Democrats are not acting like a party that is ready to pass a massive spending package stuffed full of all their most liberal priorities. That’s probably because they know the president’s $1.75 trillion reconciliation wish list is going to fail.
Late last night, Fox News’s Chad Pergram reported that Democratic leadership had finally finished the text of the bill — just hours before they planned to bring it to the House floor for a vote. Technically, they shouldn’t vote on the bill on Friday even if they wanted to because of the House’s “72-hour rule,” which makes sure members have several days to read legislation before they are asked to vote on it, Pergram noted.
The reason Democrats aren’t concerned about this is because they know they’re not voting on this bill on Friday — and probably not next week or the week after that.
In fact, there’s a good chance this bill doesn’t get brought to the House floor until the end of the month, because that’s how long it will take the Congressional Budget Office to analyze the bill and report on its projected costs. Several centrist Democrats have already said they will not vote on the bill until they have the CBO’s scores in hand.
Democratic leadership is hoping to push this bill through before the CBO has a chance to get its hands on it because they know that as soon as those financial scores come out, the bill is dead. They’ve tried hard to convince the public and hesitant members of their own party that this bill will pay for itself. But everyone, including the authors of the bill, knows this is not true. And when the CBO reveals that the true cost of “Build Back Better” is much higher than $1.75 trillion, Democrats will have a hard time convincing centrists to stick around.
So, party leadership is trying to use what little political momentum it has to ram the bill through now in one last Hail Mary effort. That’s why they added leftist policies such as paid family and medical leave and immigrant work permits back into the bill, even though centrists have said they won’t support a bill that includes them. Apparently, party leadership is hoping the last-minute pressure will be enough to convince moderates to change their minds.
But really, Democrats know this won’t work. They have an eight-seat majority in the House and a tied Senate, and right now, they might not even have enough votes to get this bill to the floor.
So, why go through with all of this? Why even introduce the bill in the first place?
Because “Build Back Better” and the idea of passing a sweeping, transformative bill reminiscent of the New Deal is the only thing Democrats have going for them right now. Their COVID-19 policies have failed, they’re staring down an economic crisis they helped create, and the Biden administration becomes more unpopular every day.
But this bill was always unrealistic, and Biden’s dream of becoming the next Franklin D. Roosevelt was always a delusion. It’s time for Democrats to accept that.
