructure bill passes by itself, centrists will have gotten everything they want and will bail on the omnibus bill. House progressives agree, and have threatened to vote against the infrastructure bill even if Pelosi brings it up for a vote.
So that's where we are. Progressives won't vote for the infrastructure bill unless they can also vote on the omnibus bill. But Manchin and Sinema are holding up the omnibus bill and refusing to say what it would take to get their votes. It seems beyond belief that both bills might fail, but right now that's a distinct possibility.
Finally, winding around all of this, is a third bill. We are once again getting close to our debt ceiling, so Democrats need to pass a bill to raise it. Republicans are just laughing at them and declaring that they'll filibuster a debt ceiling bill just to create chaos.
One solution to this is to put the debt ceiling increase into the omnibus bill and pass it solely with Democratic votes. In fact, Democrats could even vote to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely. However, the leadership of the party has refused to do this for reasons that I haven't quite sussed out. Instead, they plan to introduce a "clean" debt ceiling bill and make Republicans vote against it. I guess they're gambling that in the end Republicans will buckle when the government shuts down because we can no longer fund it all. We'll see.
Helluva mess, isn't it? This is what happens when you have a 50-50 Senate and have to satisfy every single senator.
Hold a vote on a government funding/debt ceiling increase bill. When republicans filibuster it, use it as yet one more example to Manchin and Sinema of republican minority rule via the filibuster. Then add the debt ceiling increase to the reconciliation bill. Explain to Manchin and Sinema that now if they refuse to support the reconciliation bill that shutting down the economic system will be exclusively on them. That should concentrate their minds.
Your strategy is very high risk. IF one Dem, say Manchin, just votes present then we default on the national debt: operationally and politically THAT would be a disaster.
That's on Manchin and Sinema. They are supposed to be moderate to conservative democrats and therefore would never allow a default. Let's see.
Realistically, though, if the economy goes to hell, the party in power gets the blame not matter what. Once again, Dems have to be the adults and try and pass a debt ceiling increase over pouty, childish Republicans.
There are only two options for raising the debt ceiling with no Republican votes:
1) Put it in the reconciliation bill
2) Eliminate the filibuster
While Manchin has played games and been coy around the amount and blend of policies in #1 he hasn't expressed any principled oposition. He HAS, however, expressed outright opposition to #2.
So which one is *really* the high risk option?
Clearly I would prefer both bills to pass. However, if the Democrats choice is the bipartisan bill or nothing, I would select just he bipartisan legislation. Politically, to pass nothing would be a big mistake.
Strongly disagree. I'm usually (strongly) on the pragmatist "half a loaf is better than nothing", "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good" side of these arguments.......but the cost here in this instance is long term demolition of the Democratic coalition.
Everyone knew all along that the bills were joined and if one side is allowed to unilaterally renege and get away with it then it will be *years* before there can be enough trust restored to allow a functional coalition again.
Losing the BIF bill substance would be a blow. But politically keeping the coalition together is orders of magnitude more important. I don't think it's exaggeration to say the republic falls if it splits acrimoniously.
chaboard - you present an interesting insight. My concern is this: if nothing passes, then the midterms are really bad for the Democrats. A GOP house, and maybe Senate, spend the next couple of years on BS investigations and all legislative efforts fail.
MAYBE, with just the bipartisan bill the Dems can retain both houses (fingers crossed). Clearly, a lot of unknowns out there....
I don't think passing the bill will have much effect on the midterm.
There's very little in it that voters will see inside a year.....
.......and voters generally don't reward accomplishments in general even when they see them. Look at Biden's approval rating right now just months after giving more people more immediate help than any bill in history.
Elections are won on narratives and emotions - not accomplishments. Always.
I kind of thought it completely obvious that Manchin and Sinema have no intention of voting for the 3.5 trillion bill because they think it's too much money. So there aren't any changes that can be made other than scaling it back, and that's what the 1.2 trillion infrastructure bill is.
Nope. The bills cover completely different topics. There is no overlap in those bills. The obvious approach is for democrats to negotiate among themselves for a spending level they can all support in the reconciliation bill.
OK, but then Manchin is saying that the spending level he supports on the second bill is 0.
No he's not.
No he has not.
