Passing BIF quickly then negotiating quietly with Manchinema sounds fine in a vacuum, but it was mostly Manchinema who blew that up by saying they were going to back out of the linkage. The linkage was why the overwhelming majority of Democratic legislators and the president were willing to countenance BIF. "Fine, do your thing, but the really transformative stuff will come in BBB." I mean, BBB was his damned campaign slogan.
We also need to consider that "negotiating quietly" is a non-starter in today's world. Everything becomes an online beef session.
"The linkage was why the overwhelming majority of Democratic legislators and the president were willing to countenance BIF."
This seems backwards to me. If Manchin OR Sinema or Any other Democratic Senator decides not to vote yes, then NOTHING passes in reconciliation. Biden didn't countenance the BIF, the BIF is his best hope of getting something passed when the Senate is dead even and they can only afford to lose 5 votes in the House.
Reverse the situation to see what I mean. Imagine if Republicans had the positions the Democrats had now and had a bipartisan tax cut for a trillion dollars, but the Freedom caucus was holding things up because they wanted to pass an additional 3.5 trillion tax cut. If they blow up all the tax cuts because they can't get the additional 3.5 trillion, are the moderates the ones who are considered crazy?
Manchin and Sinema and even the Senate never agreed to any linkage, so they haven’t backed out of anything. If there was actual linkage, Schumer would have held the BIF from a vote until it could be tied to the reconciliation vote. He didn’t do that - Instead the Senate passed it and sent it to the House. The linkage only applied/applies to the House and that was a demand which came from the Progressive caucus. If anyone abandoned the linkage it is Pelosi who schedule a vote on the BIF after saying she wouldn’t (And then reneged on that).
I’m not sure what you mean by “negotiating quietly” but in my view the problem is the lack of any type of negotiation. Up until this point, progressives have refused to drop below 3.5 trillion and moderates, lead by Manchin and Sinema, have refused to go up to that level. It seems we are finally getting to a place where actual negotiations may happen instead the the public and private brow-beating that’s wasted the last two months of time.
No Biden blew it up by mentioning the linkage in the 1st place after he just told the republicans that the deal was done. Biden instead should have shut his mouth and taken the win
Right. Isn’t that the dynamic that got us the linkage in the first place? Manchinema brought on this linkage, which for all the reasons MY laid out, seems tactically bad.
“The right thing to do would have been to pass the BIF quickly, and then work with Manchin and Sinema quietly on crafting a reconciliation package that could be swiftly unveiled and passed.”
Matt is many orders of magnitude more plugged into the machinations of power In DC than I am, but I am very surprised to see him write this.
It seemed to me that Gottheimer and Sinema were being very transparent about their intent to kill the reconciliation bill in its entirety. They were not being coy on the subject; they were practically bragging about it.
It may be that Matt feels that BIF + good bipartisan vibes > BIF + BBBA, but that seems like the real choice here. I don’t see a world in which you get BIF + good vibes + quiet BBBA.
The BIF win has been taken away from the President. It’s now just a Dem deal that passed through reconciliation, but Reps get to say they worked with Dems. It’s the least ideal of the three outcomes.
Progressives have to pass something now and they really increased manchin’s negotiating position. Anything over $1.5t is a gift from him and was something he wanted to negotiate away anyway.
We’re in the same spot, but without a feel good bipartisan win. I guess progressives didn’t want him to have that. Extremists don’t want feel good compromises.
This is my point though, I don’t think we’re in the same spot.
Are you explicitly arguing that whatever BBBA ends up passing (assuming one does) would also have passed in the exact same form if we had gone for good vibes first? If so, you’ll need to do more to convince me of that. My whole point is that Sinema and Gottheimer seemed intent on passing BIF first so they could sink BBBA.
I suspect his feeling is BBBA was always going to be cut down to shadow of itself and that trying to gain leverage by taking more good stuff hostage is just committing to getting less done overall. But he’s seemed very pessimistic about much of BBBA passing in any form and I feel like he was pessimistic about the BIF ever coming together as well so quite possible he’s missing something and whatever version of BBBA does get passed will be a bit larger or more friendly to the progs than it would have been absent some hostage taking.
I totally buy the positive vibes take on the BIF, but it seems a little ridiculous to me to suggest that the BBB bill would have survived without progressive hostage taking. I think Maninema, in particular, would have no problems just spiking BBB, full stop, in part for the reasons outlined in the "Sinema must be stopped" column (https://www.slowboring.com/p/sinema-menace). For a particular kind of moderate, spiking something big IS a win, because it "proves to the folks back home" that you are a Real Maverick, Unbeholden To Any Party.
Whatever is or isn't in Sinema's head do you think spiking the BBB would help her win a Democratic primary? Or allow her to win the general via a Joe Lieberman independent strategy? I think not. Maybe she doesn't care about winning reelection, but if so spiking the BBB would seem an extremely poor strategy.
Getting it down to $1.8T, on the other hand, probably wouldn't hurt and probably would help her.
I'm honestly unsure. Also, you can never discount the possibility that she is just wrong in her political calculations. Or that she holds sincere beliefs that would lead her to take that action against her political interests. The timeline of her next election is also an important variable.
But I also think that all this unpredictability makes it more reasonable for the progressives to want to hold leverage over her (the BIF), rather than simply trusting that they could convince her to vote for BBB based on the merits.
Nobody knows nothing. We have no idea how much leverage holding the BIF hostage gives the progressives over Sinema. Maybe she'd be happy to walk away from it; I don't know.
Agreed. At very least "spiking" BBB seemed a possibility. It still is a possibility. But at least now there's an incentive for the crypto-Republicans to stay on board.
Spiking an enormous spending plan that comes right on the heels of a truly astounding level of federal spending is a prudent act regardless of which party one belongs to.
