So, what’s your prediction for the prospects for the Senate’s passing the bipartisan infrastructure spending bill that has been negotiated? I think it’s DOA and President Biden and Nancy Pelosi have pretty much guaranteed that.
Can’t anybody here play this game?
It will be passed as part of the next reconciliation bill.
That assumes there will be a next reconciliation bill.
Or is the game called Talking Points for 2022 Campaigns?
Mickey (not always about immigration) Kaus, has some good analysis, but the bottom line for him comes down to this:
“The anxious progressives are right — if you’re a Dem who wants to pass massive Soft welfare state spending to turn Biden into the New LBJ, you need one big bill, passed through reconciliation. If, like me, you don’t care for the “soft” bill, you want Biden to first cut the bipartisan “hard” deal.”
https://kaus.substack.com/p/to-bi-or-not-to-bi-
That was posted Wednesday, but I think an update might be:
“Hard” infrastructure is popular, but may not be worth that much in voter’s minds in the next elections; most won’t experience any changes. The “soft” stuff is truly transformative, but too controversial to pass through the legislature on its own. The failure to pass a “hard” infrastructure package can be laid at the feet of Republicans, but only if Democrats are not seen as complicit. Thus Biden engaged in a Kabuki where he both embraced bipartisanship and sabotaged it.
The deal is dead unless the media reports and Biden backtracks. If Biden backtracks, was it a shot across the bow at progressives all along?
I don’t believe it was a “shot across the bow at progressives” but I do believe that Biden is more concerned about keeping the fractious progressives in the fold than he is about bipartisanship.
But the thing is he had a choice. If he had let the Senate pass the bipartisan bill first, the House and Senate Democrats could have restored some or all of the “soft” stuff in reconciliation and passed it with a simple majority (plus VP Harris’s tie-breaking vote). But if it isn’t passed by the Senate that’s not an option and IMO it’s touch and go. At this point I think it’s more likely to fail.
And that’s what I meant by my last wisecrack. Time will tell but it sure looks like an unforced error.
This site, Kaus have good political insights. Mish Sherlock has the key point —
https://mishtalk.com/economics/as-biden-pulls-the-rug-republican-senators-say-no-deal-by-extortion
“What precisely will Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona go along with?
I do not know, nor does anyone else.â€
My assumption of the next reconciliation bill is while the 2 maverick D’s aren’t comfortable with everything Biden and Pelosi want; they are still Democrats and want more then the 10th most moderate Senate Republican can accept. So that means reconciliation.
But Mish is correct; no one knows what Manchin and Sinema wants.
Bait and switch is perhaps the most serious of bad faith negotiating tactics. It tells you who you are dealing with: a no good fuck.
I know the Dems want the issue. I’d give it to them and develop a well crafted response to rub their faces in. Same as Kamala’s disingenuous trip to the border. No, they can’t play the game.