He is willing to support more than just the infrastructure bill but not the whole 3.5 trillion. And it is not just a dollar amount issue. There are types of spending he will not support. If you are relying on a west Virginia senator, cannot expect to get a lot of green environmental spending.
Pretty sure Manchin called Biden and told him that even thinking about the larger bill had to wait to next year. That sure sounds like he's got 0 dollars in mind for the moment.
Now you're changing your story to "for the moment". But you're still wrong. He said he would prefer a pause. He said nothing about the bill "had" to wait.
OK, you go ahead and delude yourself that Manchin just wants a different number. Fine by me.
The joys of insufficient down-ballot results…
The joys of Jimmy Crow. SIGH
True, but Abby Finkenauer is prettier than Always On Camera. So bitch had to go.
Defund the Police was a means to an end.
I think congressional leaders like using the threat of a debt default as leverage to get people to hurry up and pass a budget bill. They also apparently used it in the past as a way to get leverage over the President to attend hearings and such.
If we just did a continuing resolution that carried over in the absence of an explicit new budget, then members of the opposition might just not show up at all.
Republicans are not threatening to filibuster a debt ceiling increase to cause chaos . That is just silly. This is all politics and leverage and timing.
To start, this is a situation where democrats alone have the votes to do what they want if they can get agreement in their party. In other situations where one party controls either branch or the presidency, the political dynamics are totally different.
As kevin said, debt ceiling increases are subject to reconciliation. Democrats can just put it into the reconciliation bill and pass that with zero republican cooperation. But kevin is mystified as to why they do not just do that ? Really? Has he not been following politics for decades?
One reason is to try to exert pressure by attaching the debt ceiling increase as a " must pass " messure to something else. With the idea that you can blame the other party for it not passing when they refuse to pass it because they did not want to vote for the other thing you attached to it. That is risky as how can you blame the other party when you both could have passed debt ceiling increase in reconciliation, AND you also did not even include a clean debt ceiling bill.
And looks to me that the above old tactic is not what Pelosi is doing this time . Seems that democrats would be willing to have just a clean debt ceiling bill pass if they can get 10 republican votes for cloture.
So the key here is timing and that is why the democrats want a seperate debt ceiling bill instead of just including it in reconciliation. In order to include it in reconciliation and have it pass before debt ceiling is hit , democrats would have to come to an agreement on a reconciliation bill by that time .
.
And they do not seem able to do so.
By agreeing to provide 10 votes for a clean stand alone debt ceiling bill, the Republicans would just be enabling the democrats by giving them more time to work out their differences in reconciliation. And where is the incentive for them to do that ?
And I wonder whether there are other subtle machinations and incentives behind the scenes .
Does Pelosi really want Republicans to agree to pass a clean debt ceiling bill? Maybe not . And maybe Republicans are doing a favor ( some even perhaps knowingly) by refusing.
This puts the pressure on democrats as a party to do what they have to do to pass a debt ceiling increase. As they do control all levels of govt, it is hard for them to blame Republicans for a disaster if it happens when they had the ability to do it without republican help.
So this greatly increases the leverage Pelosi has on both manchin and sinema and the house far left to just suck it up and compromise so they can agree on reconciliation fast and include debt ceiling in reconciliation. Huge pressure on both sides of democratic party to not block reconciliation and compromise if alternative is debt default that they can be blamed for.
If Republicans did agree to help pass a debt ceiling now , and took the pressure off the reconciliation negotiations, they may never get anything passed.
There is something to the idea that Pelosi would be using this to pressure Manchin and Sinema, imo.
But what the dem leadership is trying to counter, I think, is the completely predictable and proven McConnell tactic of doing everything in his considerable power to create a shitshow and then saying "see? that's what happens with Dems in charge. All their fault."
A "clean" continuing resolution/debt ceiling extension would try to reverse the calculus and force McConnell to own the chaos if he doesn't allow 10 Rs to step in. At least that could be the theory. McConnell is slimy enough to turn anything into an accusation but if it passes, at least the breakdown of western financial systems would be avoided.
Personally, I've never understood why they don't include a clause in every spending bill to the effect that enactment into law carries with it approval to fund the authorized appropriations.
Hard to make the case that it is the Republicans to blame when democrats have total control and can raise debt ceiling in reconciliation.
