Negotiations over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill for President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan are back on after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) ultimately declined to bring the bipartisan infrastructure bill (BIF) to a vote last week due to progressives’ threat to sink it if it were put to a vote before reconciliation.
TPM. Is this Morning Memo Part Two? Not much news here either. We covered the Sinema moment yesterday.
I just had an idea. Fire your cut paste journalists and hire us. We come cheap. No overhead.
I don’t know why the F*ck we ever started even talking about infrastructure.
It is needed sure but moot as F*ck if we don’t act on voting rights.
We are wasting Joe’s political capital on things Republicans will take away in 2024 after they complete their government coup.
We won’t have any capital left to push a solid Voing rights package after this BS.
Jaypal and company should switch and say forget the reconciliation package, tell Manchin and Sinema that instead we want their support to set aside filibuster for a updated voting rights acts that kills gerrymandering, preclearance for all states on election laws, establishes uniform minimum structure for federal election administration.
None of this will cost money so no need to preen about moderation and inflation.
If we fix election law we can get the rest and more in 2022,
if not, it is time to seriously consider the possibility that the US needs to separate and what your blue state can do to prepare
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that President Joe Biden went to Capitol Hill to discuss the infrastructure and reconciliation bills with Democrats because he “wasn’t going to stand by the sideline and issue tweets.
If we don’t have more than one absentee ballot dropbox per county, Democrats are DOOOMMEDD!
Apologies for the mockery, but I feel obligated to remind folks from time to time that basically all the state-level legislation is doing is redressing Trump’s 2020 election procedures grievances. And much of it is self-defeating, like making it harder for seniors to vote by mail.
This is why, unless something huge happens, we have the only two ‘new’ stories we’re gonna get today on TPM. It’s only 10a eastern time, and it will be squibs for the rest of the day (AKA, blog posts).
I still haven’t figured out what the problem was with the old TPM style. What was the imperative to change it?
I think they’ve just run out of resources…
Or maybe it’s just mavericky… LOL!!!
If energy prices stay at this level over the winter, they are doomed anyway. I know, inflation for many here is no biggie. But for many others, it is a huge deal. When groceries, rent, and now gasoline and heating costs spike, Democrats are not going to remain in power. Regardless of what they spend. They will be blamed.
Seniors are not going to benefit with child care tax credits… or from much else in the BBB bill. . Seniors decide elections. Maybe if they raise SS payments and raise the SS tax ceiling, they would have a chance. But they are extending Medicare without doing anything about funding. Republicans are going to be messaging very effectively.
I hate to say this, but we are really are doomed unless things turn around.
Medicare recipients will get help with dental, vision and hearing with BBB. That’s a big deal for seniors.
Fuck with suspending it. If they’re going to do it all through reconciliation, kill the damned debt ceiling and be done with it.
Unless that part gets cut out in negotiations.
I wasn’t aware of the dental plans though. All these seniors with false teeth are saying …you’re too late assholes!! 
It’ll get killed, most likely. It’s one of the bigger “perks” that Medicare Advantage plans get to offer, so they don’t like it. Dentists don’t like it because Medicare pays shit.
So this one is likely going down the tubes.
I’m not sure reconciliation can kill the debt ceiling, since reconciliation is supposed to be used for finance/money issues, not policy changes?? Or so the parliamentarian might ‘rule’…Raising the ceiling to a zillion zillion dollars would work, but we’d have to see what Manchinema will vote for.
Do you know how much debt a republican president with full control of the House and Senate can run up?
We’d be at the new limit within the first week after trump rolls back into office.
But the GQP doesn’t care. Look at the previous administration, running up roughly a quarter of the current debt in just four years and how many times the debt ceiling was raised without so much as a discussion.
This is a purely political tool with no grounds in fact or constitutional law and it needs to be shut down already.
We’ll see this week if the Mods are ready to ‘Take the L’ that they justly earned last week and move on.
The Mods have some big problems, which was apparent in the angry tirades issued by Gottheimer and Sinema.
They can’t force an early vote on the BIB unless they try another game of self-destructive brinksmanship at the end of the month when the surface transportation bill expires. They would again come up against the WH, Congressional Dem leadership, 95% of the Dem Caucus and the Dem voter base which is already side eyeing the Mods and will be even angrier a few weeks from now if they keep this crap up.
Biden has offered a clear on ramp that they have no good political reason not to sign up for. Biden has proposed a target that is closer to Manchin’s than it is to the current House bill that got passed out of the committees. They can take that as their ‘fiscal conservative’ ‘W’ and move on.
The Mods are getting schooled in the media. They use Politico. Jayapal, Khanna and others go to tv and do interviews. They’re selling their position better. The liberals big challenge is to turn the debate to the specifics of the legislation and away from the number.
The Mods’ challenge, it seems to me, is that they have to break up with their lobbyist friends. They have to tell them ‘no’. They’re probably finding that hard to do. The lobbyists have been all in their ears b/c they sense that the game is slipping away and they need to lean even harder on the pols to act as a brake on Biden’s agenda.
All in all, the signs point to Biden getting what he wants before the end of the month. The only real obstacle I see is ego. The Mods have no constituency. Even the beltway media have ignored them a bit. They have no votes. No GOPers came to help them or will come to help them. The Dem caucus is with Biden. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that you’ve lost and take the on-ramp that is given to you.
You know this is just political brinksmanship because no Democrat would actually benefit from killing this bill. The death of this bill would mean the death of the Democrats for the foreseeable future, which is something no Democrat would want to be blamed for.
Hell, I be even some Republicans want this bill to pass because hurting Democrats now risks bringing back Trump and many Republicans now hate Trump far more than they oppose the Democrats.
Except false teeth are not cheap and sometimes break. So it’s still a win.
My dad waited until his health insurance covered 80% of his hearing aid costs and got himself really good ones instead of cheap-o ones for the same price.
Are you thinking 3.5 trillion? Or 2.2 trillion? Because he said he wants 3.5 trillion, but is willing to settle for 2.2 trillion according to his statement last week.
It’s going to be a month of drama and I believe the final number will be 2 trillion. Providing Sinema doesn’t blow the whole works up.