Your intermittent briefing on how negotiations over the reconciliation bill are going. This week, Congress is in recess.
After Friday’s marathon session, the House passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill by itself.
The congressional progressive caucus put out a statement saying that its members had obtained a promise from their colleagues that they’d vote for reconciliation the week of November 15, and that it was enough for the progressives to give their votes to the bipartisan bill. The members of the squad voted no, insisting that the two bills actually move together.
To those of us on the outside of those negotiations, the squad’s position makes sense. Nothing meaningful changed from the last time House Democrats had this standoff, in public anyway. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have made no promises not to gut or vote down the reconciliation bill.
Perhaps most progressives thought that this was the best they could do, and chose to put the onus to deliver on the President and congressional leadership. But it’s a big point of leverage lost, with what appears to be a long way still to go to pass the reconciliation bill.
Leverage Points
- There is the simple fact that President Joe Biden hasn’t yet signed the bipartisan infrastructure bill into law. The White House told me Monday they didn’t have a date to share when that’ll happen, but pointed to Biden’s weekend comments about wanting the lawmakers who spearheaded the effort to be able to attend the signing ceremony.
- If that’s really all the delay is about, we’ll see him sign it next week. If he’s quietly maintaining his own leverage here, he’ll have to come up with a new excuse.
- And that’s pretty much it! Manchin and Sinema really hold the cards here. They made no public promises, and House progressives may have to swallow more bitter pills when the Senate sends back its version of the reconciliation text with probable Manchin-enforced cuts to things like paid leave.
- The most optimistic among Democrats would probably say that Manchin has come through with the critical vote on big pieces of legislation for his party before, and that he wouldn’t get this far into the process just to kill it. Sinema has not yet proven herself willing to be out on a branch alone on something as big as this, to be the sole “no.”
Coming Down The Pike
- The Congressional Budget Office says that scoring for pieces of the reconciliation bill will be available as soon as this week. Depending on the numbers, this could give moderates a reason to cause trouble.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) affirmed Tuesday from the climate summit in Glasgow that the House will be voting on reconciliation text the week of the 15th, as promised.
- There’s almost no chance now that the Senate won’t run into the other stuff it has to do while finalizing reconciliation. That list includes funding the government, dealing with the debt ceiling and passing the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act. As Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) told a group of us, he’s not making any nonrefundable holiday travel plans.
Nope. Next question.
If Dems bail on BBB they risk the ire of progressives who will definitely sit out 2022.
Of course, this was always a bullshit argument. Congresscritters ignore the CBO whenever it’s convenient (like the Infrastructure bill). Also, the CBO can end up saying whatever you want it to say. I remember somewhere in the austerity-mania of Obama’s term, the GOP was using unfavorable CBO ratings to try to get leverage over bills, but the CBO was just scoring exactly what they were being asked to score, nothing more, nothing less, which in that case was not everything contained in the bills, just the bits that made it look bad. It’s not exactly what I’m looking for, but this Slate article about the ACA talks about the gimmicks politicians use in general to get the results they want.
Ultimately, the CBO shouldn’t be the end-all and the be-all, just one more datapoint to use when making a final decision.
Is paid maternity (and paternity) leave, even a few weeks, back in? If so, it would seem it would take the CBO several generations to score. It took Finland slightly over 70 years to figure out what a bargain expanded maternity is for the economy as the impacts affect child health, education right through university, right on into old age. Seems like, because of Joe Manchin (?), this standard feature of advanced economies doesn’t merit discussion, and certainly doesn’t belong in the reconciliation bill. It would seem that a guy with the word “Man” in his surname would at least be able to talk about the needs of new parents and new humans.
Moody’s has said that BBB will SAVE the US government money; whereas they scored the BIF as costing us $400 billion more than is paid for in the bill. So the “moderates” will have no leg to stand on to oppose.