That is nonsense. Spending needs to reflect a basket of factors that range from need (how big is the problem?) to ability to pay (what is the long-term cost of borrowing? will this project generate net cost or net revenue?) to the existence of other policy levers (could we cover this spending by raising taxes or making cuts elsewhere?) and other policy concerns (the classic "starve the beast" theory of GOP tax cuts). The BBB includes a bunch of pay-fors and claims to be budget neutral; if you think those are incorrect, then your claim would be, "I think the pay-fors are wrong, and the right way to get to politicians' stated goal of budget neutrality is..." Spiking stuff, by contrast, is about a feeling--the point wasn't to achieve the goal of budget neutrality; it was to be seen spiking stuff. You don't spike the football because you want to score (you already scored). You spike it because it feels good and sends a message.
“Spending needs to reflect a basket of factors that range from need (how big is the problem?) to ability to pay (what is the long-term cost of borrowing? will this project generate net cost or net revenue?) to the existence of other policy levers (could we cover this spending by raising taxes or making cuts elsewhere?)”
None of that has been discussed as far as I can tell. Your calculus also leaves out the most important question: Will this money be better spent by the federal government or by the people who will be taxed? The assumption - again, as far as I can tell - is that the federal government is assumed to be the best judge of that.
You're absolutely right, Ken: passing the BBB would be a foolish thing for a Republican Congress to do and in complete violation of their views on the role of government spending on the public weal.
But on behalf of the Democratic Congress, I want to say thank you for your interest in what is the best policy for that Congress to pass.
Normal people want roads and bridges. My parents worked in greater DC for 30 years. They woke up crazy early in the morning to avoid traffic. In the summer, my mom went to bed while it was still light to maintain this inhuman schedule. Neither of their jobs were near metro stations and their house was 3 miles from the Springfield station. Even a moderately improved metro would have taken them over an hour each way.
I commute suburb to suburb and then drive between suburban courthouses. Rail transit will never help me. If I leave work after 4:15, the roads crossing interstate 75 back up (only four crossings in McDonough) and it adds 10 minutes to my commute. My wife spends 10-12 minutes in traffic at the junction of SR 54 and SR 74 each day. Politicians who want to do non ideological things to help us would build more roads crossing I-75 and a flyover at the 54/74 junction.
Instead, the BIF defunds the infrastructure we actually use to piss away money on Amtrak and fund transit projects that will only help people closer in.
The felt imperative to herd people onto transit is part of the “conservation mindset” MY complained about yesterday. If we can manufacture abundant green energy and electric vehicles, we can keep our cars. Many working parents love their cars— it’s the only alone time they get all day, and they don’t want to spend it packed like sardines in a bus or train.
What a pathological post. "Normal" = you; "non-ideological" = convenient to you, fractionally closing the gap in transit usage between the US and most other developed countries = "imperative to herd people"
It's Ending America As We Know It to make any change to a transport system that kills 40,000 Americans a year, covers the country in parking lots, and contributes to an obesity epidemic
This is a good point. Of course, it's a good explanation for why Democratic progressives from more urban jurisdictions should feel confident in holding BIF hostage.
Good thing 75% of the bill is for highway funding then. I suspect your bigger roadblock is coming from the GA DOT. They spend inordinate amounts of money and resources on the highways in Atlanta and the northern arc of suburbs. They’ve completely redone every bridge and interchange on 85 north of the city, for example. Lots of fancy reverse flow patterns and other craziness to cut down on the waits for people trying to cross the interstate. It’s not that they don’t do it, it’s that they don’t care about Henry, Clayton, Fayetteville, and Coweta counties because there’s just not that much population or traffic in these areas compared to the closer, more populous, and wealthier northern suburbs or the city itself. Try getting a coalition together for a SPLOST that targets the those 75 crossings. Worked out great for Fayetteville and now they have that movie studio complex right off the new road that got built. Great for the local economy and the road eased traffic on two local roads connecting to 85.
I don’t think the south side has gotten screwed relative to the north side. Traffic up north is much worse than it is down here because those counties are denser. The problem is the highway funding pie is too small.
Good news: nothing is preventing Georgia from raising taxes and improving its roads. Your real problem is that the people who disproportionately use roads also disproportionately prefer politicians who offer to cut taxes and refuse to invest in roads.
Is I-75 part of the system that is getting 75% of the money? What, precisely, is the claim here? We clearly value roads a lot--more than any other form of transit. If a person local to Georgia thinks that there is still a shortage, despite that clearly expressed policy preference, then the obvious solution is for people in Georgia to support that policy preference, rather than to claim that moving the funding formula back by 6% would somehow result in massive improvements to state highways in one of 50 states. It's a nonsensical claim.
"I commute suburb to suburb and then drive between suburban courthouses. Rail transit will never help me."
Hate to be the one to break it to you but you're living in the twilight of the Golden Age of driving. Enjoy your commute tomorrow morning because it's literally going to be the best one you'll every enjoy.
Unfortunately, your numbers are a bit off for BIF (I suspect they're from the "increases over 'baseline'" from some of the summaries being tossed around when the bill passed).
(Embarrassingly my Amtrak numbers were off... I excluded $15 bn of "doesn't have to be Amtrak but is probably Amtrak" funding for a different bucket... So Amtrak total is $34 bn (+24 bn or *240%* vs FAST Act))
Seems like this article highlights two reasons progressives are not in love with this bill: it gives a lot of money to an ambitious young politician they do not like, and it was appearing to validate bipartisan legislating. I think saying ‘but it really has a lot of good stuff like lead cleanup and train money’ is like being confused as to why so many left wingers are upset with J powell at the fed. After all he is strengthening labor’s bargaining power quite a bit why be so fussy about it?
Most likely if these same provisions were included in a reconciliation package never intended to pass with bipartisan support then progressives would defend it vigorously. Even more so if, say, Julian Castro were transportation secretary.
I tend to think a lot of folks are watching everyone from the 2020 field. But even if all these political pros somehow forgot about this successful young moderate (or consider him finished now that he’s just a cabinet secretary instead of mayor of Indiana’s third largest city) they probably won’t be excited to learn that BIF gives him unprecedented power for a transport bill. Matt is listing this as a plus! It does seem like a plus to me I’m just saying no one currently holding the bill hostage would feel that way.
