A Democratic ‘Suicide Squad’ Threatens To Sabotage The Biden Agenda And Fellow Democrats

Nine Democratic House members, a rump “suicide squad” drawn from the House Problem Solvers Caucus – a misnomer, because this group has never solved any problem despite all the attention it receives – is inexplicably threatening the Biden agenda and fellow Democrats. Its members mostly have voted for whatever House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brings to the floor for a vote. So what is their problem now?

The “suicide squad” supports Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, because the Senate bill is “bipartisan,” but they oppose the human infrastructure bill, Biden’s American Families Plan, which Senate Democrats are pursuing by the budget reconciliation process?

Do these rogue Democrats really want to be targeted as anti-family in the middle of a pandemic and a Covid recession which removed over 2 million women from the workforce, and made the “care economy” a major issue with women voters critical to electing Democrats?

This Democratic “suicide squad” is badly miscalculating its leverage to sabotage the Biden agenda, and to harm fellow Democrats including members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus – to what end exactly? (They should called upon to answer this question).

Greg Sargent of the Washington Post explains, Meet the handful of Democrats who are threatening to derail Biden’s agenda:

A handful of moderate Democrats issued a stark threat on Friday morning: If the House does not hold an immediate vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate, they will withhold support for a procedural measure that’s necessary to pass the larger reconciliation bill.

Let’s be clear: This is a threat to tank the entire process that has been carefully constructed to ensure that President Biden’s full agenda makes it to his desk.

The threat came in a new letter from nine centrist House Democrats to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), which lays out demands for how the process should unfold from here.

“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,” reads the letter, which is led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and signed by other members of the House Problem Solvers Caucus.

So this is a threat to scuttle the process needed to pass the “human” infrastructure bill — including big investments in combating climate change, supports for children and families, expanded health care, and much more — to force immediate passage of the “hard” infrastructure package.

This would completely disrupt the two-track process that Biden and Democratic leaders want. Under it, Pelosi will delay House passage of the bipartisan bill until the Senate sends over the reconciliation one, then hold votes on both. This locks in each side: Moderates back the reconciliation bill to get progressives to back the bipartisan bill, and vice versa.

This move by centrists makes zero sense. First, as a Democratic aide pointed out, even if the House did vote on the bipartisan bill today, it wouldn’t pass, because the votes are not there without completion of the reconciliation bill.

That’s because progressives wouldn’t vote for it. So Pelosi all but certainly will not hold this vote.

The centrists seem to believe that if they exercise their leverage in this fashion, it will force Pelosi’s hand. But even if it did, why would it force the hand of progressives?

Second, note that only nine centrist Democrats signed the threat. The names of many, many other Democrats in the Problem Solvers Caucus are not on the letter.

What’s more, even some moderates think this misguided strategy could scuttle the whole process.

[I]n this case these centrists are asking for too much. Every time they make a threat like this, it seems more obvious that they will indeed withhold support for the reconciliation bill later, or at least insist on dramatically downscaling its spending.

Which only reinforces the need to stick to the two-track strategy.

It’s true that under the two track strategy, centrist Democrats will not get to campaign on passage of the bipartisan bill in isolation, as they want. But it’s also true that progressives will not ultimately dictate what the reconciliation bill looks like.

The latter will have to satisfy Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), not to mention the House centrists as well. That bill will ultimately spend less than $3.5 trillion, and progressives will have to accept some of those concessions.

Neither side will be fully happy with the end product. And that’s how the two-track strategy is designed to work. Disrupting it now over a desire to see this unfold in a different procedural order makes no sense.

[D]isrupting the two-track strategy threatens to bring that whole agenda down. Holding together makes it more likely that the end product will be a win for everyone.

Jonathan Chait adds, 9 Moderate Democrats Threaten to Tank Entire Biden Presidency (excerpt):

The demand of the letter is that the House votes on the bipartisan infrastructure bill before it votes on the budget. Why are the nine Democrats so insistent on this order when the party’s leadership wants to pass both bills? The reason is that they aren’t promising to support the budget resolution, either. The House leadership can wait on the infrastructure bill, which they are desperate to pass, to pressure them to support the bigger, Democrats-only budget bill. If the infrastructure bill were to pass the House first, on the other hand, they could threaten to take their ball and go home if the House doesn’t give them absolutely everything they want.

Notably, the moderate House Democrats have been loading up the reconciliation bill with a series of conflicting demands. On the one hand, they have been complaining about its overall size and pushing to shrink down the headline number. On the other hand, they have been making their own costly demands. Josh Gottheimer, one letter signer, has been crusading for a restoration of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, a benefit for some of his affluent constituents. Jim Costa, another signer, wants to protect the heirs to massive fortunes from any taxation on their windfall.

These demands, notably, are not designed to protect the Democratic Party from the left’s unpopular baggage. Most of the broader debate has focused on the toxic brand damage of slogans like defunding the police and Green New Deal, but the moderate Democrats are, in this case, threatening to tank a highly popular agenda of taxing the very rich in order to give broad middle-class benefits. The [nine] moderate Democrats are the biggest obstacle to making the math work, simultaneously complaining about the size of the bill while ordering more expensive goodies for themselves.

The larger problem with this threat is that it misunderstands the actual leverage they possess. The nine Democratic saboteurs could get an infrastructure bill tomorrow, but that wouldn’t help them because it almost certainly won’t pass the House. The bill needs liberal Democrats to pass, and the liberals are supporting Biden’s strategy. So, getting the infrastructure bill up for a vote would simply mean the infrastructure bill would be defeated by mass opposition — not only by the 94 members of the House Progressive Caucus but also likely other liberal Democrats who want Biden to succeed. A failed infrastructure vote does nothing to help the moderates.

