Budget Reconciliation Train Is Leaving The Station, Sens. Manchin And Sinema Had Better Get On Board

The Huffington Post reports, Democrats Fret They’ll Get Hoodwinked On Infrastructure:

Democrats are growing anxious about a bipartisan deal reached last week by a group of moderates that is aimed at overhauling the nation’s infrastructure system.

The bipartisan framework, which totals approximately $1 trillion, deals only with physical infrastructure projects such as roads, bridges and waterways. Its costs would be offset in part by user fees on electric vehicles and indexing the gas tax to inflation. It would not include any tax increases on corporations.

Now, a growing number of Democratic senators are demanding some sort of assurance from leadership that Congress will pass another, more robust package ― one that includes progressive priorities ― if the senators first vote for the more narrow infrastructure bill negotiated with Republicans.

The fear is that some sell-out Senate Democrats ― Joe Manchin of West Virginia being just one of them ― would decline to support a robust second bill under a special budget process known as reconciliation, potentially dealing progressives a huge defeat.

“I’m not for this if it’s the beginning and the end,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost when asked about the bipartisan infrastructure deal.

“We fail to do the second part of this at our political peril,” said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).

[O]ther Democrats were more dubious about the prospect of trading their vote away in the present for a progressive bill that may never become law in the future. In all probability, the party would need total unanimity to approve such a bill, which would likely include things that moderate senators may have trouble supporting, like tax increases and at least an additional trillion dollars in spending.

Let’s be clear: the bipartisan “Gang of Ten” only has an agreement among the ten of them, and maybe not even amongst themselves. 45 Republican Senators will follow Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s policy of total obstruction, and vote against any bill Democrats put forward. 45 Democratic Senators will not vote for the “Gang of Ten” agreement which is too small in scope: it does not address climate change and clean energy, does not address “human infrastructure” needs, and does not raise taxes on corporations and billionaires tp pay for it. The “Gang of Ten” agreement is D.O.A. and is just wasting everyone’s valuable time in order to humor the vanity of putative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) has seen enough. “Look man, I ain’t fallin’ for no banana in my tailpipe” from Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer plans to formally trigger the budget reconciliation process on Wednesday, setting Democrats up to ram the White House’s American Jobs and Family Plans through the Senate via a simple majority vote in July.

Schumer will convene a meeting Wednesday with all 11 Democratic members of the Senate Budget Committee and will urge them to have the budget resolution — what he’s labeling a “Unity Budget” — ready to be presented to the conference in early July.

The Associated Press reports, Impatient Democrats prepare to go-it-alone on infrastructure (excerpt):

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he is moving ahead, huddling privately Wednesday with the Senate Budget Committee to prepare for July votes on a majority-rules approach as wary Democrats prepare to lift Biden’s $1.7 billion American Jobs Plan and $1.8 billion American Families Plan to passage.

Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are trying to calm worries from anxious rank-and-file Democrats that Biden is leaving too much on the table in talks with Republicans. Restless lawmakers want assurances that if they concede to a scaled-back bill with Republicans, it won’t be the last word and the president’s push for investments in climate change strategies, child care centers and other Democratic priorities will proceed — with or without GOP votes.

“We’ll see where we’re going to go after a week or 10 days (of) more dialogue and negotiation,” White House counselor Steve Ricchetti said Tuesday, according to a partial transcript of the private caucus meeting obtained by The Associated Press.

The updated timeline comes as Biden’s top legislative priority is teetering in Congress while he is overseas. The president and the Democratic leaders of the House and Senate have been engaged in a two-track strategy — reaching for a bipartisan deal with Republicans but also setting the stage for a potential majority-rules strategy in case talks fail.

[O]n Tuesday, the members of the bipartisan group of senators presented the emerging proposal to their colleagues at closed-door Senate lunches and were met with mixed reviews.

Sen. Ron Wyden, chair of the Senate Finance Committee, described it as “another hit on working people.”

“To me, their idea that they’re going to raise taxes on working people while letting multinational companies and the most wealthy Americans off the hook is a nonstarter,” Wyden said. “I mean, where is the fairness in that?”

Biden is also facing skepticism from Democrats who want to see robust investments in strategies to fight climate change — for electric vehicle charging stations, money to bolster communities’ response to harsh weather conditions and funds for public transit that many rural state Republicans oppose and that have been dramatically reduced in the bipartisan plan.

Democrats to Biden: No climate provisions, no vote for infrastructure deal:

“There has to be an absolute unbreakable guarantee that climate has to be at the center of any infrastructure deal that we cut,” Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts said at a news conference with Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon.