I guess you can't be in love with everything. But on its own, would the progressives think the BIF is acceptable on its merits? If not, then they're no more ready to do the hard work of governing than the Freedom Caucus.
I think there are three main things going on, which are in tension with each other to some extent.
(1) The progressives think 2022 is lost anyway, which makes a (theoretically at least) high-risk/high-reward play like hostage-taking more attractive.
(2) The progressives think it is strategically more important to maximize their power within the Democratic coalition than to maximize the likelihood that the coalition beats the Republicans. That is because they think that even if Democrats are destined to lose in 2022, the pendulum will inevitably swing back to them at some point because of larger uncontrollable forces that influence public opinion much more than mere policy debates do. So the key to effectuating progressive political change is simply to make sure they're in charge of the Party when the pendulum inevitably swings back to it.
(3) The progressives dislike the BIF *because* it is bipartisan, irrespective of its policy content.
I feel like I can understand why the progressives are doing this. They're sick and tired of the party not being willing to throw them a bone. At the end of the day though, they need to be able to win more elections and they haven't proven themselves able to do that. And this is coming from someone who considers himself to be a "Sanders Socialist".
If you told progressives a few years ago that just in 2021, they would get a $1.9T recovery bill, a $1T infrastructure bill, and a $1.5-2T social spending bill, they wouldn't have thought that would be a win?
"But I do want to say that I think this whole strategy was misguided. Not only is the BIF a good and important piece of legislation on its own, but its bipartisan nature could and should have been a medium-sized political win."
The whole strategy was necessitated by the fact that Sinema & Manchin opted to back the filibuster (and by implication, the Republican blockade on all other bills) whole-heartedly and then wanted to negotiate the BIF as a 'bipartisan' substitute and something they could point to when implicitly vetoing all other bills. McConnell gave it to them because it gave HIM leverage.
They chose to play this particular game. Biden backed the House here to stop the obvious scam, given that the R's would happily dump the BIF as well if they didn't need it as a Trojan house. Thus we have Sinema claiming progressives and Biden went back on promises *they* *didn't* *make*.
Two can play at that game and here we are. (Which, again, was McConnell's scheme.)
"Being involved in bipartisan bills is a good look for anyone in a difficult race. But progressives have already killed the good vibes via the linkage. So not just Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, but also Jacky Rosen and Maggie Hasan and everyone else who’d like an upbeat news cycle about bipartisan comity have already taken the L. All this is actually doing is making everyone feel more nervous about 2022 and Biden’s increasingly weak political standing."
Sure, but it's still cover for blockading the various voting rights bills and any, say, anti-gerrymandering bills. That's why Gottheimer was trying to force the BIF out of the House - so he can then vote no on everything else.
As for the win - it would've passed, we'd have had a few good news cycles and then it would be back to refusing to pass voting rights bills (or any other bills, full stop) and saying all the exact same shit they're saying now.
If you like the bill (sounds fine, excepting maybe the financing) and the House needs to come back down on the reconciliation bill, then bump the reconciliation bill to 3.6 trillion and fold the entirety of the BIF (except perhaps the exact financing mechanism for the BIF) into the reconciliation bill - effectively cutting down the reconciliation bill down by a trillion or so. Then we get the larger chunk of the reconciliation bill and the BIF.
Problem solved.
elm
then sinema & manchin can threaten to vote down their own bill
It seems to me that Sinema and Manchin specifically want the current theater. They want the story to be the two of them standing up as balancing forces for their own party.
I think this is bad for the party, bad for the country, and bad for Democratic moderates (including those two), but I also think Sinema and Manchin disagree with me on this. I think they see political value in visibly pissing off the Democratic base, so they see it as against their interest to arrive at a compromise quietly.
Something I had previously assumed was that while BIF was bipartisan in the Senate, it was going to be a party-line vote in the House because republicans up for reelection next year didn't want to risk it. Under that thinking, it made sense that, with only five votes to spare, Pelosi couldn't afford to lose progressives.
But then I came across this piece that says "House republican centrists hoped to deliver dozens of votes". So why then is Pelosi not just moving forward regardless of what progressives want?
For the same reason that Boehner didn't move forward with immigration reform even though the votes were there for it to pass. At some point, you can't afford to lose your a significant portion of your caucus. Especially when your close to the end. She's 81, the squad and such can outlast her.
Boehner, I believe, was following the Hastert rule, which was that if you don't have a majority in your party, don't bring it to a vote. But that's not the case here. Still, you are probably right, but I've never seen someone say this explicitly. It seems like it would be a useful pressure point for the pro-BIF side if true.
Every discussion around it, including here saying that progressives are holding it hostage, makes it sound like they have real leverage. But if it's really just that Pelosi wants to be nice to them, that presents a completely different calculus.
It's very hard to Monday morning quarterback the public negotiating tactics among members of Congress who presumably also talk to each other in private, without being a lot more in the know than I, at least, am.
Well, if 'the moderates' really would like to have the nice vibes of BIF, why did they choose to try to delink the bills? Nobody would have pissed on their parade if they had gotten along with passing BIF and BBBA at the same time. Frankly, BIF is not needed at all, as it can be rolled into BBBA anyway, and used for leverage in negotiations with Manchinema. This is the leverage progressives have and they did right to shut down the delinking. Now Biden wants him some bipartisan bona fides, hence his insistence on relinking, but everybody needs to realise that reconciliation is ultimately where the action is. JMM is right that all of this really is about democrats negotiating between themselves.
Watching this political process unfold has indeed been disheartening and I wish they would all just go behind closed doors and do that compromising thing that politicians have done since time immemorial. But if they do get to a final agreement, through whatever means, I'll be more happy than sad.
The question is if the Democratic legislators will be happy. Or will they grouse about how they had to come down from $6T to ~$2T, or that they had to increase spending so much, or that the BBB is a misbegotten mess with delayed starts and absurd sunset clauses etc etc.
