Pelosi confronts ticking clock as senators weigh Biden economic plan

President Joe Biden’s quest to enact his $4 trillion economic agenda enters a turbulent new phase Monday as the U.S. House comes back into session and Democratic representatives ramp up pressure on the Senate to produce a bipartisan compromise or stop prolonging the effort.

Addressing the demands of progressive Democrats to go it alone will be a major challenge for Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants in the coming weeks. She’ll need to keep an eye as well on moderate Democrats, who are leery about any solo package in the absence of the party having enough Senate votes to power it through.

Tensions have risen in the run-up to White House acting budget director Shalanda Young and Biden counselor Steve Ricchetti’s Tuesday meeting with House Democrats to discuss Biden’s proposed programs. That will mark the caucus’s first in-person get-together since the pandemic erupted.

Bing Guan/Bloomberg

A key challenge is that the fast-track budget process that progressives want to use — the same one deployed for the $1.9 trillion March pandemic-relief bill — will only be available if all 50 in the Senate Democratic caucus agree to take that step.

Two key members — Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — are not in favor of that course without trying a bipartisan deal first. While talks on that front continue, there’s no guarantee a Senate compromise could pass the Democratic-controlled House.

Infrastructure talks

A bipartisan group of 10 senators, including five GOP members along with Manchin, Sinema and three other Democrats, last week said they agreed on a $1.2 trillion, eight-year infrastructure package. The White House pledged to continue talks with that group.

The proposal does not have social spending on health care and corporate-tax increases Biden sought in his Jobs plan. It also does not yet have the 60 votes — including 10 Republicans — needed to pass the Senate under the normal legislative process.

Its funding measures may prove a key hurdle, with a suggestion to index the national gasoline tax rejected by the White House and a move to repurpose billions of dollars allocated to state governments under the pandemic-relief bill negating a key priority for Pelosi and others in hard-fought negotiations over the better part of a year.

Pelosi said she hasn’t seen the proposal but it may be a tough sell to House Democrats “unless we know there is more to come.”

“Let’s see if we can come to a reasonable amount of money to get that work done, but I have no intention of abandoning the rest of my vision about the better — building back better,” she said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program Sunday.

The Senate for now will pursue “two tracks,” Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has said — one featuring a possible bipartisan infrastructure proposal and the other preparing the way for a tax and spending package with items only Democrats support.

Schumer timeline

How long the first track will be pursued remains to be seen, but Schumer has said he would like to turn to infrastructure in July.

Progressive House Democrats are growing increasingly impatient.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others have already complained the Senate group’s tentative deal doesn’t do enough to tackle climate change and said they fear Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is just running out the clock to limit Biden’s achievements before the 2022 midterm elections.

Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal summed up the frustration in an email appeal Thursday to donors, saying, “It is once again very clear that Republicans do not want to come along.” She predicted, “Look: we can wait another week, we can negotiate with another Republican senator or two — but the results won’t be any different.”

Ocasio-Cortez said Sunday that the deal being worked on by the bipartisan group in the Senate won’t get Democrats closer to climate goals or create the millions of jobs that are needed in the country.

“The argument that we need to make here is it’s worth going it alone if we can do more for working people in this country,” she said in a separate interview on CNN.

McConnell said Monday that there was a “maybe 50-50” chance of the bipartisan Senate group’s proposal passing Congress. Speaking on conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt’s show, McConnell reiterated GOP demands not to roll back 2017 tax cuts. He also restated Republican calls to repurpose unused pandemic-relief funds allocated to states and localities, something he considered “would be a way to get a pretty robust infrastructure bill on a bipartisan basis without raising taxes.”

Progressives aren’t the only ones with angst over the Senate talks.

A senior aide to a moderate House Democrat on Friday likened the latest proposal from bipartisan group to trash.

The aide, who asked not to be identified so he could explain more fully, highlighted that much of the state and local funding — which the senators’ plan would repurpose — was supposed to go to hospitals and health care providers, a particular priority for Pelosi. The aide said the question now isn’t whether that compromise goes forward, it’s instead who nixes it and when.

Even the No. 3 House Democrat, Jim Clyburn, said that lawmakers may be “running out of time” with an approach at bipartisanship on infrastructure, because Biden is expecting something on his desk from Congress by August.

‘Hot mess’

“I just don’t want to repeat the ‘Infrastructure Week’ every month that never really happens,” Wisconsin Democrat Gwen Moore said on Bloomberg TV Friday. “It’s a hot mess,” she said, pointing to the lack of climate-change and corporate tax hike measures in the Senate outline.

Still, some 29 moderate Democrats in the Problem Solvers Caucus have signed off on a $1.2 trillion infrastructure framework that closely hews to the Senate group’s effort. Their preference for a bipartisan deal is bolstered by the likely exclusion of major elements, including billions of dollars in earmarked projects in members’ districts, from a reconciliation bill under Senate rules.

For now, Pelosi and House leaders are still biding their time. The leadership will have other strains to manage as the House comes back into session, including a flap over controversial remarks by Ilhan Omar.

The full House is slated to vote by the end of June on roads and rails funding legislation, while a vote is also pending on a budget resolution for 2022 — something that typically jump-starts work on regular annual government spending bills as well as with the fast-track reconciliation process.

A vote on a placeholder budget resolution is expected this week, deeming $1.5 trillion as the spending limit for 2022. That then gives House Budget Chairman John Yarmuth and his committee time to work on the rest of a budget outline, along with the detailed instructions for a reconciliation bill.

The longer the White House entertains the bipartisan Senate group’s proposals, the more compressed the timetable for the Democrat-only program. But a successful deal could also sow division.

Michigan Democrat Dan Kildee said he and others in the party worry about the idea of passing a slimmed-down bipartisan package with a promise to use reconciliation later for the rest of the Biden program, including robust funding for electric vehicle charging stations and lead pipe removal.

“Sometimes, later never comes,” Kildee said in an interview, advocating that the House proceeds with its own bill if delays continue in the Senate. “I’m concerned about delegating the future of the economy to a small group of senators who have appointed themselves to be in charge.”

— With assistance from Laura Litvan