Senate Democrats Approve $3.5 Trillion Budget Resolution – Now Comes The Hard Part

The Biden agenda remains on track in the Senate.

Senate Democrats approved a budget resolution early Wednesday morning that will allow them to pass a $3.5 trillion spending plan without GOP support later this year. Senate Democrats approve budget resolution, teeing up $3.5T spending plan:

The Senate voted 50-49 to adopt the resolution, capping off a chaotic, hours-long debate on the floor where senators voted on dozens of largely non-binding amendments that offer a preview of the fight to come on the spending bill.

Though the budget resolution doesn’t get signed into law, it’s the first step toward bypassing the 60 vote threshold required to pass most legislation in the Senate. Democrats will try to unify their entire 50-member caucus to pass the spending bill on their own as soon as late September. The package is expected to include top Democratic priorities like immigration reform, combating climate change and universal pre-K.

“This legislation will not only provide enormous support to the kids of this country to the parents of this country, to the elderly people of this country, but it will also, I hope, restore the belief that in America we can have a government that works for all, not just the few,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

The House left Washington, D.C., late last month. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) announced in a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday that they will return on Aug. 23 to consider the budget resolution and “will remain in session until our business for the week is concluded.”

The Senate’s vote on the budget comes less than a day after they passed a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure bill that was negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators and the White House.

The votes fulfill Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) pledge to make progress on both pieces of President Biden’s infrastructure plan — the bipartisan bill and the Democratic-only measure — before letting senators leave for their August recess.

“So despite this long road we’ve taken, we have finally, finally reached the finish line. Of course, we Democrats believe we need to do much more. The bipartisan infrastructure bill is a very significant bill, but our country has other very significant, very important challenges. …We are moving on to a second track which will make generational transformation,” Schumer said on Tuesday.

Though 19 Republicans helped pass the bipartisan bill on Tuesday, Democrats approved the budget resolution without any GOP support and are expected to go-it-alone to pass their $3.5 trillion spending package that sparks fierce opposition from Republicans.

[T]here were flashes of tensions during the Senate’s hours-long session as well as unexpected bipartisanship as Democrats tried to defuse GOP’s political messaging amendments.

After Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) offered an amendment on the Green New Deal, a progressive climate change plan that Republicans see as prime campaign fodder, Sanders said he had “no problem” voting for it because it had “nothing” to do with the plan.

When Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) offered an amendment opposing defunding the police, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who has been involved in police reform negotiations, called the amendment a “gift” and urged everyone to vote for it in an animated speech.

“I am so excited. This is perhaps the highlight of this long and painful and tortuous night,” Booker said. “Finally once and for all we can put to bed this scurrilous accusation that somebody in this great esteemed body would want to defund the police. So let’s all of us, let’s 100 people, not walk but sashay down there and vote for this amendment.”

The amendment got added to the budget in a 99-0 vote.

Republicans also got several symbolic wins. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) joined with Republicans to add non-binding language into the budget resolution on preserving the Hyde Amendment and banning “critical race theory,” which has become a key talking point for conservatives as midterm election battles start to take shape. [The key here is “non-binding.”]

Democrats also voted with Republicans in support of new law enforcement positions and requiring COVID-19 tests for immigrants. Each of the amendments was non-binding, meaning they’ll have no practical impact on Democrats as they craft the bill but could preview looming fights on the spending package this fall.

The budget resolution includes few details about what will be in the Democratic spending plan, instead providing broad top-lines that committees will need to start formally drafting their bills.

But the subsequent spending package it greenlights, according to a memo sent to Democratic senators this week, will be a sweeping bill that touches on almost every facet of American life including childcare, health care, housing, education, job training and manufacturing.

It will tackle big Democratic priorities that outside of the budget process would likely fail to defeat the filibuster, including immigration reform, combating climate change and free community college.

Democrats still need to hash out many of the details, a balancing act that will require them to craft a bill that can win over centrists like Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) without losing progressives like Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Democrats for example are expected to include “lawful permanent status for qualified immigrants” and border security measures in the spending package, according to the memo to Democratic offices, but they haven’t specified who would qualify. And the budget resolution provides even less clarity, only providing the Judiciary Committee with a price tag for its bill, but no guidance on what they should include in it.

Democrats are proposing to pay for the bill, in part, by increasing taxes on wealthy earners and some corporations.

Unity on the spending package later this year isn’t guaranteed. Sinema has raised concerns about the price tag [without citing any specific policy objection] and Manchin [who profits off of coal] has expressed concerns both about the debt and some of the energy language.

Meanwhile, some progressives have signaled they want to go even bigger.

“The $3.5 trillion in the Democrat-led budget resolution making its way through the Senate right now is much closer to what we need, but it still doesn’t go far enough,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) said in a statement.