What gives me hope is that good politicians are excellent bullshitters. If at the end the entire Democratic group smiles happily, sings the praises of the other side for some tough but fair negotiating, and highlights the great things that will happen for the American people -- with more work yet to do in future Democratic Congresses -- then I'll be very pleased.
>>>The right thing to do would have been to pass the BIF quickly, and then work with Manchin and Sinema quietly on crafting a reconciliation package that could be swiftly unveiled and passed.<<<
Isn't it possible if they followed Matt's advice that A) ZERO reconciliation bill would have passed (pretty sure that's what progressive feared) and/or B) a mere, say, $900 billion reconciliation would've been all they could get?
Sure, we'll have to see how it goes, and it's still possible the whole thing will fall apart. But if they can get, say, a $2.1 trillion reconciliation bill AND the BIF bill passed, I think it's worth waiting a couple of months for the signing ceremony.
I think the reconciliation package is actually less likely to pass now than it would have been if BIF had passed weeks ago (though it still may well pass). Sinema is not facing any pressure from her right to get BIF passed. The only motivations for passing BIF are (1) sincere goo-goo policy preferences - which is not a political motivation in nature, (2) get a positive news cycle for bipartisanship - which, as Matt writes, has already been spoiled and thus no longer represents any kind of carrot, (3) maybe some very mild pressure from liberals who like lead abatement and what not. Lobbying/dealmaking from Sinema's left may or may not be sufficient/helpful in getting her to sign on to the reconciliation bill in some form, but withholding BIF enactment doesn't add to that pressure, because the only pressure on her to sign BIF now is coming at her from the same side that's trying to pressure her to sign on to reconciliation.
>>get a positive news cycle for bipartisanship - which, as Matt writes, has already been spoiled<<
Matt *claims* this is the case, sure. It's far from clear he's right. I also think this analysis ignores the instincts of people who are closer to the action than any of us (Matt included), namely, progressive members of Congress and their staffers. It's possible they'll ultimately be proven wrong and everything falls apart. It's also possible the president could have had his BIF signing ceremony and the reconciliation negotiations would fall apart. And yes, it's possible they'll get two bills done exceeding $3 trillion in new spending. Time will tell.
At the end of the day, I don't think any of us knows what Sinema -- or for that matter Manchin -- will agree to. Some of her public and leaked comments have been maddening, but I think we'll all have to just wait and see.
For all the people who are saying they should roll the BIF into BBB, recognize that would make it much harder to pass. The BIF is pretty much unpaid* for - i.e. going on debt. Rolling a trillion dollars in the BBB and doing it through reconciliation means that you have to come up with more tax increases or other spending reductions. How many Dem moderates in the Senate and House want to pass an even larger partisan tax increase to run against than was already in the BBB?
*I recognize that various people pretended that the BIF was paid for through "pay fors" and such but that is nonsense.
Conservatives practice judicial restraint. I'm unsure how many conservatives he has actually shepherded. Right-wing activist judges, perhaps. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh kind of have elements of both of those in them. Conservatives and activists.
Reversing decades of precedent is not conservatism. It's activism. John Roberts is probably the most conservative member of the court in my opinion. Probably followed by Gorsuch.
Thomas and Sotomayor are both about equally un-conservative.
“Reversing decades of precedent is not conservatism.”
If you believe that American conservatism means defending the status quo, no matter what that is, you are fundamentally mistaken. Bad court decisions are bad because they are counter to the plain meaning of the Constitution, i.e., the way the Constitution was understood when it was written.
My take on Gorsuch is that his belief in textualism will lead him to be more like Thomas. McGirt or Bostock are arguably textually accurate, but I don't see how you could call either "conservative" as we understand the terms.
I'd be curious what are the best examples of activist decisions that each of the justices has handed down so far..what would you nominate for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, and Sotomayo?
She was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court. That should have been instructive to whoever thought she would make a good associate justice, but apparently it was not.
I'm curious on the electorates rank ordering of both bills, compromised bills, infrastructure only and no bill passed. My guess is something is preferred to nothing for 75% and prioritizing passing everything is 25%. My guess is the median position is infrastructure only. I get that this is probably against the economic interest of many voters, but what's new there?
Passing BIF quickly then negotiating quietly with Manchinema sounds fine in a vacuum, but it was mostly Manchinema who blew that up by saying they were going to back out of the linkage. The linkage was why the overwhelming majority of Democratic legislators and the president were willing to countenance BIF. "Fine, do your thing, but the really transformative stuff will come in BBB." I mean, BBB was his damned campaign slogan.
We also need to consider that "negotiating quietly" is a non-starter in today's world. Everything becomes an online beef session.
"The linkage was why the overwhelming majority of Democratic legislators and the president were willing to countenance BIF."
This seems backwards to me. If Manchin OR Sinema or Any other Democratic Senator decides not to vote yes, then NOTHING passes in reconciliation. Biden didn't countenance the BIF, the BIF is his best hope of getting something passed when the Senate is dead even and they can only afford to lose 5 votes in the House.
Reverse the situation to see what I mean. Imagine if Republicans had the positions the Democrats had now and had a bipartisan tax cut for a trillion dollars, but the Freedom caucus was holding things up because they wanted to pass an additional 3.5 trillion tax cut. If they blow up all the tax cuts because they can't get the additional 3.5 trillion, are the moderates the ones who are considered crazy?
That is...an inapt comparison.
I think if I had to choose, I would go Sinchin over Manchinema.
Manchin and Sinema and even the Senate never agreed to any linkage, so they haven’t backed out of anything. If there was actual linkage, Schumer would have held the BIF from a vote until it could be tied to the reconciliation vote. He didn’t do that - Instead the Senate passed it and sent it to the House. The linkage only applied/applies to the House and that was a demand which came from the Progressive caucus. If anyone abandoned the linkage it is Pelosi who schedule a vote on the BIF after saying she wouldn’t (And then reneged on that).
