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Category: CPC

  • Progressive Dems Balk at “Trust Manchin” After Frantic Push by Biden and Pelosi

    President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi depart a House Democratic Caucus meeting in the U.S. Capitol on October 28, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    As of this writing, the President Biden has departed for Europe with no legislative clarity in hand, despite a full court press on Thursday morning that included House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The framework he proposed for the Build Back Better Act has not been explicitly endorsed by either Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, which means it does not actually exist yet.

    House progressives — with the blessing of Sen. Bernie Sanders — emerged from an early afternoon meeting with Pelosi saying they are still not supportive of a plan to de-couple these two bills, which Pelosi had proposed this morning. Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal told CNN after the meeting that she is a “no” on Pelosi’s proposed vote today. She will not be alone.

    Unless something truly dramatic breaks loose this afternoon, this was a big loud morning that moved the process along barely at all. There’s a framework for the Build Back Better Act now, but it only exists if Manchin and Sinema decide to say it does. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is not willing to gamble the fate of the Build Back Better Act on the good word of Biden, because his good word depends on what Manchin and Sinema will do, and if history is any guide, he has no basis to make that promise safely.

    In other words: Legislatively speaking, it’s still yesterday around here.

    The mayhem began when President Biden came to Capitol Hill to serve congressional Democrats some thin gruel for breakfast. On the menu: The framework for a Build Back Better Act that is half of what it was a month ago, and half again what it was when first devised. For dessert: A push to de-couple the Build Back Better Act from the infrastructure bill, so the infrastructure bill can be voted on first and by itself.

    The Congressional Progressive Caucus has fought since August to thwart this de-coupling, because doing so all but assures the Build Back Better Act will die at the hands of conservative Democrats, who have already beaten the thing almost beyond recognition. On Wednesday afternoon, Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Japayal told reporters that “there are over three dozen members who feel strongly” about keeping these two bills coupled.

    Biden wanted something — anything, really — in his pocket when he went wheels-up for Europe. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week,” he reportedly told the morning group, evoking the peril of elections that are more than 12 months away.

    Late Thursday morning, Sen. Sanders — one of the principal authors and staunch defenders of the Build Back Better Act — told reporters that “it doesn’t make sense” to pass the infrastructure bill without securing the fate of the Build Back Better Act. “I think that the House should not be voting for an infrastructure bill unless they see very clear language and know that there are 50 senators on board, whatever the agreement may be,” continued Sanders. The message was unmistakable: This thing is nowhere without clarity from Manchin and Sinema.

    After Biden concluded his pitch to the Democratic caucus, House Speaker Pelosi essentially scolded the Congressional Progressive Caucus for not charging into agreement with the new framework, chiding them not to “embarrass” the president, according to CNN. When asked about Manchin and Sinema, who can still chop down any or all of the proposed framework, Pelosi told the assemblage they would simply have to trust Biden to get it done. She will reportedly call for a vote on infrastructure alone this afternoon, and will leave the vote open until it passes.

    Manchin and Sinema still lurk. Sinema released a statement a bit after 11:00 am saying she was glad to see “significant progress” on the bill, without actually indicating whether she will support it. Manchin, speaking to reporters at about the same time, was equally opaque. “It’s all in the hands of the House,” he said, which is hilarious coming from the senator whose hands have been very busy denuding this bill. “No comment” by any other name is still “No comment.”

    Biden, flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke just before noon to formally announce the existence of the Build Back Better Act framework. He thanked congressional Democrats for their hard work, saying, “Nobody gets everything they want. That’s consensus.” This was more than a tad disingenuous; the progressives did the motherlode of compromising in good faith, only to be lied to on more than one occasion. The only “concession” made by conservative Democrats was the fact that the bill still exists in its current tattered form; they didn’t want this bill to exist at all.

    On Wednesday, via social media, progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar came down hard on the reasons why the Build Back Better Act has been rendered a shadow of its former self. “First, instead of centering the needs of the American people, corporate Democrats have purely been about lining the pockets and serving the interests of the donor class,” she wrote. “If you really want to know why a provision is being killed, all you have to do is follow the money…” The Twitter thread went on at length to explain how corporate money and fossil fuel lobbyists twisted the Build Back Better Act almost beyond recognition.

