{"id":327294,"date":"2021-09-27T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=371477"},"modified":"2021-09-27T15:04:00","modified_gmt":"2021-09-27T15:04:00","slug":"pelosi-delays-infrastructure-vote-after-progressive-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/27\/pelosi-delays-infrastructure-vote-after-progressive-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Pelosi Delays Infrastructure Vote After Progressive Pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is<\/u>\u00a0September 27, which was supposed to be the day that Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., managed to force a floor vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill that passed the Senate earlier. His goal was to split the bipartisan bill away from the broader reconciliation bill so that he and his allies could pass the small one and water down or kill the latter. The dark-money group No Labels that is backing his effort\u00a0has made that goal explicit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Gottheimer won the concession of a vote from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, but, crucially, he didn\u2019t win a promise of a successful vote. So the Congressional Progressive Caucus organized its members into a bloc and vowed to vote against infrastructure unless the bigger bill came along with it. Twenty-two House Democrats\u00a0went on the record<\/a>\u00a0saying they\u2019d withhold their votes; Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and\u00a010 Democrats backed them up. The media took a long time to catch on but finally realized that — wait a minute! — these people are serious. Late last night, Pelosi\u00a0sent out a letter<\/a>\u00a0announcing that the vote would be pulled. Debate on the bill starts today, but the vote has been rescheduled for Thursday.<\/p>\n

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In years past, progressives would not have been able to make a threat credible enough to get the vote pulled from the floor. So what\u2019s different this time? For one, primaries matter, and in 2020 progressives ousted a handful of corporate Democrats and won open primaries against right-wing, business-friendly Democrats.<\/p>\n

But that still doesn\u2019t quite explain it, because progressives are still in general stuck with a structural disadvantage: They actually want to pass things, whereas centrists are happy never passing anything. Progressives have little leverage, since the choice is often between getting a little bit of something and getting nothing. That\u2019s exactly what happened with the Affordable Care Act. Progressives vowed that they wouldn\u2019t support a health care bill without a robust public option, and in the end they were told, here\u2019s the final bill — it\u2019ll give insurance to 20 or 25 million more people and expand Medicaid, but it has no public option. Are you a yes or a no? Faced with that choice, a progressive member of Congress is going to vote yes 99 out of 100 times.<\/p>\n\n

What\u2019s different this time is that the corporate Democrats actually want something. They worked really hard on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and it includes a ton of corrupt giveaways their financial backers really want.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t take my word for it \u2014 here\u2019s Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., chair of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, talking to NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur, quoted on Twitter: \u201cThe crap written by those 12 rump senators, who are all pro-fossil-fuel actually, does virtually nothing to reduce fossil fuel pollution from transportation. So I’m trying to fix that in reconciliation. They basically took out all of our climate provisions. They took my electric bus program, and they cut it and then they said oh, and a third of the money has to be spent on fossil fuel buses. I mean, they’re such jerks\u2026 The industry could\u2019ve written their bill.\u201d<\/p>\n


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House Transportation Chair @RepPeterDeFazio<\/a> on Senate infrastructure bill: \u201cThe crap written by those 12 rump senators, who are all pro-fossil-fuel actually, does virtually nothing to reduce fossil fuel pollution from transportation. So I'm trying to fix that in reconciliation.\u201d<\/p>\n

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) September 22, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n