Merkley added: “If there is no climate, there is no deal.”

So let’s cut this crap about sanctifying “bipartisanship,” now synonymous with “do nothing” in the U.S. Senate. Senator Jon Tester, a member of the “Gang of Ten,” should recall what he said back in January.

Sen. Jon Tester: “Chuck Schumer is the majority leader and he should be treated like majority leader. We can get shit done around here and we ought to be focused on getting stuff done. If we don’t, the inmates are going to be running this ship.”https://t.co/rd1ScEkC6a

— Zach C. Cohen (@Zachary_Cohen) January 21, 2021

It’s time for Senate Democrats to be the “get shit done” Caucus to counter the total obstruction of the Sedition Caucus, and that means getting rid of the Jim Crow relic Senate filibuster rule to do it. We’re done with preening prima donna putative Democrats like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. It’s time they get on board Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Train.

As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post explains, The ‘reconciliation’ train is about to leave the station:

In a meeting with House Democrats on Tuesday morning, top White House adviser Steve Ricchetti appeared to put a hard deadline on the possibility of an infrastructure deal. According to Punchbowl News, Ricchetti said the White House is giving the bipartisan group of senators negotiating that deal another week to 10 days.

Why? You have already wasted enough valuable time on Republicans who have no intentions of ever negotiating in good faith, time you do not have to waste.

Indeed, it’s obvious that, barring some surprisingly abrupt turnaround, Democrats are going to have to pass a big package by themselves, via the simple majority “reconciliation” process.

This train is going to leave the station by the end of the month. And that’s good: If anything, it should have left some time ago. We can only hope the damage done by the wait doesn’t end up being too serious.

This process is already being set in motion. According to a Senate Democratic aide, Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) will convene a meeting with all the Democrats on the Budget Committee on Wednesday to start putting together the reconciliation vehicle for the infrastructure package.

Schumer will instruct those Democrats to craft a measure that includes requisite spending for policies that would “reduce carbon pollution at a scale commensurate with the climate crisis,” the aide emails, adding that he will also say that the family-oriented components of Biden’s package are “essential” and must be “robustly funded” in reconciliation.

The reason this is so critical is that many progressives have been loudly objecting that the endless quest for a deal with Republicans was putting all the progressive priorities in Biden’s package at risk. This seems like an effort to reassure the progressives that they needn’t worry.

As you’ll recall, the idea all along has been that the groups of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate who are negotiating a bipartisan deal would try to reach one centered on bricks-and-mortar infrastructure, along the lines of what Republicans will accept. This plan would be paid for somehow or other without raising tax rates on corporations, which Republicans cannot accept under any circumstances.

If that deal comes together, then Democrats would load all the other priorities in Biden’s package — the climate proposals, the supports for children and families, the investments in caregiving infrastructure, the corporate tax hikes to pay for it all — into a reconciliation bill and pass that later. If no bipartisan deal is reached, then Democrats would do the entire thing in one big reconciliation package.

As we all knew would happen, the bipartisan deal is failing to materialize. While it’s still possible, skepticism is intensifying on both sides, with Republicans saying it’s too liberal, and progressives saying too much is being traded away and it’s time for Democrats to move forward alone.

But either way, what’s remarkable is that the other half of the plan actually may be on track.

Schumer’s assurances that the reconciliation package must include robust spending on both the climate and family-support sides of Biden’s plan is designed to send liberals a clear signal. Whatever happens with Republicans, the reconciliation measure — whether it represents the second half of a two-part package, or the whole package all at once — will be ambitious and progressive.

Indeed, as I’ve reported, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who as chair of the Budget Committee is playing an influential role in the creation of that reconciliation package, is privately confident that this measure will be historic in ambition and scope, even if it doesn’t give progressives everything they want. Schumer’s latest directives perhaps validate that confidence.

We should not lose sight of why this has taken so long. It’s because of two factors: the filibuster and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). The filibuster is why all this effort has to be poured into creating a reconciliation package in the first place. And this has dragged on to this point because Manchin will not support a Democrats-only bill until all efforts to win GOP support have been exhausted.

Since it’s apparently too much to hope that Manchin might see the insanity of this process and reconsider his support for the filibuster and his strange insistence that legislation cannot be inherently worth doing unless one or more Republicans supports it, we’ll have to hope all this delay doesn’t end up compromising the final product. But at least we’re about to get real movement.

“All aboard!”