The “bipartisan” physical infrastructure bill (Biden’s American Jobs Plan) remains inextricably linked to the human infrastructure bill (Biden’s American Families Plan) Democrats are trying to pass by the budget reconciliation process. You don’t get one without the other. And the “Grim Reaper of Democracy,” Mitch McConnell and his gang of insurrectionist obstructionists are still committed to denying President Biden any legislative victories.

House Democrats reaffirmed that the two bills are inextricably linked. House progressives won’t vote for the infrastructure bill unless the Senate approves $3.5 trillion in other spending.

Jonathan Chait writes, House Progressives Should Help Biden by Ransoming the Infrastructure Bill:

The drama and attention surrounding the infrastructure bill has focused almost entirely on the Senate, which has seen an unusual, high-profile bipartisan coalition. But the measure can’t be enacted without also passing the House of Representatives, which was not a party to the negotiations, and has a large number of Democrats much less invested in its success than their Senate counterparts. This provides an opportunity for the progressives: The left can and should refuse to support the bipartisan deal until moderate Democrats assure them of support for the much larger, more important reconciliation bill that will follow.

It’s not unusual for progressive Democrats to threaten to withhold their votes in an effort to win concessions. They make these threats all the time, and almost always have to go along in the end with whatever deal the moderates have signed onto. But this time, progressives have real leverage.

The unusual power House progressives hold at the moment is the product of the unique political circumstances of the moment, which has several factors.

To begin with, the bipartisan infrastructure bill is nice, but hardly crucial. It has some useful spending on mass transit, environmental remediation, and other Democratic priorities. The symbolism of a bipartisan bill operating in broad daylight (unlike the under-the-radar maneuverings of the Secret Congress) would provide political validation for President Biden.

But the infrastructure bill is much less important than the far larger Democratic budget bill that is coming next. That bill is many times larger, and its fate will both define Biden’s domestic-policy legacy and play a major role in shaping his 2024 campaign message. Biden and his party will have the chance to run on a combination of popular middle-class benefits (universal child tax credits, enhanced Medicare, and others), financed by an also-popular tax hike on the very wealthy.

The barrier they’re facing is the reluctance of moderate Democrats to raise taxes on the rich. That reluctance is not grounded either in public opinion (which supports soaking the rich) or in economics (even conservative models find Biden’s progressive tax hikes would have barely any effect on economic growth). It’s rooted instead in the deep influence of the ultrawealthy, who would generally prefer not to pay much higher tax rates, and who have enormous levels of access and influence on lawmakers.

Reminder: U.S. Chamber rewards Senators Manchin, Sinema for opposing Biden initiatives and for preserving the Senate filibuster.

Moderate [Corporate] Democrats sent a letter to their party leadership simultaneously asking that the House pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill right away, and preemptively raising doubts about the reconciliation bill:

Moderate House Dems are raising concerns about the Democrats’ budget plans that would pave the way for passing $3.5T package – and are also calling on Pelosi to give an immediate vote to the infrastructure bill and not tie it to the reconcilation package, per letter from source pic.twitter.com/cMSZp3bdft

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 7, 2021

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has rejected this position and said she won’t bring up the bipartisan infrastructure bill in her chamber until the Senate passes the budget reconciliation proposal. Pelosi: House won’t take up the bipartisan bill until Senate votes on reconciliation.

That’s where the leverage comes in. The moderate Democrats are irrationally worried about passing a big tax hike on the rich, but they really want to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill. They see the bipartisan bill as their golden ticket to showing Republican-leaning voters in their districts that they can work across party lines. If that bill doesn’t pass, instead of getting to talk about how they helped pass a big infrastructure bill with Republican support, their message will be that they tried to pass a big bipartisan bill but failed. If the bipartisan infrastructure bill fails, the moderate Democrats are screwed.

The progressive goal shouldn’t be to sink the infrastructure bill or even to alter it, but to pressure moderate Democrats to support the reconciliation bill. The House progressives have been demanding a vote on the reconciliation bill before passing the infrastructure bill, but the sequence itself is probably not the important thing. What matters is getting private assurances on the contours of a deal from the moderates before the left supplies the votes to pass the infrastructure bill.

Democrats only control the House by a handful of votes. The bipartisan infrastructure bill will probably get some Republican support — 29 Republicans in the “Problem Solvers Caucus” seem likely to support it — but the 94 members of the House Progressive Caucus have more than enough votes to control its fate.

[T]his time, the left has real power. Progressives can credibly threaten to sink a priority that moderates care about more than they do. The Democratic Party’s left flank has devoted much of its energy under Biden to making demands that are either substantively unrealistic or politically dicey. Now they have the opportunity to push for a policy that is neither, and which will help advance the goal of a successful Biden presidency. The House progressives’ moment has arrived.