The Democratic infighting threatening to sink President Joe Biden’s economic agenda is a byproduct of paper-thin majorities just large enough to control Congress but too small to govern.
Liberal and centrist Democrats are at odds over the size and scope of a $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” spending package chock full of the party’s domestic priorities. These differences are typical. But with a 50-seat Senate “majority” that rests on Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote and a narrow, five-seat majority in the House, both factions have the numbers to block the legislation, turning standard haggling into a brutal standoff.
Caught in the crossfire is a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure package Biden negotiated with Senate Republicans, which received substantial GOP support in the chamber in an August vote. In the House, left-wing Democrats are refusing to greenlight the bill until their demands for the reconciliation package are met. Simultaneously, center-left Democrats are declining to back reconciliation until the House clears infrastructure. This struggle to govern risks leaving Democrats, and Biden, with nothing.
“The progressive caucus is playing hardball and they will wreck the Biden presidency and hand the Republicans the majority if they don’t allow this bill to be passed — and then let’s talk about the next bill,” said Dane Strother, a Democratic strategist who is urging liberals to back immediate passage of the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill while negotiations on the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package continue.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled Wednesday that the intraparty logjam could delay a planned Thursday vote on infrastructure. The California Democrat, among the most effective legislative leaders of her generation, has been stymied by the fact that she does not have a majority large enough to allow her to side with the liberals over the centrists or visa-versa. With Republicans declining to bail Pelosi out, she needs every Democratic vote at her disposal.
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But as much trouble as the speaker is having herding competing factions of her caucus, that is not the Democrats’ only problem.
In the Senate, centrist Democrats, particularly Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, are balking at the $3.5 trillion price tag of the reconciliation package and some of its proposed tax increases. Under Senate rules, reconciliation bills are not subject to a filibuster, so Democrats do not need Republican votes. But they need the entirety of their 50-seat majority. Without Manchin and Sinema, they are at least two short.
“We’re obviously at a precarious and important time in these discussions,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said, conceding the difficulty Biden and Democratic leaders are facing as they attempt to bridge the divide between the liberals and centrists.
At the heart of this difficulty is a mismatch between the sheer ambition of the reconciliation spending package and the slender advantages Democrats hold in the House and Senate. Even in 2009, with a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority in the Senate and a near 40-seat majority in the House, Democrats labored to enact historic healthcare reform (“Obamacare”) and failed to pass climate-related “cap and trade” legislation through the Senate.
Jason Altmire, a Democrat who represented a Western Pennsylvania district in the House at that time, said he understands the desire of House Democrats today to get big things done, especially with the possibility that Republicans might recapture the majority in the 2022 midterm elections. But Altmire said House Democrats should be more practical about what is legislatively possibly with small majorities.
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Doing so would leave his party better positioned to defend those majorities, he said, recalling how in 2009, the Democratic House members approved unpopular cap-and-trade legislation only to see their votes wasted when the bill died in the Senate.
“They’re trying to do too much, yes. But they’re definitely trying to do too much because it’s not going to pass the Senate,” Altmire said.