I’m not sure what you mean by “negotiating quietly” but in my view the problem is the lack of any type of negotiation. Up until this point, progressives have refused to drop below 3.5 trillion and moderates, lead by Manchin and Sinema, have refused to go up to that level. It seems we are finally getting to a place where actual negotiations may happen instead the the public and private brow-beating that’s wasted the last two months of time.
"Manchinema" love that. What about "Sinematic Manchinations"
No Biden blew it up by mentioning the linkage in the 1st place after he just told the republicans that the deal was done. Biden instead should have shut his mouth and taken the win
Right. Isn’t that the dynamic that got us the linkage in the first place? Manchinema brought on this linkage, which for all the reasons MY laid out, seems tactically bad.
“The right thing to do would have been to pass the BIF quickly, and then work with Manchin and Sinema quietly on crafting a reconciliation package that could be swiftly unveiled and passed.”
Matt is many orders of magnitude more plugged into the machinations of power In DC than I am, but I am very surprised to see him write this.
It seemed to me that Gottheimer and Sinema were being very transparent about their intent to kill the reconciliation bill in its entirety. They were not being coy on the subject; they were practically bragging about it.
It may be that Matt feels that BIF + good bipartisan vibes > BIF + BBBA, but that seems like the real choice here. I don’t see a world in which you get BIF + good vibes + quiet BBBA.
The BIF win has been taken away from the President. It’s now just a Dem deal that passed through reconciliation, but Reps get to say they worked with Dems. It’s the least ideal of the three outcomes.
Progressives have to pass something now and they really increased manchin’s negotiating position. Anything over $1.5t is a gift from him and was something he wanted to negotiate away anyway.
We’re in the same spot, but without a feel good bipartisan win. I guess progressives didn’t want him to have that. Extremists don’t want feel good compromises.
This is my point though, I don’t think we’re in the same spot.
Are you explicitly arguing that whatever BBBA ends up passing (assuming one does) would also have passed in the exact same form if we had gone for good vibes first? If so, you’ll need to do more to convince me of that. My whole point is that Sinema and Gottheimer seemed intent on passing BIF first so they could sink BBBA.
I suspect his feeling is BBBA was always going to be cut down to shadow of itself and that trying to gain leverage by taking more good stuff hostage is just committing to getting less done overall. But he’s seemed very pessimistic about much of BBBA passing in any form and I feel like he was pessimistic about the BIF ever coming together as well so quite possible he’s missing something and whatever version of BBBA does get passed will be a bit larger or more friendly to the progs than it would have been absent some hostage taking.
I totally buy the positive vibes take on the BIF, but it seems a little ridiculous to me to suggest that the BBB bill would have survived without progressive hostage taking. I think Maninema, in particular, would have no problems just spiking BBB, full stop, in part for the reasons outlined in the "Sinema must be stopped" column (https://www.slowboring.com/p/sinema-menace). For a particular kind of moderate, spiking something big IS a win, because it "proves to the folks back home" that you are a Real Maverick, Unbeholden To Any Party.
Whatever is or isn't in Sinema's head do you think spiking the BBB would help her win a Democratic primary? Or allow her to win the general via a Joe Lieberman independent strategy? I think not. Maybe she doesn't care about winning reelection, but if so spiking the BBB would seem an extremely poor strategy.
Getting it down to $1.8T, on the other hand, probably wouldn't hurt and probably would help her.
I'm honestly unsure. Also, you can never discount the possibility that she is just wrong in her political calculations. Or that she holds sincere beliefs that would lead her to take that action against her political interests. The timeline of her next election is also an important variable.
But I also think that all this unpredictability makes it more reasonable for the progressives to want to hold leverage over her (the BIF), rather than simply trusting that they could convince her to vote for BBB based on the merits.
Nobody knows nothing. We have no idea how much leverage holding the BIF hostage gives the progressives over Sinema. Maybe she'd be happy to walk away from it; I don't know.
Agreed. At very least "spiking" BBB seemed a possibility. It still is a possibility. But at least now there's an incentive for the crypto-Republicans to stay on board.
Spiking an enormous spending plan that comes right on the heels of a truly astounding level of federal spending is a prudent act regardless of which party one belongs to.
That is nonsense. Spending needs to reflect a basket of factors that range from need (how big is the problem?) to ability to pay (what is the long-term cost of borrowing? will this project generate net cost or net revenue?) to the existence of other policy levers (could we cover this spending by raising taxes or making cuts elsewhere?) and other policy concerns (the classic "starve the beast" theory of GOP tax cuts). The BBB includes a bunch of pay-fors and claims to be budget neutral; if you think those are incorrect, then your claim would be, "I think the pay-fors are wrong, and the right way to get to politicians' stated goal of budget neutrality is..." Spiking stuff, by contrast, is about a feeling--the point wasn't to achieve the goal of budget neutrality; it was to be seen spiking stuff. You don't spike the football because you want to score (you already scored). You spike it because it feels good and sends a message.
“Spending needs to reflect a basket of factors that range from need (how big is the problem?) to ability to pay (what is the long-term cost of borrowing? will this project generate net cost or net revenue?) to the existence of other policy levers (could we cover this spending by raising taxes or making cuts elsewhere?)”
None of that has been discussed as far as I can tell. Your calculus also leaves out the most important question: Will this money be better spent by the federal government or by the people who will be taxed? The assumption - again, as far as I can tell - is that the federal government is assumed to be the best judge of that.
You're absolutely right, Ken: passing the BBB would be a foolish thing for a Republican Congress to do and in complete violation of their views on the role of government spending on the public weal.
But on behalf of the Democratic Congress, I want to say thank you for your interest in what is the best policy for that Congress to pass.
If you believe I am a Republican or supported their fiscal policies when they were in charge, you are way off the mark.
