Reading recent headlines, you’d think that all-out civil war is upon the Democrats and that the Biden agenda is DOA. “Congress Ends The Week with Leaks, Disagreement, and Chaos around Infrastructure Bill” declared Fortune magazine. “Democrats in Disarray” warned NBC Bay Area. One journalist even took a pot shot at the president as he visited his son’s grave. “Biden goes to church and walks through a graveyard in Wilmington while his legislative agenda is dying in Washington,” observed Annie Linkey, a White House reporter for the Washington Post. (She later deleted the tweet, apologizing for it being badly conceived and insensitive.)
Despite these doom and gloom pieces, President Biden made clear in remarks to reporters over the weekend that he will see his agenda through. “It doesn’t matter whether it in six minutes, six days or six weeks, we’re going to get it done,” he stated. He also, for the first time, made clear that the Democrats were united but for a pair of holdouts. “We could bring the moderates and progressives together very easily if we had two more votes. Two. Two people,” the president said, not expressly naming but definitely referring to Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are objecting to the size of the $3.5 trillion budget bill. His point was clear: There isn’t deep division, there are only two dissenters out of fifty.
With Manchin currently offering only as high as $1.5 trillion and Sinema not yet showing any of her cards (while facing growing anger from her own constituents, some of whom aggressively pursued her into a bathroom at ASU after a class she taught there, demanding to know why she’s blocking Biden’s plan), it would seem that there remains a daunting $2 trillion chasm between the two obstructionists and the rest of their Senate colleagues. With every vote needed to pass the bill, is that a gap too big to bridge? And will House Progressives tank the infrastructure bill, as they have threatened, in response to no action on the budget?
As I wrote last week, it’s best to think of the bill not as a $3.5 trillion dollar bill but as a $350 billion average annual added expenditure over a ten year period. Ten years is generally the outer limit for budget bills, so what Biden is proposing is essentially a big ten year plan. This is especially important for things like action on climate change, for which longer term measures and programs are needed to address the problem.
But there is nothing that requires Democrats to make everything last ten whole years. When Congress passed the American Rescue Plan, for example, it included child care tax credits to help poor and middle class families, lifting some 50 percent of children in America out of poverty. But that provision was set to expire in 2022, two years after it was passed, unless it is renewed by something like this budget bill. So instead of extending programs like new child tax care credits, elder care subsidies or even free community college out for ten years, Congress could simply offer to do it for eight, or five, or even two.
This would allow Biden to keep all of his priorities in the bill but fund them for less time, with the hope that they can be renewed with the Democrats still in control. Progressives understand this and are starting gingerly to open that door, speaking about options and compromises. Progressive leader Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on “Face the Nation” on Sunday to make that case. “[D]o we shorten our funding programs—do you reduce the level of funding? Do you cut programs out together?” she asked. Then tellingly, she added, “I think that one of the ideas that's out there is, fully fund what we can fully fund, but maybe instead of doing it for 10 years, you fully fund it for five years.”
If enough programs are fully funded but for only five years instead of ten, we start to get much closer to Manchin’s $1.5 trillion offer. In fact, Joe Biden has already floated the idea of a target around $2 trillion instead of $3.5 trillion. “He basically said it’s not going to be $3.5. It could be $1.9 trillion to $2 trillion. The president threw out some numbers, so I assume there was a reason why,” moderate Democrat Henry Cuellar (D-Tx) told Axios following a meeting between House members and president Biden.
This is why many leaders still have confidence that a number agreeable to all parties will be reached, especially now that they have bought themselves a bit more time.
So when the press breathlessly reports that the Democrats are falling apart and ready to strangle one another of budget priorities and ceilings, remember that this is just part of negotiation. There are many ways to get to that number.
Also, never bet against Nancy Pelosi.
"Also, never bet against Nancy Pelosi." - truer words have never been spoken!
I think the only two in danger of being strangled are Manchin and Sinema. I get that Manchin is owned by his corporate donors, but Sinema is turning out to be just a piece of garbage. She pretty much immediately turned coat after getting into office, and I applaud the people who chased her into that bathroom.