Bipartisan Infrastructure/3.5T Reconciliation/Gov Funding/Debt Ceiling (1 Viewer)

The drama and diplomacy are set to intensify over the next 24 hours, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) scrambles to keep her fractious, narrow majority intact and send the first of two major economic initiatives to Biden’s desk. In a sign of the stakes, the president even canceled a planned Wednesday trip to Chicago so that he could stay in Washington and attempt to spare his agenda from collapse.
Democrats generally support the infrastructure package, which proposes major new investments in the country’s aging roads, bridges, pipes, ports and Internet connections. But the bill has become a critical political bargaining chip for liberal-leaning lawmakers, who have threatened to scuttle it to preserve the breadth of a second, roughly $3.5 trillion economic package.
What is in and out of the bipartisan infrastructure bill?
That latter proposal aims to expand Medicare, invest new sums to combat climate change, offer free prekindergarten and community college to all students and extend new aid to low-income families — all financed through taxes increases on wealthy Americans and corporations. Liberals fear it is likely to be slashed in scope dramatically by moderates, including Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), unless they hold up the infrastructure package the duo helped negotiate — leading to the stalemate that plagues the party on the eve of the House vote.

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coldseat said:

Thought it would be good to have a place to discuss all the drama on Capitol Hill and whether Democrats will get any of this signed. Given that Republican have abandoned any responsibility of doing anything for the good of country it's on Dems to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. But as with the reconciliation bill, moderates are opposing this.

I'm really trying hard to understand why Manchin and Sinema are making the reconciliation bill process so difficult and how they think that benefits them? As far as I can see, all it's doing is raising the ire of the majority of democrats towards them. It's been well known for a long time now that both the Infrastructure bill and reconciliation bill were tied together. They worked so hard to get and "Bipartisan" Infrastructure bill together (because it was oh so important to them to work together) and passed in the Senate, but now want to slow drag and bulk on the reconciliation bill (by not being able to negotiate with members of their own party)? There by, Putting both bills passage at risk and tanking both the Biden agenda and any hope of winning Congress in 2022? Make it make sense!

I suspect they'll get it done in the end because the implication of failure are really bad. But why make it so dysfunctional?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/09/29/biden-pelosi-democrats-infrastructure/

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bdb13 said:

Outside of anything else I don't believe Manchin would be incorrect to believe that the issue of supporting a huge Democratic-only social infrastructure bill would be a political loser for him in West Virginia. He probably fares best here personally in this scenario by appearing to stand firm imo.

I think that when Joe Manchin is your deciding vote in the Senate it probably should have been recognized and reconciled with earlier than now that it was going to be extraordinarily difficult to leverage political will from his left against him in a way that forces him to move on this.

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coldseat said:

I mean, I get that much. But if the outcome here is that both bills go down, where's the win at for him? Just being an immovable object on reconciliation is enough for his voters in West Virginia? I'm assuming that the people voting for him aren't Trump loyalist and actually want some (most) of the social infrastructure bill, or else they wouldn't have voted for him? I mean, we all know it would be highly beneficial for the people of his state. How effective of a politician is he if he can't even negotiate with the left wing of his own party?

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bdb13 said:

I also think that a (better?) reading of the room post 2020 Presidential and Congressional elections would have led Democrats to understand that their rise to power here was based much moreso in the country's distaste for Trump and Co. than its affinity for Democrats.. hence their surprise losses in the House and narrow taking of the Senate (and that due in no small part to Trump's continued dumbassery post-2020 election that clearly helped swing Georgia's Senate races to the Democrats). The way that all played out is indicative to me that 'the country' wasn't so much in support of what they perceived to be the Democrat's platform as much as it collectively just wanted to see Trump go the fork away.

I realize that the 'left' of the party is more vast and wields more power than it did, let's say, ten years ago and probably feels as if "our side is fully in power, let's get this shirt done" with things here that Democrats generally have supported here recently.

If Democrats had swept into power with huge margins and huge victories I think it would have been indicative that the country was there on this and that the electorate was in support of the Democratic agenda and that the result of the election was not just simply Anti-Trump. But in reality the Democrats gained power here because the middle of the electorate and a few Republicans rebelled and voted against Trump because they just couldn't stand the madre frocker anymore.

And the result was that the Democrats won the Presidency and narrowly held on to the House but didn't pick up additional seats in the Senate to make the conservative Manchin the 51st, 52nd, or 53rd vote needed for a bill like this one. And I just think that's where we are today with it and why there's such difficulty/inability in getting Manchin - and Sinema - on board with it.

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coldseat said:

That's all fine, but it doesn't answer my question.

So Manchin and Sinema choose mutually assured destruction of the whole Dem caucus over of negotiating with Biden and Progressive? I mean, it's pretty clear they aren't going to bully progressives in to just passing Infrastructure. If one goes down, both go down. So what's the play?

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bdb13 said:

My guess would be to continue to hold firm and attempt to force the progressives to come down substantially on the number as 'something is better than nothing' and it appears the alternative is definitely nothing. I don't know if there's time for all that though and I don't really think Manchin is bluffing that he won't support the $3.5 trillion dollar bill.. so yeah I don't really know how this is going to play out.

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samiam5211 said:

The debt ceiling increase should always pass with unanimous consent. There isn't any reason to every make that a political issue. Even if you think the national debt is the biggest issue we face, the debt ceiling is not the place to fight that battle. Whichever party is not in the white house has been irresponsibly politicizing the debt ceiling for the past 20 years.

As far as the spending bill goes, i think we need to bring back earmarks. Pork barrel spending sure made it easier to get a budget passed, and it wasn't every as big a deal in the big picture as it was made out to be.

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coldseat said:

Agreed. But Republicans don't really care any more.

Given that Republicans won't help, Democrats should just suspend it permanently. Do it through reconciliation even if the Senate parliamentarian says it's not allowed or suspend the filibuster and pass it by majority. But we all know the usual moderate Democrats oppose that.

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MT15 said:

I don’t know this polling outfit, but have seen similar results for months now:

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samiam5211 said:

Yea, if only we could add the Joe Manchin regional airport in Charleston WV into the bill.

The republicans are the bad guys this time, and i realize that right now the Republican party is in a bad place the likes of which we have never seen the US, but the Democrats aren't above it. The parties need to be broken up.

If we don't have some type of structural reform to our political system, it is all going to fall apart. I don't see anything taking us off the path we're on. We need campaign finance reform, election reform, and probably even a reformation of our government structures. Our legislative branch argues about whether or not to keep the lights on twice a year, there is no way they are going to be able to address the issues that are taking us down the path of a failed state.

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bdb13 said:

Some relevance to this

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