Normal people want roads and bridges. My parents worked in greater DC for 30 years. They woke up crazy early in the morning to avoid traffic. In the summer, my mom went to bed while it was still light to maintain this inhuman schedule. Neither of their jobs were near metro stations and their house was 3 miles from the Springfield station. Even a moderately improved metro would have taken them over an hour each way.
I commute suburb to suburb and then drive between suburban courthouses. Rail transit will never help me. If I leave work after 4:15, the roads crossing interstate 75 back up (only four crossings in McDonough) and it adds 10 minutes to my commute. My wife spends 10-12 minutes in traffic at the junction of SR 54 and SR 74 each day. Politicians who want to do non ideological things to help us would build more roads crossing I-75 and a flyover at the 54/74 junction.
Instead, the BIF defunds the infrastructure we actually use to piss away money on Amtrak and fund transit projects that will only help people closer in.
The felt imperative to herd people onto transit is part of the “conservation mindset” MY complained about yesterday. If we can manufacture abundant green energy and electric vehicles, we can keep our cars. Many working parents love their cars— it’s the only alone time they get all day, and they don’t want to spend it packed like sardines in a bus or train.
What a pathological post. "Normal" = you; "non-ideological" = convenient to you, fractionally closing the gap in transit usage between the US and most other developed countries = "imperative to herd people"
85% of Americans drive to work. There are two people who think Trump won the election for every person who takes transit!
It's Ending America As We Know It to make any change to a transport system that kills 40,000 Americans a year, covers the country in parking lots, and contributes to an obesity epidemic
Hey it only kills 35,000 directly!
Sounds like a linked pathology to me. I'm cool with rewarding folks closer in.
And I’m fine with driving your sort into the political wilderness and breaking your pride.
Sorry. You will have to buy me a bus ticket to get there. I'm not driving anywhere with you.
your politics will never have purchase beyond several dozen coastal congressional districts
This is a good point. Of course, it's a good explanation for why Democratic progressives from more urban jurisdictions should feel confident in holding BIF hostage.
I'm confused - is it not the case that a hundred billion dollars from this bill are flowing to these types of projects?
Part of it isn't being spent on Dave's commute.
Good thing 75% of the bill is for highway funding then. I suspect your bigger roadblock is coming from the GA DOT. They spend inordinate amounts of money and resources on the highways in Atlanta and the northern arc of suburbs. They’ve completely redone every bridge and interchange on 85 north of the city, for example. Lots of fancy reverse flow patterns and other craziness to cut down on the waits for people trying to cross the interstate. It’s not that they don’t do it, it’s that they don’t care about Henry, Clayton, Fayetteville, and Coweta counties because there’s just not that much population or traffic in these areas compared to the closer, more populous, and wealthier northern suburbs or the city itself. Try getting a coalition together for a SPLOST that targets the those 75 crossings. Worked out great for Fayetteville and now they have that movie studio complex right off the new road that got built. Great for the local economy and the road eased traffic on two local roads connecting to 85.
I don’t think the south side has gotten screwed relative to the north side. Traffic up north is much worse than it is down here because those counties are denser. The problem is the highway funding pie is too small.
Good news: nothing is preventing Georgia from raising taxes and improving its roads. Your real problem is that the people who disproportionately use roads also disproportionately prefer politicians who offer to cut taxes and refuse to invest in roads.
"...nothing is preventing Georgia from raising taxes and improving its roads.:
Similarly, there's nothing preventing cities from raising taxes and improving their public transit. And at least I-75 serves interstate commerce.
Is I-75 part of the system that is getting 75% of the money? What, precisely, is the claim here? We clearly value roads a lot--more than any other form of transit. If a person local to Georgia thinks that there is still a shortage, despite that clearly expressed policy preference, then the obvious solution is for people in Georgia to support that policy preference, rather than to claim that moving the funding formula back by 6% would somehow result in massive improvements to state highways in one of 50 states. It's a nonsensical claim.
“…massive improvements…”
Do you expect massive improvements in, for instance, Amtrak?
how is it getting 75% of the money when the post says it’s only getting $110 billion? I’m reacting to the box in MY’s OP
That first Fayetteville should just read Fayette
"I commute suburb to suburb and then drive between suburban courthouses. Rail transit will never help me."
Hate to be the one to break it to you but you're living in the twilight of the Golden Age of driving. Enjoy your commute tomorrow morning because it's literally going to be the best one you'll every enjoy.
Hey Matt -
Unfortunately, your numbers are a bit off for BIF (I suspect they're from the "increases over 'baseline'" from some of the summaries being tossed around when the bill passed).
For those interested, the text of the BIF bill is here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-117hr3684eas/pdf/BILLS-117hr3684eas.pdf
And the text of the old bill (FAST Act) is here: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-114publ94/pdf/PLAW-114publ94.pdf
For BIF, it includes (all these numbers over five years):
$273 bn (+66 bn or 32% vs FAST Act) for the Federal Aid Highway Program (Sec. 11101(a)(1) or pg. 21 of BIF)
$70 bn (+21 bn or 44% vs FAST Act) for the Mass Transit Account (Sec. 30017 or pg. 1,275 of BIF)
$19 bn (+11 bn or a whopping *139%* vs FAST Act) for Amtrak (Sec. 22101(a) and (b) or pg. 695 of BIF)
(Embarrassingly my Amtrak numbers were off... I excluded $15 bn of "doesn't have to be Amtrak but is probably Amtrak" funding for a different bucket... So Amtrak total is $34 bn (+24 bn or *240%* vs FAST Act))
Upping Kris's comments, Matt's numbers on the BIF are wrong. Post needs correction.
Seems like this article highlights two reasons progressives are not in love with this bill: it gives a lot of money to an ambitious young politician they do not like, and it was appearing to validate bipartisan legislating. I think saying ‘but it really has a lot of good stuff like lead cleanup and train money’ is like being confused as to why so many left wingers are upset with J powell at the fed. After all he is strengthening labor’s bargaining power quite a bit why be so fussy about it?
