Can Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema save America from ruin? All of Washington is watching as Monday’s deadline approaches for a House showdown over the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the Senate. Moderate and progressive Democrats are each trying to call the other’s bluff. The question is whether one side blinks or both cut a deal. If neither happens, that will be good news for fiscal sanity and bad news for President Biden’s agenda.
The immediate stakes are the same as they have been for months. The bipartisan bill authorizes $550 billion in new infrastructure spending — a big number, but Congress has spent worse. That passed the Senate with significant GOP support.
Meanwhile, progressive Democrats are pushing the American Families Plan, their $3.5 trillion package of welfare spending. No Republican supports this, which all by itself spends more than $27,000 for every household. Nothing like the American Families Plan has ever passed Congress. It would cost nearly as much, in 2021 dollars, as our World War II war effort. That fiscal burden could tie the hands of every Congress for a generation in spending money on anything else, let alone addressing deficits or the national debt.
With a 50-50 Senate and a 220-212 House majority, Democrats can pass both of these bills through the budget reconciliation process — if they are united. But they aren’t, and a loss of one vote in the Senate or four votes in the House would sink their agenda.
House progressives, most vocally Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad, have said that they will vote down the bipartisan infrastructure package Monday because it is being offered alone, without the American Families Plan. They want the two linked to ensure that the bigger package passes. But Manchin, Sinema and nine House Democratic moderates have pledged to oppose the $3.5 trillion plan unless the infrastructure bill passes first — which would then give them leverage to negotiate down the size of the American Families Plan. For now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi has acceded to their request, hence the Monday vote.
Because the bipartisan bill is up first, it is the progressives who have to take a stand now or fold. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) has complained that Monday’s vote is an arbitrary, self-imposed deadline, which of course it is. House Whip James Clyburn has admitted that the vote may not happen on Monday. Delay is the likeliest outcome, for now, but delay only draws out the agony of the standoff.
Pelosi won’t want to hold a losing vote, but she might put the progressives to the test. If they vote the bill down, they get to show their voters that they meant what they said . . . and then make a deal later. If they pass the infrastructure deal, Pelosi begins to break the logjam and can get down to the business of hammering out a smaller compromise version of the American Families Plan.
But is a compromise possible? The linkage standoff in the House obscures the fact that the American Families Plan itself can’t pass unless both Manchin and Sinema support it. It also can’t pass if at least half of the House moderates stand their ground.
The wild card? More than a few House and Senate Democrats would love to see the American Families Plan go down, so they don’t have to weather the attack ads from Republicans, but they’d prefer that Manchin and Sinema take the heat for wielding the knife. We may not know who in the caucus feels that way, but rest assured: Pelosi and Chuck Schumer do. Which is how we got the Monday deadline.
Manchin and Sinema are different animals with different goals. Manchin is an old-school West Virginia Democrat of the sort that once dominated that poor and now deep-red state. He seems to genuinely want the infrastructure bill. He isn’t averse to spending money. But the American Families Plan is vast and left-wing. He has mused aloud about putting the whole thing off until 2022, which would add to the anguish of Dems worried about facing the voters.
The smart money says that Manchin will happily make a deal, but it may be a deal that The Squad would find insulting. AOC hasn’t helped matters by constantly attacking Manchin, tweeting this month that he sold out to oil lobbyists and that his skepticism about the bill was “killing people.”
Even if Manchin is bought off at a reasonable price, there is still Sinema. Once a young progressive herself, Sinema represents a swing state that has long rewarded infuriating mavericks. She seems to take a perverse glee in the fury of the progressives. Nobody really knows what she will do. But cards will be on the table soon.
Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review.
Twitter: @BaseballCrank
