The Democratic ‘Suicide Squad’ Causes A Delay, Critical Rules Vote May Occur Today

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

Nine Democratic House members – now reportedly ten, with the addition of Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), a co-chair of the Blue Dog Coalition – 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.

The leaders of this rump “suicide squad” published an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday threatening to triple down on their obstruction of their own caucus. Let’s take the win. Let’s do infrastructure first. (excerpt):

The challenge we face right now is that there is a standoff with some of our colleagues [i.e. the vast majority of Democrats in Congress] who have decided to hold the infrastructure bill hostage for months, or kill it altogether, if they don’t get what they want in the next bill — a largely undefined $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. While we have concerns about the level of spending and potential revenue raisers, we are open to immediate consideration of that package.

So exactly what the hell is your problem?

Nowhere in this dishonest op-ed do the ten obstructionists in the Democratic “suicide squad” tell the simple truth that they do not support the top-line figure of $3.5 billion for the reconciliation package. Nor do they anywhere identify the specific programs and line-item spending that they would reduce. They owe it to the American people to explain to what precisely they are objecting.

The tone of the op-ed reads as if the “suicide squad” is simply saying that the “bipartisan” Senate Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is good enough, and nowhere do they make a firm commitment to supporting the “human infrastructure” portion of the Biden agenda, the American Families Act. Which is why Democratic leadership is moving the two infrastructures bills together, because the “suicide squad” cannot be trusted to support the $3.5 billion reconciliation package if you give them the “bipartisan” Senate Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act standing alone.

I’ve posed this hypothetical before, “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?” Because I am more than happy to work with their Democratic primary opponents to cast them as anti-family if they fuck this up deal.

There was supposed to have been a rules vote on Monday night to move the two infrastructure packages and the voting rights bills through the House this week. But that vote had to be delayed until Tuesday because of the obstructionist Democratic “suicide squad” members.

Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent of the Washington Post explain How Pelosi can give the rebels a way out of the hostage crisis they created (excerpt):

It turns out there may be a way out of the jam: One that involves giving the conservative Democrats a concession on timing, while preserving the two-track strategy.

The trouble right now is that other Democrats don’t trust the conservative Democrats — or moderates in the Senate — to stay on board with the reconciliation bill, which includes extensive measures building “human” infrastructure and addressing climate change. [With good justification.]

Thus was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) “two-track” strategy devised: The House would only vote on the infrastructure bill after the Senate sends over the reconciliation bill.

This locks both factions in together: Conservative and moderate Democrats must support the reconciliation bill to get the infrastructure bill passed; progressives must support the infrastructure bill to get the reconciliation one passed.

The conservative Democrats are badly misrepresenting the situation, however. In an interview with The Atlantic, Gottheimer laughably claimed House progressives are “holding the president’s priority hostage.” [A serious case of projection. It is this congressman no one has ever heard of and the Democratic “suicide squad” holding the president’s priorities hostage.]

This is nonsense: President Biden has endorsed the two-track strategy: He recently declared that he hopes House Democrats will “eventually put two bills on my desk, one on infrastructure, and one on reconciliation.”

And on Monday, a White House spokesman stressed that Biden wants “both bills on his desk.” While that’s a bit vague, it does demonstrate that Biden actively wants the House to move the reconciliation process forward.

[So] what happens now? The conservative Democrats may simply fold, and vote to move the reconciliation bill forward. But it may also be necessary to give them a way to save face first.

Several procedural experts point to a way to do that: The House could pass the infrastructure bill and move the reconciliation process forward, but Pelosi could effectively refrain from sending the infrastructure bill to the president until the Senate sends over a completed reconciliation bill.

Sarah Binder, a congressional expert at the Brookings Institution, tells us that the relevant House rule stipulates that the Speaker “shall” sign a bill that has passed both chambers (as would be the case with the infrastructure bill), but doesn’t specify when.

Binder also points to a Congressional Research Service report stating that the Speaker “may sign” such bills “at any time.” That would mean the bill doesn’t get sent to the president, which Pelosi could wait on until the Senate sends the reconciliation bill, Binder says.

“There does not appear to be any prohibition in House rules for such a delay,” Binder tells us.

This can be looked at two ways. In one sense, it makes the conservatives’ strategy appear more quixotic. Even if they did leverage the House into passing the infrastructure bill, Pelosi would still be able to preserve her two-track strategy.

These amateurs don’t know what the hell they are doing. Nancy Pelosi is the Jedi Master.

“They may think they have Pelosi over a barrel, but they don’t,” congressional scholar Norman Ornstein told us.

Another way to look at this is that it gives Pelosi the option of passing the infrastructure bill in this fashion, then holding it, to give the conservative nine a way to say they “won.” They could say to their districts they got the infrastructure bill passed, and it’s only a matter of time until the money flows, yet it would not be sent to the president until moderates backed the reconciliation bill.

“This would seem to be a useful tool for Pelosi in negotiating with the conservative members of her caucus,” Josh Chafetz, the author of a good book about Congress, told us. “They can claim to have won the concession of passing the bipartisan bill first.”

“It’s certainly a plausible pathway in procedural terms,” Binder told us.