Most likely if these same provisions were included in a reconciliation package never intended to pass with bipartisan support then progressives would defend it vigorously. Even more so if, say, Julian Castro were transportation secretary.
I don't think anyone but MY is thinking of Mayor Pete right now.
I tend to think a lot of folks are watching everyone from the 2020 field. But even if all these political pros somehow forgot about this successful young moderate (or consider him finished now that he’s just a cabinet secretary instead of mayor of Indiana’s third largest city) they probably won’t be excited to learn that BIF gives him unprecedented power for a transport bill. Matt is listing this as a plus! It does seem like a plus to me I’m just saying no one currently holding the bill hostage would feel that way.
I guess you can't be in love with everything. But on its own, would the progressives think the BIF is acceptable on its merits? If not, then they're no more ready to do the hard work of governing than the Freedom Caucus.
I think there are three main things going on, which are in tension with each other to some extent.
(1) The progressives think 2022 is lost anyway, which makes a (theoretically at least) high-risk/high-reward play like hostage-taking more attractive.
(2) The progressives think it is strategically more important to maximize their power within the Democratic coalition than to maximize the likelihood that the coalition beats the Republicans. That is because they think that even if Democrats are destined to lose in 2022, the pendulum will inevitably swing back to them at some point because of larger uncontrollable forces that influence public opinion much more than mere policy debates do. So the key to effectuating progressive political change is simply to make sure they're in charge of the Party when the pendulum inevitably swings back to it.
(3) The progressives dislike the BIF *because* it is bipartisan, irrespective of its policy content.
You're just caricaturing progressives as power hungry maniacs. Consider this alternative:
(4) Progressives think BBB will *help* win in 2022 because
a) it's what Democrats ran on and won with in 2020
b) both the bill in toto and the policies it contains continue to poll well / very well
c) BBB's opponents almost never discuss the policies in the bill, suggesting they realise the policies are popular.
I feel like I can understand why the progressives are doing this. They're sick and tired of the party not being willing to throw them a bone. At the end of the day though, they need to be able to win more elections and they haven't proven themselves able to do that. And this is coming from someone who considers himself to be a "Sanders Socialist".
If you told progressives a few years ago that just in 2021, they would get a $1.9T recovery bill, a $1T infrastructure bill, and a $1.5-2T social spending bill, they wouldn't have thought that would be a win?
"But I do want to say that I think this whole strategy was misguided. Not only is the BIF a good and important piece of legislation on its own, but its bipartisan nature could and should have been a medium-sized political win."
The whole strategy was necessitated by the fact that Sinema & Manchin opted to back the filibuster (and by implication, the Republican blockade on all other bills) whole-heartedly and then wanted to negotiate the BIF as a 'bipartisan' substitute and something they could point to when implicitly vetoing all other bills. McConnell gave it to them because it gave HIM leverage.
They chose to play this particular game. Biden backed the House here to stop the obvious scam, given that the R's would happily dump the BIF as well if they didn't need it as a Trojan house. Thus we have Sinema claiming progressives and Biden went back on promises *they* *didn't* *make*.
Two can play at that game and here we are. (Which, again, was McConnell's scheme.)
"Being involved in bipartisan bills is a good look for anyone in a difficult race. But progressives have already killed the good vibes via the linkage. So not just Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, but also Jacky Rosen and Maggie Hasan and everyone else who’d like an upbeat news cycle about bipartisan comity have already taken the L. All this is actually doing is making everyone feel more nervous about 2022 and Biden’s increasingly weak political standing."
Sure, but it's still cover for blockading the various voting rights bills and any, say, anti-gerrymandering bills. That's why Gottheimer was trying to force the BIF out of the House - so he can then vote no on everything else.
As for the win - it would've passed, we'd have had a few good news cycles and then it would be back to refusing to pass voting rights bills (or any other bills, full stop) and saying all the exact same shit they're saying now.
If you like the bill (sounds fine, excepting maybe the financing) and the House needs to come back down on the reconciliation bill, then bump the reconciliation bill to 3.6 trillion and fold the entirety of the BIF (except perhaps the exact financing mechanism for the BIF) into the reconciliation bill - effectively cutting down the reconciliation bill down by a trillion or so. Then we get the larger chunk of the reconciliation bill and the BIF.
Problem solved.
elm
then sinema & manchin can threaten to vote down their own bill
It seems to me that Sinema and Manchin specifically want the current theater. They want the story to be the two of them standing up as balancing forces for their own party.
I think this is bad for the party, bad for the country, and bad for Democratic moderates (including those two), but I also think Sinema and Manchin disagree with me on this. I think they see political value in visibly pissing off the Democratic base, so they see it as against their interest to arrive at a compromise quietly.
Something I had previously assumed was that while BIF was bipartisan in the Senate, it was going to be a party-line vote in the House because republicans up for reelection next year didn't want to risk it. Under that thinking, it made sense that, with only five votes to spare, Pelosi couldn't afford to lose progressives.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/10/06/gop-centrists-infrastructure-delays-515182
But then I came across this piece that says "House republican centrists hoped to deliver dozens of votes". So why then is Pelosi not just moving forward regardless of what progressives want?
For the same reason that Boehner didn't move forward with immigration reform even though the votes were there for it to pass. At some point, you can't afford to lose your a significant portion of your caucus. Especially when your close to the end. She's 81, the squad and such can outlast her.
Boehner, I believe, was following the Hastert rule, which was that if you don't have a majority in your party, don't bring it to a vote. But that's not the case here. Still, you are probably right, but I've never seen someone say this explicitly. It seems like it would be a useful pressure point for the pro-BIF side if true.
Every discussion around it, including here saying that progressives are holding it hostage, makes it sound like they have real leverage. But if it's really just that Pelosi wants to be nice to them, that presents a completely different calculus.
It's very hard to Monday morning quarterback the public negotiating tactics among members of Congress who presumably also talk to each other in private, without being a lot more in the know than I, at least, am.
Absolutely. I guess I'm just trying to figure out if I'm missing something or if the reporting is generally misrepresenting it?
