Progressives fold once again, Continue to prove they're a Complete Joke
The House passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill alone on Monday with no solid assurances that the reconciliation package is coming with it.
In a couple of earlier articles, I covered the Infrastructure negotiations in Washington, and at the time of my last update, it seemed like things were trending in a positive direction. That all changed last Friday evening, when the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) did exactly what they promised they would not.
That statement could not be any clearer, and yet when the BIF was introduced as a stand-alone bill, it passed anyway, with just 6 Democrats standing strong and voting no. 13 Republicans broke ranks with their party and voted yes.
This has been a game of chicken since the beginning, with progressives on one side and corporate Democrats on the other. Is it unfortunate that Democrats are having to negotiate against themselves in order to get anything done? Absolutely, but that’s the reality of having corporate money polluting our system. So, the only thing that matters in this process is having leverage on your side. This fact is critical in understanding how to strategize and win in these negotiations.
Being willing to use your political power is the single most impactful thing you can do in Congress. Progressives have consistently done the opposite of this, instead trying to appeal to the better angels of their corporate-owned counterparts, despite those same colleagues never giving any indication that they’ll negotiate in good faith. This is especially frustrating in situations like these, where they are the only members of Congress fighting to include highly popular proposals in the legislation in question.
Short summary of how we got here:
Senator Bernie Sanders proposes $10 trillion in spending during his presidential campaign
President Joe Biden proposes $6 trillion
Senator Joe Manchin proposes $4 trillion
Spending gets split into 2 bills
Progressives commit to voting down lesser bill if reconciliation doesn’t come with it.
Original proposal for reconciliation is $3.5 trillion
Lesser bipartisan infrastructure deal worth around $1.2 trillion
Cuts begin, reconciliation gets whittled down to $2.5 trillion, and then $1.7 trillion.
Progressives fold and pass BIF on its own
If I had known that progressives would remain so stubborn in not using any of their points of leverage, I would’ve said that this result was inevitable. It is that fact which allows people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema and others in the House to steamroll progressives throughout the negotiations. Allow me to play out an alternative scenario where progressives actually play hardball- Speaker Pelosi introduces the BIF in the House, and progressives hold strong and vote no as a large bloc. The pressure then goes 100% back on the Senate to pass the reconciliation bill alongside the BIF. That is not a position that Manchin and Sinema want to be in, but they clearly weren’t worried about progressives following through with their commitments.
This is also not the only point of leverage on their side. If Manchin and Sinema were really willing to walk away with nothing, the public polling is completely on the side of the progressives. This is something that Bernie Sanders once understood very well, and perhaps still does. In his 2016 campaign, when asked how he would work with politicians who disagreed with them, he said he would visit those representatives’ home states, hold giant rallies and appeal directly to their constituents. Make no mistake, Manchin and Sinema are not working to cut proposals like paid family leave, lowering prescription drug prices and important climate provisions because their constituents don’t want those things. All of those proposals poll incredibly well not only on a national level, but in West Virginia and Arizona as well. The real reason why they’re working to cut these proposals is corruption. Legalized corruption, sure, but corruption nonetheless. Sinema is raking in the cash from Big Pharma, while Manchin has made over $5 million in the last decade from his own coal company which he founded before entering public office.
As for the process of the vote itself, it seems like Pramila Jayapal (chair of the CPC) cut some sort of deal with Pelosi. It remains to be seen what that deal was, or what that means in the long term, but even the 6 squad members who held the line seemed to be planned. Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley reportedly didn’t vote no until the yes votes had already reached the total number needed to pass.
Now that BIF has passed both chambers, it is now incredibly unlikely that there will be any kind of reconciliation bill at all. If anything does come to pass, it will almost certainly be diluted further, with Manchin making more climate cuts or House corporatists slicing more of the most popular aspects. This is not only a big loss for everyone that these proposals would have helped, but also politically for Democrats in 2022. Refer to my last article for more details on that, but the point is, voters expect some kind of return from the politicians that they choose to support.
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