Typically, moderates hold all the cards because the walk-away scenario of no bill harms them less than it harms the liberals. In this case, the moderates have a bill that they care about more than the liberals do, inverting the typical dynamic.

The suicidal illogic of the demand may explain why only nine Democrats signed the letter. The most famous Democratic members representing purple districts — Ellisa Slotkin, Abigail Spanberger, and many others — are absent from the list, which is heavy with Democrats focused monomaniacally on protecting the bank accounts of their funders.

The moderates’ desperation to pass the infrastructure bill is perfectly understandable. It’s a popular bill that has wide Republican support and the perfect issue to support their message that they can work across party lines. But the only way for them to actually get that bill signed into law is to work cooperatively with their party’s liberals and find an agreeable deal to pass Biden’s signature domestic legislation.

They can kill Biden’s domestic agenda, but doing so would only mean that the bipartisan infrastructure bill comes crashing down with it, along with the entire Democratic Party’s domestic profile. That’s how mutually assured destruction works: When you have so much leverage that you can obliterate everything, you actually don’t have much leverage at all.

Steve Benson makes a similar argument. Why are 9 moderate House Dems putting Biden’s agenda in jeopardy?

For congressional Democrats, the road map to legislative success was relatively clear. The Senate approved a $3.5 trillion budget resolution this week with unanimous support from the Democratic conference. Once the Democratic-led House returns to work and dose the same, members can move forward with working out an ambitious intra-party compromise.

This morning, however, we learned of an unexpected wrinkle that may affect the plan. NBC News reported:

Nine House Democrats are warning Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., that they won’t vote for a budget resolution until the House passes the bipartisan infrastructure bill advanced by the Senate this week…. The letter, dated Thursday, was led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., the co-chair of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.

The New Jersey Democrat was joined by Reps. Carolyn Bourdeaux (D-Ga.), Filemon Vela (D-Texas), Jared Golden (D-Maine), Henry Cueller (D-Texas), Vicente Gonzales (D-Texas), Ed Case (D-Hawaii), Jim Costa (D-Calif.), and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.).

To put it mildly, these moderate House Dems have a plan that is … flawed.

The process envisioned by House Democratic leaders and the vast majority of progressive members has been unchanged from the outset. The chamber will tackle the $3.5 trillion measure, and once it passes, the House can then approve the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure legislation, sending both parts of the two-track package to the White House for President Biden’s signature.

The nine moderates are demanding to move things around: vote on the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill first, and then they’ll consider the rest of the party’s plans. Maybe. If they feel like it.

If Democratic leaders fail to satisfy these nine moderates — representing roughly 4% of the House Democratic conference — they’ll derail the budget resolution and the entire White House agenda will collapse because nine members couldn’t bring themselves to support a budget resolution that even Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) endorsed.

Or put another way, progressive Dems won’t support the bipartisan infrastructure legislation until the reconciliation bill passes, and moderate Dems won’t let the fight over reconciliation even begin until the bipartisan infrastructure legislation gets a vote.

There’s a tactical problem the moderates may not fully appreciate. Let’s say Pelosi, left in a tough spot, caves to the centrists’ demands and brings the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure bill to the floor, just as they’re insisting. I don’t think this is likely, but just for the sake of conversation, let’s say this happens. Would the legislation pass?

Almost certainly not. The vast majority of House Republicans would oppose it, because they don’t like the bill anyway, and the vast majority of House Democrats would also oppose it, because they want to keep it on the shelf while negotiations continue on the larger and more ambitious bill. Indeed, House progressives have the leverage right now, and they wouldn’t give it up just to make nine centrists happy.

In other words, these nine moderates are effectively asking their own party colleagues, “Let us have the Senate bill, and while you’re at it, also give us the power to undermine the rest of Biden’s popular domestic agenda.”

Why would the other 211 House Democrats go along with this? They wouldn’t.

This is precisely what many progressive members were worried about, which is precisely why the moderate members’ plan will not work. The legislative arithmetic is unavoidable: the moderates need the progressives’ votes, and progressives have no incentive to go along.

Complicating matters, this nine-member faction has left itself on an unstable branch. These centrists can swallow their pride now and walk back their threat, since it’s based on a demand that won’t be met, or they can follow through, kill Biden’s domestic agenda, invite primary rivals, and destroy their party’s chances in the next round of elections.

Again, to what end exactly?

I realize that these moderates really want to pass the Senate’s bipartisan plan. The White House and Democratic leaders want that too. But there’s one sure-fire way to guarantee its passage, and that’s to approve the party’s budget resolution and get to work on a reconciliation package.

If the moderates follow through on their threats, they’ll end up defeating the bill they want to pass. The sooner they realize this, the better it will be for everyone.

This Democratic “suicide squad” has badly miscalculated – unless their actual goal is to sabotage the Biden agenda and harm their fellow Democrats – and they should take Steve Benen’s advice: walk back this ill thought out threat. Negotiate your position on the budget resolution, but do not sabotage the Biden agenda and your fellow Democrats. Do not give the seditious insurrectionist Republicans who threatened all of your lives on January 6 an opening to return and to complete their coup d’etat to overthrow American democracy. History will condemn you if you do.