Well, if 'the moderates' really would like to have the nice vibes of BIF, why did they choose to try to delink the bills? Nobody would have pissed on their parade if they had gotten along with passing BIF and BBBA at the same time. Frankly, BIF is not needed at all, as it can be rolled into BBBA anyway, and used for leverage in negotiations with Manchinema. This is the leverage progressives have and they did right to shut down the delinking. Now Biden wants him some bipartisan bona fides, hence his insistence on relinking, but everybody needs to realise that reconciliation is ultimately where the action is. JMM is right that all of this really is about democrats negotiating between themselves.
Watching this political process unfold has indeed been disheartening and I wish they would all just go behind closed doors and do that compromising thing that politicians have done since time immemorial. But if they do get to a final agreement, through whatever means, I'll be more happy than sad.
The question is if the Democratic legislators will be happy. Or will they grouse about how they had to come down from $6T to ~$2T, or that they had to increase spending so much, or that the BBB is a misbegotten mess with delayed starts and absurd sunset clauses etc etc.
What gives me hope is that good politicians are excellent bullshitters. If at the end the entire Democratic group smiles happily, sings the praises of the other side for some tough but fair negotiating, and highlights the great things that will happen for the American people -- with more work yet to do in future Democratic Congresses -- then I'll be very pleased.
I think both wings of the caucus need to go back and rewatch De Niro/Al Capone's "Part of a Team" speech from The Untouchables. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHH9EYZHoVU
>>>The right thing to do would have been to pass the BIF quickly, and then work with Manchin and Sinema quietly on crafting a reconciliation package that could be swiftly unveiled and passed.<<<
Isn't it possible if they followed Matt's advice that A) ZERO reconciliation bill would have passed (pretty sure that's what progressive feared) and/or B) a mere, say, $900 billion reconciliation would've been all they could get?
Sure, we'll have to see how it goes, and it's still possible the whole thing will fall apart. But if they can get, say, a $2.1 trillion reconciliation bill AND the BIF bill passed, I think it's worth waiting a couple of months for the signing ceremony.
I think the reconciliation package is actually less likely to pass now than it would have been if BIF had passed weeks ago (though it still may well pass). Sinema is not facing any pressure from her right to get BIF passed. The only motivations for passing BIF are (1) sincere goo-goo policy preferences - which is not a political motivation in nature, (2) get a positive news cycle for bipartisanship - which, as Matt writes, has already been spoiled and thus no longer represents any kind of carrot, (3) maybe some very mild pressure from liberals who like lead abatement and what not. Lobbying/dealmaking from Sinema's left may or may not be sufficient/helpful in getting her to sign on to the reconciliation bill in some form, but withholding BIF enactment doesn't add to that pressure, because the only pressure on her to sign BIF now is coming at her from the same side that's trying to pressure her to sign on to reconciliation.
>>get a positive news cycle for bipartisanship - which, as Matt writes, has already been spoiled<<
Matt *claims* this is the case, sure. It's far from clear he's right. I also think this analysis ignores the instincts of people who are closer to the action than any of us (Matt included), namely, progressive members of Congress and their staffers. It's possible they'll ultimately be proven wrong and everything falls apart. It's also possible the president could have had his BIF signing ceremony and the reconciliation negotiations would fall apart. And yes, it's possible they'll get two bills done exceeding $3 trillion in new spending. Time will tell.
At the end of the day, I don't think any of us knows what Sinema -- or for that matter Manchin -- will agree to. Some of her public and leaked comments have been maddening, but I think we'll all have to just wait and see.
For all the people who are saying they should roll the BIF into BBB, recognize that would make it much harder to pass. The BIF is pretty much unpaid* for - i.e. going on debt. Rolling a trillion dollars in the BBB and doing it through reconciliation means that you have to come up with more tax increases or other spending reductions. How many Dem moderates in the Senate and House want to pass an even larger partisan tax increase to run against than was already in the BBB?
*I recognize that various people pretended that the BIF was paid for through "pay fors" and such but that is nonsense.
MM is pretty FUBAR. I feel like we don’t talk about how mighty and terrible Mitch is around these parts. He’s the Steve Jobs of f*cking up government.
He managed to shepherd a number of conservatives to the Supreme Court. That’s no mean feat.
Conservatives practice judicial restraint. I'm unsure how many conservatives he has actually shepherded. Right-wing activist judges, perhaps. Gorsuch and Kavanaugh kind of have elements of both of those in them. Conservatives and activists.
Conservatives read the Constitution as it is written.
Reversing decades of precedent is not conservatism. It's activism. John Roberts is probably the most conservative member of the court in my opinion. Probably followed by Gorsuch.
Thomas and Sotomayor are both about equally un-conservative.
“Reversing decades of precedent is not conservatism.”
If you believe that American conservatism means defending the status quo, no matter what that is, you are fundamentally mistaken. Bad court decisions are bad because they are counter to the plain meaning of the Constitution, i.e., the way the Constitution was understood when it was written.
My take on Gorsuch is that his belief in textualism will lead him to be more like Thomas. McGirt or Bostock are arguably textually accurate, but I don't see how you could call either "conservative" as we understand the terms.
I'd be curious what are the best examples of activist decisions that each of the justices has handed down so far..what would you nominate for Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Kagan, and Sotomayo?
For Sotomayor I’d nominate Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Dabit.
It’s really unclear why she is on the Supreme Court.
That's the one you would choose for her - whether SLUSA preempts securities fraud claims in state court? That's hardcore nitpicking right there Ken.
You must be new here.
Hi, I’m David!
She was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court. That should have been instructive to whoever thought she would make a good associate justice, but apparently it was not.
I'm curious on the electorates rank ordering of both bills, compromised bills, infrastructure only and no bill passed. My guess is something is preferred to nothing for 75% and prioritizing passing everything is 25%. My guess is the median position is infrastructure only. I get that this is probably against the economic interest of many voters, but what's new there?