Bipartisanship Watch
The Way Forward: Pelosi and Gottheimer
From VOA, Dec. 19, 2019
From NYPost, Aug 23, 2021: Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) is one of the Democrats refusing to back down to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. AP
Here is a quote from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez from The Hill, Aug. 23, 2021. It is regarding the stand taken by nine centrist Democrats, led by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, calling for a vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that was agreed in the Senate, before considering the $3.5 trillion American Jobs / Families bill:
“The idea of just kind of throwing a bomb at the 11th hour, it just doesn’t seem responsible to the people of this country who expect a legislature that works for them,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) (My bold added.)
That isn’t really fair. Moderates have been saying for some time that the Democrats have to be more prudent with pandemic spending.
Let’s use less incendiary language, rather than “bomb”— how about “wrench”, throwing a wrench (or a spanner if you prefer the British term).
Before getting into the important parts of this note, namely, the way forward on achieving sound, bipartisan economic policy, allow me to “bullet”, excuse me, to list a couple of spanners that “progressives”, such as Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, have thrown into the mix. Wrenches that have contributed to the polarization that is plaguing the country, making getting the people’s business done in Washington challenging. Just a couple:
Instead of focusing pandemic spending on the poor, Democratic legislation has also provided billions in middle-class giveaways, such as the unnecessary ~$400 billion in rebates in the American Rescue Plan and the expansion of education, housing and social programs that are not appropriately means-tested and targeted to the poor.
The “6 trillion-dollar man”, Bernie Sanders, was installed as Chair of the Senate Budget Committee. Budget Committee? Bernie? Really?! I’d expect that in a joke from Fallon on late night, not from Sen. Schumer in the well of the Senate. Bernie Sanders has called for, not $3.5 trillion of spending, but six trill. This amounts to more than one-quarter of U.S. GDP, larger than the GDP of every other country in the world, including Japan and Germany, except China. This is a spending package that exceeds what every single Japanese consumer (125 million of them), Japanese business and government spend on food, clothing, shelter and everything else in a year! That is a b…, I mean a wrench. With U.S. government debt-to-GDP of >130% likely by year-end 2021, an historic high and over 60 percentage points of GDP greater than fiscally-sound Germany’s, that is some heavy wrench you are throwing, “progressives”!
The Way Forward
Get the $3.5 trill price tag down, but don’t bet against Speaker Pelosi.
Move forward with expanding and making permanent the Earned Income Tax Credit and Child Tax Credit which are focused like a laser on the working poor.
Move forward with spending on a low-carbon transformation.
Means-test everything else. This will make the package less popular politically, but more prudent financially.
Put out a credible medium-term fiscal consolidation plan that brings debt and deficits down over the next 5–10 years. The CBO in December 2020 issued a report with 83 options for reducing the federal deficit, including by: means-testing entitlement programs, raising taxes, and trimming discretionary spending. Rs and Ds need to read this report and use it as a handbook.
How to do this…
Josh Gottheimer
Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) co-chairs with Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. In many ways, this caucus is doing the Lord’s work. Seeking rules changes that reward bipartisan majorities, fast-tracking legislation — these are the proposals of the Problem Solvers Caucus, which Speaker Pelosi has yet to endorse. This bipartisanship in the House, in conjunction with similar, less formal efforts in the Senate, i.e. the bipartisan “gangs”, such as Senators Sinema’s and Portman’s “Infrastructure Ten”, could very well save the Republic.
Speaker Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi is quite possibly one of the most skilled legislative leaders in the history of deliberative bodies. Bet against her at your own risk.
Monday night, she and her leadership team pulled out all the stops by heaping pressure on Gottheimer and his followers, like she did to the Squad before them, who came at her from the left on a number of issues. Gottheimer has thus gotten himself into a tricky situation. He should try to negotiate a deal with the Speaker, if possible. He currently has ten Democrats holding out, and she needs three votes.
The concession she offered in a letter over the weekend was not unlike what Schumer offered Sinema and Manchin earlier this year. Leader Schumer couldn’t afford to lose any Democratic votes, and got these two moderates to vote to advance the $3.5 trill budget resolution in the Senate, in exchange for support on infrastructure, leaving them with a shot at reducing that excessive number when the time comes to vote for the final budget legislation.
Speaker Pelosi suggested in her letter over the weekend that the $3.5 trill would have to be “paid for”, which analysts suggest indicates that the final figure could in fact be lower because finding sufficient revenues would prove difficult.
The “unbreakable nine” moderate Democrats, a label given Gottheimer’s group by the centrist No Labels organization (a Joe Lieberman creation), could still hold out for putting the infrastructure vote first.
And now, the unbreakable nine have become the unstoppable ten, as Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-FL) released an op-ed in the Orlando Sentinel tonight just as Speaker Pelosi was rallying the troops for the $3.5 trill. Rep. Murphy said she could not support the budget resolution until the infrastructure bill was passed.
And. there are more centrist Ds, such as Rep. Abigail Spanberger, Vice Chair of the Problem Solvers, who just didn’t go as far as the unflinchable (I mean unbreakable) nine as to sign the holdout letter to Speaker Pelosi. However, other swing district Ds, such as Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA), back the Speaker. Tempers flared tonight and curses were hurled, as speaker after speaker rose to endorse the Speaker, and the Dem caucus meeting pushed toward midnight.
Gaming this out, if Gottheimer prevails and Pelosi agrees to a vote first on infrastructure, which looks improbable given news reports and knowing the mettle of the Speaker, the more numerous “progressives” could pull their support from infrastructure. The pro-infrastructure camp couldn’t lose more than 29 of these Dem votes (if that many), which is the number of Rs “in play” in favor of infrastructure, according to Gottheimer’s Problems Solvers co-chair, Brian Fitzpatrick.
If Josh Gottheimer doesn’t get the votes for infrastructure, the ten holdouts could cave and hope the $3.5 trill drops, as Speaker Pelosi cleverly suggested it would in her “Dear Josh letter”, without explicitly saying so. She also has committed to getting the infrastructure vote done by Oct. 1, before current surface transportation programs expire. Maybe Gottheimer & Co. should just take the deal.
If the uncaving nine, I mean unbreakable nine, do not cave, then both spending bills would fail, which forces the House Democratic Caucus back to the drawing board. And, if Ocasio-Cortez, as well as Pramila Jayapal, Katie Porter, Ilhan Omar & Co. (the leadership of the Progressive Caucus) refuse to drop the $3.5 trill figure, this could mean failure… failure that indicates that the Democrats cannot govern.
They may then go back to the drawing board again to prove otherwise, especially given the colossal failure of the Biden administration in implementing the withdrawal from Afghanistan and its implications regarding public perceptions of leadership competence.
That could end up being the best result, thereby forcing Ds to come together on a more prudent package. The Ds have thus far done remarkably well holding their caucus together. After the hugely effective and well-appreciated cooperation of “progressives” in backing Biden’s candidacy against Trump, a critical driver of the former VP’s success, most of the concessions have gone the other way. Notably, pandemic rescue has been on Bernie’s terms.
Time for some flexibility on the part of “progressives”? I say yes, but I am of course biased.
Ok — enough about sausage-making in American politics. It’s really not in my wheelhouse…