And yet, adding another complexity, this might not work for another reason. Progressives might not vote for the infrastructure bill as part of this strategy, because they won’t trust that it will work in the end.

The bottom line is that Pelosi might have to come up with some way of giving the conservative nine a face saving exit. If she did, and it got the conservatives to drop their hostage taking, they could then claim the Problem Solvers Caucus — which these conservatives belong to — actually solved a problem. Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Jamelle Bouie explains The 9 Democrats Making Nancy Pelosi’s Life Harder Are Making a Big Mistake (excerpt):

It should be said that Biden has not actually asked Congress to fast track the bipartisan infrastructure bill ahead of the reconciliation package. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, told NBC News that Biden “has been clear that he wants both bills on his desk and that he looks forward to signing each.”

The nine members in question are also out of step with their districts, where the most likely voters back the budget reconciliation package without much in the way of reservation, according to a recent survey from the left-leaning firm Data for Progress.

The facts of the situation aside, it simply boggles the mind to watch another set of conservative and moderate Democrats persuade themselves that they are not subject to the laws of politics and will come out ahead if they, as Democrats, undermine the Democratic president.

We are well past the age of split-ticket voting. If and when voters turn against Biden, they’ll turn against congressional Democrats too. Try as they might, these Democratic skeptics will struggle to distance themselves from their party and its leadership. If past elections are any evidence, they’ll fail.

The only thing that could possibly buoy their prospects is the president’s popularity, which depends, in part, on his success. For conservative Democrats, handing Biden a major legislative defeat — which is what might happen if the House scraps its two-track process — is the very definition of an own goal, assuming they hope to stay in office.

A Washington Post editorial makes the same point. Failing on infrastructure would be bad for the nation and a self-own for Democrats.

[T]he best play, then, is to go all out: to stop the games and pass as much of Biden’s agenda as possible; to do what they can to level the electoral playing field and combat voter suppression in the states; and to make the structural reforms (D.C. statehood, for example) that might bring American democracy a little closer to “one person, one vote.”

The point of winning power is not to stay in power; it is to use it. And if you use it well — if you do what you said you would do — you might actually get to keep it.

The Hill reports that, as of this morning, Pelosi, moderates inch closer to infrastructure, budget deal:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told rank-and-file Democrats in a private meeting Tuesday that she is inching closer to a deal with a band of centrist rebels who have threatened to tank President Biden’s domestic agenda over disagreements about leadership’s strategy for how to pass trillions in federal spending.

“I’m sorry that we couldn’t land the plane last night, and that you all had to wait. But that’s just part of the legislative process,” Pelosi told colleagues in their weekly caucus meeting, a reference to the hours of delays late Monday as lawmakers waited for a procedural vote to advance Biden’s agenda.

“I think we’re close to landing the plane,” Pelosi added.

After the hour-and-a-half-long closed-door meeting, Pelosi told reporters: “When we bring up the bill, we will have the votes.”

Nancy Pelosi is a master vote counter. She does not bring up a bill for a vote unless she is certain that she has the necessary votes secured. If she holds the vote today, rest assured that she is confident she has secured the necessary votes.

Pelosi’s concession:

The emerging agreement began to shape late Monday and Tuesday morning. It would extend an olive branch to the recalcitrant obstructionist moderates led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) by guaranteeing that the House will take up the Senate-passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure package by a Sept. 27 deadline and send it to Biden’s desk.

Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), a close ally of Pelosi’s, introduced legislation late Monday night that states the House would commit to bringing the infrastructure bill to the floor by Sept. 28, though sources said that deadline has now been moved up by one day.

By Tuesday morning, Gottheimer’s group of 10 centrist Democrats appeared to be moving toward signing off on the deal. They expressed concerns to Pelosi that the Sept. 27 resolution was not binding and leadership agreed to make the language more forceful.

“Incredibly close” to a deal, Gottheimer said emerging from Pelosi’s office. “Inches, inches.”

The latest tweak will revise the rule from including a sense of Congress that the House commits to voting on the bipartisan infrastructure bill by Sept. 27 to stating that the chamber “shall consider” it by that date, according to a Democratic leadership aide.

It’s almost as if the amateurs in the Democratic “suicide squad” are unaware that the fiscal year ends on September 30, and the budget resolution must be approved by October 1. There is also the complication of raising the federal debt ceiling this year around the same time. Do they want to be responsible for a government shutdown, rather than the Republicans holding the federal debt ceiling hostage?

If the band of moderates — or enough of them — agree to get on board the new Pelosi plan, the House will hold a procedural vote Tuesday afternoon to move forward on three pieces of Biden’s domestic agenda: a voting rights bill named for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.); the infrastructure package; and the $3.5 trillion budget framework.

The vote on the combined rule would “deem” the budget as passed once the House passes the rule itself, meaning squeamish moderates would not need to take a separate, standalone vote on the $3.5 trillion budget later Tuesday.

Given Democrats’ razor-thin majority in the House, Pelosi can only afford to lose three Democrats on any given vote. So the Speaker, who considers herself a “master legislator” and vote counter, will need to win over a majority of the 10 holdouts in order to secure a victory for her party.

Stay tuned.