    Mark my words: Pelosi and her “moderate” House allies will lay this whole fiasco at the feet of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This is balderdash; nobody wanted this bill more than the House progressives, and they had to watch as Pelosi let the House conservatives she is so protective of tear it apart. Above all else, however, this mess falls on Manchin and Sinema almost completely. They have sown enough chaos to bring us to this brittle moment, which I suspect is what they wanted all along.

    Despite what the pundits and “moderates” may say going forward, there is actually no reason why infrastructure must be passed today without the Build Back Better Act. The deadline was artificially constructed around Biden’s travel plans, which is no way to run things when you’re trying to nail down significant legislation. This is, then, an artificial crisis, created by a bunch of right-leaning Democrats who want to have their cake and destroy it, too. No sale.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Social Infrastructure Bill Has Been Gutted. Progressives May Not Let It Pass.

    Sen. Joe Manchin mingles with guests before speaking during an event with the Economic Club of Washington at the Capitol Hilton Hotel on October 26, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    For those still playing along at home, still chasing the details of this long and ugly slog toward passage of a standard infrastructure bill and a second bill called the Build Back Better Act, this latest update brings grim tidings.

    Due almost entirely to their own self-interest and devoted service to those who fund their campaigns, Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema have managed to either kill or mortally wound multiple elements of the social infrastructure bill that would have dramatically improved the lives of millions. Many of those items had already been removed from the standard infrastructure bill, on the promise they would be included in the second bill. This was a lie.

    Gone, or almost gone from the bill are vital new climate provisions that would force utilities to move to clean energy; a Medicare expansion that includes dental, vision and hearing coverage; prescription drug pricing reform that is vital to funding the bill itself; free community college; new taxes on the ultra-wealthy; and 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave.

    Manchin and Sinema did this, with some backstopping from a few House Democrats deep in the pockets of the pharmaceutical industry. The Republicans barely had to get out of bed. “We’re still ‘no’ on everything,” they’ve occasionally reminded us as they sit back and watch the shit show unfold.

    After days of relative silence as these provisions were stripped from the bill, Bernie Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) — by far and away the most constructive and fair-handed players in this process — sounded a warning alarm: If the Medicare expansion and climate provisions are removed from the bill, despite numerous promises they would be included, there is no promise the 96-strong Caucus will vote to approve it.

    Without their votes, the bill is almost certainly doomed in the House, as less than 10 Republican House members have indicated they will support it. The Congressional Progressive Caucus votes are the margin, and at present, that margin is in peril.

    “Bottom line is that any reconciliation bill must include serious negotiations on the part of Medicare with the pharmaceutical industry, lower the cost of prescription drugs. That’s what the American people want,” Sanders said forcefully on Tuesday, adding that a “serious reconciliation bill must include expanding Medicare to cover dental, hearing aids and eyeglasses.”

    “Progressives are fighting to tackle the climate crisis, expand Medicare to cover dental, vision and hearing, and guarantee family leave in America,” tweeted progressive Rep. Ilhan Omar. “These are the investments major countries make in their communities and we can too.”

    “Medicare treats your eyes, teeth, and ears like they’re not part of your body,” tweeted progressive Rep. Cori Bush. “It makes no sense. The Build Back Better Act currently expands Medicare to cover vision, dental, and hearing. We need to make sure that happens.”

    The Democratic senator from West Virginia coal was unmoved.

    “Sen. Joe Manchin on Monday shut down one of Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders’s biggest priorities, expanding Medicare, which Manchin warned would undermine the solvency of the broader program,” reports The Hill. “Sanders insisted in a tweet Saturday that his proposal to expand Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision must be included in a budget reconciliation package that is likely to come in well below the $3.5 trillion price tag Democratic leaders initially envisioned. But Manchin on Monday threw cold water on Sanders’s push to expand Medicare, warning the program faces insolvency in 2026.”

    Manchin is also insisting the price tag for the social infrastructure bill be no higher than $1.5 trillion, a full $2 trillion less than the amount Sanders and the Congressional Progressive Caucus settled on after much compromise.

    Because these are Democrats we are talking about, we are now required to cross the ever-treacherous span between the nauseating and the utterly surreal. On the far side of that chasm stand House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, who have spent this entire endeavor watching Pelosi’s precious “moderate” Democrats gnaw through these bills like beavers.

    At a historic crossroads that is nothing less than a genuine existential crisis, the Speaker and the Majority Leader have watched as life-and-death provisions of these bills are chopped away by fellow Democrats chasing dollar signs around the building. Their advice to every Democrat in the face of this? Don’t worry, be happy!

