{"id":324590,"date":"2021-09-24T11:11:53","date_gmt":"2021-09-24T11:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/09\/progressive-lawmakers-budget-reconciliation-bill-infrastructure-biden-administration-establishment-pushback\/"},"modified":"2021-09-24T11:14:59","modified_gmt":"2021-09-24T11:14:59","slug":"progressive-pressure-over-the-budget-reconciliation-bill-is-creating-establishment-pushback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/24\/progressive-pressure-over-the-budget-reconciliation-bill-is-creating-establishment-pushback\/","title":{"rendered":"Progressive Pressure Over the Budget Reconciliation Bill Is Creating Establishment Pushback"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

The pressure from pro-corporate establishment voices against the budget reconciliation bill is intensifying because progressives are, for the first time in generations, threatening to use their leverage and refuse to vote for a watered-down bill stripped of measures that would aid working people.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n President Joe Biden walks with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the Capitol in Washington DC as he arrives to discuss the latest progress on his infrastructure bill. (Caroline Brehman \/ CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Way back in August, the Daily Poster<\/em>\u00a0told you<\/a> that progressive House Democrats\u2019 willingness to hold out for a serious anti-poverty and climate-focused reconciliation bill would likely determine the outcome of the epic battle unfolding on Capitol Hill.<\/p>\n

We also told you that if progressives began holding out, corporate Democrats, egged on by a deal-hungry president, would revise their strategy and try to help their business donors hollow out that bill by defanging the legislative details.<\/p>\n

One month later, all of that has proven to be true, and this conflict has now devolved into what most fights in Washington become: a clash between good policy and blatant corruption, and a deeper struggle between aspiration and lethargy.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

\u201cAll Done Together, Or It’s Going to Be None\u201d<\/h2>\n \n

Thanks to the\u00a0whip count<\/a> work of the\u00a0Daily Poster<\/em>, the American Prospect\u00a0<\/em>and the\u00a0Intercept,<\/em> we know that twenty-one House Democrats have publicly pledged to vote against passage of a business-sculpted infrastructure bill unless it remains coupled with the much bigger reconciliation legislation, which is supposed to include climate initiatives, drug pricing measures, anti-poverty programs, and higher taxes on the wealthy.<\/p>\n

This two-track strategy is sound: The idea is that the only way to get corporate Democrats to provide necessary votes to pass a reconciliation bill they hate is to link it to an infrastructure boondoggle that their\u00a0corporate donors desperately want<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We’re either going to have to get this all done together, or it’s going to be none,\u201d Daily Poster<\/em>\u00a0subscribers were told during\u00a0last week\u2019s live chat<\/a> with Democratic representative Brendan Boyle, who has committed to withholding his vote. \u201cThat’s the practical reality.”<\/p>\n

If progressives follow through and vote down the bipartisan infrastructure bill, it would be no small thing. It would not only be a reversal from their\u00a0previous surrender<\/a>\u00a0on a $15 minimum wage as part of President Joe Biden\u2019s COVID relief bill, it would be the first time in forever that progressive lawmakers actually opted to wield real power.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s huge \u2014 but there\u2019s a catch.<\/p>\n

Progressive holdouts have \u2014 deliberately \u2014 not made specific demands about what they believe must be in the reconciliation legislation. That omission has created the political space for corporate Democrats to try to whittle down the bill to barely anything at all. If that effort is successful, it would force progressives to choose between voting for an empty husk of a bill that is at least called \u201creconciliation,\u201d or risk getting nothing at all. Corporate Democrats would be betting that under enough pressure, progressives will eventually choose the husk and calculate that they\u2019d be able to sell it to voters back home as a spectacular victory.<\/p>\n

In the last two days, this kind of pressure has ratcheted up in a coordinated fashion.<\/p>\n

Biden is now reportedly\u00a0telling<\/a>\u00a0corporate Democrats that they get to decide how much to slash out of the reconciliation bill.<\/p>\n

Similarly, John Podesta \u2014 who ran the\u00a0corporate-funded<\/a>\u00a0Center for American Progress \u2014 circulated a memo on Capitol Hill telling progressives to suddenly back off the $3.5 trillion framework, even though it already passed the\u00a0House<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Senate<\/a>, even though $3.5 trillion is already a compromise from\u00a0$6 trillion<\/a>, and even though\u00a0$3.5 trillion is a comparatively paltry sum<\/a> that\u2019s less than what the government is expected to shovel out the door to the Pentagon in just the next five years alone.<\/p>\n

Podesta has declared that \u201cwe will not secure the full $3.5 trillion investment\u201d \u2014 demanding Democrats once again back off and live to never fight another day, all in the name of protecting the party\u2019s prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Somehow forgotten is how the same demands for compromise and capitulation were made during President Barack Obama\u2019s first two years, resulting in an all-too-small stimulus<\/a>\u00a0that did not adequately boost the economy, and that helped create the conditions for Democrats\u2019 electoral shellacking in 2010.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n

Pay Attention to the Billionaires Behind the Curtain<\/h2>\n \n

We know what\u2019s at issue in this conflict \u2014 and it\u2019s not some earnest policy dispute over which particular policies would be good for the country. We\u2019ve long known what needs to be done to fight the climate crisis, make taxes more fair, and prevent Americans from being fleeced with the world\u2019s highest prices for medicine \u2014 and with the nation facing a climate cataclysm, a health care emergency, a pandemic, and economic turmoil, much of that has been promised by Democrats and is supposed to be in their reconciliation bill.<\/p>\n

But in recent weeks, we\u2019ve seen these agenda items put on the chopping block: Tax measures have been trimmed, prescription drug pricing provisions have been voted down, threats against climate programs have been made. This has happened because of a factor that politicians rarely acknowledge and that reporters and pundits at corporate media outlets don\u2019t like to mention.<\/p>\n

And that factor is: blatant, obvious corruption in a capital city immersed in corporate cash, overseen by business lobbyists who buy votes, and run by lawmakers who have their own financial interests in mind.<\/p>\n

Some obvious examples:<\/p>\n