This, in a nutshell is why we fail so often
It's a case of "who will get blamed?" as opposed to it's the right thing to do.
Here's a unique idea
Eliminate the debt ceiling entirely.
The republicans added $7T to the debt in only 4 years under Trump so it's really meaningless to both parties.
The smoking enhanced bat virus?
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wuhan-scientists-planned-release-skin-145326380.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9yZWRkaXQuY29tLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGJhhSu-L2fccRzHJ47HSLKls9Lev6-g9JmqBwwQcteeRMoe-iSAyRreFO5KuB2MBtXPzBuE9GCv_4Jj8kWqU74TLIzvRwFOZc4Vs-JL_AZ-VKm6Cpdze-2vOQxBJFTtTCoy4LT43Y0jwj9DNtQSt3NS46FBOaa2LsQBM5Dj3lLk
And it gets even better after that, they were going to do it to MERS as well.
I get it that we are frustrated with Manchin and Sinema but weren’t we aware this would be a problem from the get-go? And that we were just fantastically lucky that we won both Georgia seats because if we didn’t the Republicans would be fully in charge of the Senate and we’d get less than nothing?
It seems to me that Progressives should push for what they want but settle for what they can get. I sure don’t know what it will take to get Manchin and Sinema’s votes but it seems to me that we should get what we can while we can and do it as fast as we can.
This time around the progressives were being reasonable, thought they had a compromise and then the centrist cabal said nope we changed our minds and kept moving the goal posts.
Very clearly, rational thought explains why the Republicans are being, well, rational and why those crazy leftist progressive Democrats will blow everything up, and why reasonable Democrats should agree to everything Republicans want. In short, like everything he's ever written.
Not at all.
Why should reasonable democrats agree to everything Republicans want? They have no power here since democrats, if they all agree, can do whatever they want in reconciliation.
And who said the progressive left is being crazy and will blow everything up. Maybe they will be - we cannot tell yet. So far , the left wing is only threatening to act crazy and blow everything up . Which is exactly what you would do if you were acting rationally in order to increase your leverage in negotiations.
Aa usual, I suspect all the public show of acting crazy and being willing to blow things up is mostly an act . And, at the last minute, when it really will blow things up , they will cobble together a compromise somehow .
And , in reality, it is manchin and sinema , publicly, and maybe a group of other Democrats who want to moderate too but are letting them be the public face, who hold the cards . So end result is any final compromise is going to be closest to what they want . Only issue now is what little the progressive can get as a compromise by acting obstinate.
Republicans can be frozen out entirely. The only power they have is if Pelosi and Schumer decide to throw them some things to get enough votes to ignore the progressives if they are too stubborn.
If congress passes bills that require more money than available they have implicitly authorized the debt. There us no debt limit and never was.
I'd rather both bills tank. Biden trying to say democracy can still get it done but he's proving that it can't. Might as well be honest about it. I'm planning on fleeing the country next year when the pandemic calms down.
The failure to pass a budget and raise the debt ceiling has real effects on real people, not simply some far away hypothetical DC filled with old white men. There were a ton of folks devastated financially by Trump's shutdown in 2019.
A shutdown is completely different than the debt limit. Don't try a bait a switch.
At this stage, the dysfunctional political system would do us all a favor by failing miserably to fund anything.
It makes no sense to cover or debate the day-to-day news out of DC. It's like watching a sports match between two terrible losing teams. The end result doesn't even matter so why bother keeping score?
I know... you all think the end result does matter. I suppose that is true if they default on the debt and shutdown the government for 6 months. But we all know that's not going to happen.
"In fact, Democrats could even vote to eliminate the debt ceiling entirely."
This appears to be more political malpractice on the part of the Congress. Get rid of it.
Passing a clean bill means they'll be able to suspend the debt ceiling to X-date. Including it into an omnibus reconciliation bill means having to put a dollar amount on the new ceiling cap. The political implications are obvious, are they not, once you understand the difference between raising and suspending the debt ceiling?
"I've been derelict in covering the day-to-day news out of Washington"
Leave it to Politico to cover. They live for this stuff. For the rest of us, it's just hurts your head because its impossible to tell who being sincere and who is faking it so it's just better to wait until real decisions have been made to analyze them rather than get caught up in the kabuki drama.
It's weird how the far right keeps getting called "centrist".