    “If we don’t act like we are winning, the American people won’t believe it either,” Hoyer reportedly told Democrats during a recent private meeting. Pelosi, for her part, has been telling her caucus that the contest is over, and the corporations have won again. “Embrace this,” she reportedly told the room during that same private meeting, “and have a narrative of success.”

    Yes, of course, pretend to lead and have a “narrative of success” so people “believe we’re winning.” This is the politics of fiction, of cowardly lions with gavels and titles, all roar and no bite. That should have been the Democratic Party slogan since right about when Pelosi and Hoyer got involved in big-time politics. “Democrats: Pretending to Lead Since 1981, Because Reagan Was Scary and Republicans Say Mean Things.”

    This is not entirely true, of course. The Congressional Progressive Caucus has from top to bottom fought the good fight since the beginning. If they could be criticized for anything, it is that they were credulous enough to believe the promise that those vital provisions stripped from the infrastructure bill would be revived in the Build Back Better Act.

    Perhaps they should have chosen the infrastructure bill as their hill to die on, an immediate signal that compromising on such life-or-death provisions was unacceptable. That’s all hindsight, and besides, how much can the CPC do when the party’s leadership folds like a hotel laundromat?

    Another twinkle of a bright spot: Sen. Elizabeth’s wildly popular “two cents” campaign platform to tax the ultra-wealthy may become part of the Build Back Better Act, a replacement for the other taxation vehicles that were gutted from the bill. The idea being proposed is not exactly the same as hers, but it is a close cousin, and would do much to claw back some of the money Donald Trump gave away to his rich pals in December of 2017. Whether it survives the denuding process remains to be seen.

    Soon, soon, Pelosi and company keep telling us. The bills will be ready for passage soon… but the Congressional Progressive Caucus may have something to say about that before the deal goes down. It’s a dirty business, and it’s not finished yet.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Progressive Dems Offer Simple, Brilliant Path Forward for Build Back Better Act

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal speaks to journalists surrounding her

    The debt ceiling crisis has been averted for now, albeit without a single Republican vote in the House, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is leaning toward using the reconciliation process to get it done. The federal highway spending authority expires in 18 days, leaving ample time to deal with it. Funding for the federal government will not expire until December 3.

    While no “top line” spending amount has been agreed to, Democrats in both chambers appear to be moving past the gut-punch of Joe Manchin’s coal-fueled intransigence, and are working to get as much as they can for the people with less money than they wanted. There is no fixed deadline for finalizing and passing the Build Back Better Act and the infrastructure bill, but Democratic leadership devoutly hopes this can get done before November.

    All in all, it’s a remarkably packed legislative calendar, and certainly the most impactful one in recent memory. Roadblocks abound, to be sure, but there is scant reason to believe it can’t all get done before the deadlines. Now would be the perfect time for all involved to pause, take a breath, and adopt a broader view of the situation beyond the reactionary WE ALL GONNA DIE fuss and feathers of standard-issue D.C. politics.

    Yeah, right. Where’s the fun (and clicks, and advertising dollars) in that kind of calm, deliberate approach? “Biden Bleeds Out,” screamed a Wednesday morning Washington Post headline. The author, Dana Milbank, even went so far as to say out loud the crappy little secret that undergirds most of the legislating that gets done in that dank and humid town: “The ultimate details are less important than passing both bills.”

    And boom goes the dynamite. Never mind the fact that the Democrats have had such trouble pushing these wildly popular bills because they have utterly failed to explain what’s so good about them. You know who cares about the details, aside from the people who would benefit from them? The legion of corporate lobbyists who are laboring night and day to destroy or denude the BBB Act specifically because of what the bill contains.

    Milbank is hardly alone. “Democrats are nowhere right now,” announces Punchbowl News. “Democrats Are In Peril,” proclaims The New York Times. “Another Bad-News Poll for Democrats,” glooms CNN. “Biden’s Approval Rating Has Fallen,” intones NBC News. Unless I missed a memo, the midterm elections are still 13 months away. This precipice President Biden and his party are allegedly dangling over appears only to exist in the hive mind of reporters who need to fill column inches every day to earn their paychecks.

    The D.C. press corps is notorious for its flock-of-birds mentality, wheeling this way and that en masse in search of — and in service to — the accepted, acceptable story line. “Dems in Disarray” has been catnip to this bunch since time out of mind, and nothing about today’s reporting suggests a change of course or an adjustment of perspective is in the offing.

    “Like wildebeests crossing the Serengeti, journalists travel in a herd,” columnist Eugene Robinson wrote on Monday. “We follow not the life-giving seasonal rains but a safe, comfortable, groupthink story arc — call it The Narrative — whose current chapter is titled ‘Democrats are doomed’…. So when The Narrative warns that Biden urgently needs to get the progressives and the moderates in his party to set aside their differences, I take a somewhat different view. What I see is a pretty normal exercise in legislative give-and-take, except that it’s all happening within the Democratic Party — while Republicans hoot, holler and obstruct…”

    As has been the case throughout the hyper-chaos surrounding this process, it is the congressional progressives who have been the steadying hand of reason. After it became clear that Manchin was a hard “no” on spending $3.5 trillion on the Build Back Better Act, Democratic legislators began mulling the grim question of what to keep, and what to cut, from the bill in order to bring down its cost.

    This was an impossible conundrum: Everything in the bill is important, and quite a lot of it is nothing short of life or death. Everyone with skin in the game was prepared to fight to the knife for their priorities, and the possibility of actual party immolation became more than just an easy headline with a print deadline looming. Talk of doing “fewer things well” had House members seething all over the building, while Republicans stood back and waited for the explosion.

    Enter the Congressional Progressive Caucus with a wondrously simple solution: Chop the thing in half.

    Instead of spending $3.5 trillion over ten years, spend $1.75 to $2 trillion over five years. Keep the bill mostly if not entirely intact, and set the programs to expire in half the time. The money should be good for the likes of Manchin. By the time the programs reach their expiration dates, ones that worked well will likely have enormous popular support, and can be extended. At a bare minimum, the country will get five years of policy geared toward helping people, and not toward making rich people even richer.

    “We do believe that you can significantly cut down on the price tag by funding some of these programs for a shorter period of time,” Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal told CBS News. “Make sure that the benefits are universal and accrued to people immediately — not in three years or five years — but something that people can tangibly feel right away. And then deal with the extension of those programs down the road when people see how transformative they are.”

    Speaker Pelosi appears to be on board with the idea, which suggests it is more than halfway home. The devil remains in the details, but this suggestion is an inspired, shrewd bit of deal-making. The party would be foolish to reject it out of hand. They have more than two weeks to meet their self-imposed November deadline, at which point the other priorities will be teed up and waiting.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • With Infrastructure on the Brink, Manchin Refuses to Negotiate

    Sen. Joe Manchin pauses during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing at the Dirksen Senate Office building on Capitol Hill on September 28, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    A little after 9:00 pm yesterday evening, CBS News dropped a headline announcing that a deal had been nailed down to avert a government shutdown. The opening sentence of the report read, “Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer announced Wednesday night that an agreement to keep the government funded and prevent a government shutdown has been reached.” Schumer is the Minority Leader, really? Did I oversleep through two Novembers?

    The error was still in place at 7:10 am this morning but had finally been fixed by 8:30 am. Call it an honest mistake. With people like Joe Manchin in his caucus, Schumer may as well be the minority leader. Legend says you can thwart a vampire with holy water and a crucifix. No one knows what it will take Manchin to go away, because he won’t tell anyone. He’s having too much fun, he’s protecting his own polluting interests, and O my Lord, how the corporate lobbyist money is rolling in.

    A lot of corporate “news” media are having a good deal of sport with their favorite shortcut around actual reporting, “Dems in Disarray!” Beats working, I guess, but it is probably worthwhile to clarify why the progressive wing of the party is pissed off enough to try and blow up the president’s infrastructure bill, which may happen today if Speaker Pelosi brings the bill to the floor.

    When this whole thing first began, the infrastructure bill was priced at $2 trillion. The Senate started to chew on it, and industry lobbyists who call people like Joe Manchin a friend gutted the proposed legislation of virtually all its climate-related policies. The bill ultimately passed by the Senate cost $1 trillion, with only half of that coming from newly raised revenues, while billions in fossil fuel subsidies were allowed to remain.

    The first promise progressives got was that all the vitally needed climate elements that had been purged from the infrastructure bill would be packaged into the Build Back Better Act (BBB Act), a budget bill Schumer could get passed in the Senate with no Republican votes if every Democrat went along for the ride. That is what happened, and the addition of all those climate policies ballooned the BBB Act’s price tag to its current $3.5 trillion.

    The BBB Act, with those additions, stands today as the most important piece of climate-oriented legislation to make it this far into the process, and contains a raft of other dearly needed social reforms that would change the face of the country for the better after four decades of trickle-down plunder.

    The second promise, made several times by Speaker Pelosi, was that both bills would be “coupled,” so conservative Democrats wouldn’t pass the industry-favored infrastructure bill and then sink the industry-despised BBB Act. The infrastructure bill, in effect, was the hostage to fortune progressives intended to use to make sure the BBB Act at least made it to the Senate.

    These promises began to unravel because Joe Manchin and his cohort have exactly as much shame as your average Trump Republican. After demanding the removal of the climate policies in the infrastructure bill, these conservative Democrats abruptly turned on the now pricier BBB Act, calling it too expensive… but it only got more expensive because of the inclusion of policies they’d ripped out of the infrastructure bill.

    Over the next days and then weeks, Manchin and his crew steadfastly refused to say what price tag would satisfy them. They brought nothing to the table, and accepted nothing put before them. They pulled a bait and switch on the climate policies, and after infrastructure passed in the Senate, they refused to budge on the BBB Act. That broke promise #1. On Monday, Pelosi abandoned all pretense and announced the infrastructure bill would be brought up by itself for a vote today, thus breaking promise #2.

    “There was a deal,” writes Josh Marshall for Talking Points Memo, “an agreed upon framework. The Manchin-Sinema-Gottheimer troika got their [infrastructure] bill. And as soon as they did they backed out of the deal. That is how we got here. We knew it would be hard to come to an agreement, a lot of tense moments and standoffs. What we’ve actually seen is rather different. They’re not having a hard time coming to an agreement. The troika is refusing to negotiate.”

    In place of negotiation, Manchin released a statement on Wednesday — flush with words and phrases like, “fiscal insanity,” “dysfunction,” “vengefully tax,” “spend for the sake of spending,” “careless spending,” “these fatal mistakes” — that could have been produced by any one of the dime-a-dozen supply-side Republican think tanks that dot the Washington, D.C. landscape and produce facile gibberish meant only to derange the debate. The statement was, once again and entirely by design, not helpful at all.

    This is the juncture where the corporate “news” people start laying blame for this mess at the feet of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which appears entirely prepared to sink the infrastructure bill in order to save the BBB Act. Now is when progressives need to start cooperating, goes the refrain; don’t they see how important this is? The people! The midterms! My goodness, Franklin Roosevelt cut deals with the worst Southern segregationists in the land when crafting the New Deal. Why won’t the progressives compromise?

    That’s the thing, right there: FDR got something for the foul compromises he made. If the Congressional Progressive Caucus backs down now, a shabby pro-business half-measures infrastructure bill will pass, and the vital BBB Act will almost certainly be defeated.

    Simply put: The fear is that Democrats will get nothing if the Congressional Progressive Caucus doesn’t back down, but the reality is Democrats — and the people — will get next to nothing if they do surrender. A few of Pelosi’s precious “moderates” will get to campaign on the bipartisan bill they voted for, without caring much at all about what was actually in it. For people like that, the contents of a bill matter far less than the publicity generated by the bill’s passage.

    Listening to the “news,” you’d think a delayed infrastructure bill would disappear forever into the abyss. In fact, it could easily be re-offered once the BBB Act is ready for a vote, and this process could unfold the way it was promised. Congressional progressives have already compromised on the infrastructure bill and the BBB Act — both are now half of what they need to be because of those compromises — and now they are being pushed into yet another retreat. They are being promised many good things for that retreat, most of all that conservative Democrats won’t sink the BBB Act after the infrastructure bill passes alone, after seeing two promises already broken.

    Speaker Pelosi would be wise to shelf the infrastructure bill for a few days, allow temperatures to cool, and finish drafting the BBB Act. Pass them both out of the House. It comes down to Joe Manchin however this finally unfolds. Even if both bills clear the House, Manchin and his conservative pals are lying in wait.

    Every sinew of public muscle must be brought to bear on the senator from West Virginia to at least get him to negotiate. Make it simple — make it all about Manchin and his wretched motives — and call his bluff. It’s that, or fold and let this McConnell-esque power play get whatever it wants. If that happens, it won’t stop with this. If you give a mouse a cookie, it’s going to want a glass of milk.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.