Tangle - Joe Biden's agenda hangs in the balance.

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

The president is trying to pass a $1.2 trillion, bipartisan infrastructure bill today. But progressive Democrats say they will only vote for that bill if it comes with a guarantee that the Senate passes its $3.5 trillion spending bill, also known as the reconciliation bill, which can become law without a single Republican vote.The problem: Moderate Democrats in the Senate, including Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), say they won't support another three trillion dollars of spending, and want more time to scale the bill down and flesh out what it's going to do. Pelosi has said she wants the language of the $3.5 trillion bill settled on before passing the smaller bipartisan bill, a demand to appease the progressives in her caucus, but Manchin and Sinema say there is no way that will be ready by today.What's going to happen? On today's podcast, we discuss.Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and man, do we have a show today. I mean, this has got to be one of the craziest weeks in the history of Congress. So many balls in the air right now that Democrats are juggling so many different ways that this week could break. I'm not really sure what's going to happen. We're going to get into it in just a minute. Before we do, as always, we'll start with our quick hits Number one, the Senate is preparing to approve a government funding bill hours before the

midnight deadline to keep the government from shutting down. Number two, the CDC issued an urgent health advisory instructing women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Number three, former President Donald Trump has exiled Corey Lewandowski, one of his top advisors, after allegations Lewandowski made unwanted sexual advances towards a major Trump donor. Number four, the House Committee investigating the January 6th riots have subpoenaed 11 people associated with the planning of pro-Trump rallies that preceded the riots. Number five, Democrat Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin had their second and final debate in the race to become Virginia's next governor.

All right. And with that, we can jump into our main topic today, which is basically the Biden agenda that is entirely on the line this week. On Tuesday, we set the table for what was coming this week in Congress. A quick recap of where we are now. for what was coming this week in Congress. A quick recap of where we are now. The president is trying to pass a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill today, but progressive Democrats say they will only vote for that bill if it comes with a guarantee

that the Senate also passes a $3.5 trillion spending bill known as the reconciliation bill, which can become law without a single Republican vote. The problem now is that moderate Democrats in the Senate, including Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, say they don't want to support another $3 trillion of spending. They want more time to scale the bill down and flesh out what it's going to do. Pelosi has said she wants the language of the $3.5 trillion bill settled on before passing the smaller bipartisan bill, a demand she's made

to appease the progressives in her caucus. Meanwhile, Manchin and Sinema say there's no way that the bill will be ready by today. So now what we have basically is Democrats in a game of chicken with each other. The Senate has passed this $1.2 trillion bill and they need the House to pass it now to make it law. Meanwhile, House progressives want the Senate to also pass a $3.5 trillion bill before it becomes law. If House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brings up the bipartisan infrastructure bill for a vote in Congress today and progressives stick to their guns, the bill will almost certainly fail. That's unless enough House Republicans magically get behind it. That wouldn't be the death knell for Biden's agenda, as they could always bring up the bill again later, but it would be a major blow to it and

pretty much put both bills at risk. The other option Pelosi has is delaying the vote, but this would break a promise she made to moderate Democrats that there would be a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill today. Remember, in August, about 10 moderate Democrats demanded a vote on the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that passed the Senate. Pelosi cut a deal with them by promising there would be a vote on September 27th. That was three days ago. Now it's September 30th, and we still haven't had a vote on it because it's not clear if the vote would actually pass. Perhaps with assurances that the White House was close to a deal to get Manchin and Sinema on board for the reconciliation bill, the Democratic House caucus could wait out a few more days. But they don't yet have those assurances. Pelosi could also bring the bill up for a vote and let it fail,

which could ramp up pressure on both progressives and Manchin and Sinema in the Senate. That seems unlikely, though, as Pelosi traditionally is not one to try and pass a bill she doesn't have the votes for. Meanwhile, the government will shut down tonight at midnight if a continuing resolution, a short-term spending bill, isn't passed. It seems like that bill is in the works and should sail through Congress today, but only because Democrats have removed language that raised the debt ceiling, meaning they still have to deal with that problem within a couple weeks. So below, we're going to take a look at some of the views on this pickle

from the right and left left and then my take. So first we'll start with the right's take. The right is supportive of Joe Manchin, Sinema, and other moderate Democrats, and they believe Biden's agenda is a massive government takeover. In Politico, Rich Lowry said that as the political prospects for Democrats' $3.5 trillion bill have sagged, they're trying to recalibrate by arguing that a generational spending binge really won't cost anything at all. Citing provisions to offset the spending, Biden said last week that the bill is going to cost nothing. At a Wednesday news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeated this argument with great confidence.

It's not about a dollar amount, she told reporters. The dollar amount, as the president said, is zero. This bill will be paid for. president said, is zero. This bill will be paid for. Trying to redefine the cost of a $3.5 trillion bill as zero must rank among the most shameless, patently absurd attempts to change reality through a talking point ever attempted, Lowry said. It's the equivalent, in its transparent, willful implausibility, of Donald Trump's pledge that Mexico would somehow, at some time, despite all its denials, pony up and pay for the border wall. Put aside that the reconciliation instructions say that the bill can increase the deficit by up to $1.75 trillion over a decade, and that if Biden were truly adamant against new deficit financing, he could threaten

to veto any bill adding a nickel to the debt. He hasn't, and he won't. Regardless, even if the bill is fully financed through tax hikes, it still costs something or the tax increases wouldn't be necessary in the first place. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it a moment of truth for moderates. Mrs. Pelosi may figure she can bludgeon House Democrats in the line, as she always has in the past, the board said. But senators are a different story. The speaker and her agenda couldn't win a race for city council in Mr. Manchin's state of West Virginia. Mr. Biden lost the state by 39 points to Donald Trump. If progressives defeat the infrastructure bill, the centrists will know they're not even the tail wagging the tail of the Democratic caucus.

They're essentially hostage to progressive demands, and they are likely to cost the swing state members their seats in 2022. But it's hardly better if the speaker postpones a vote. This would also mean the progressives are still in charge, and who knows when they if the Speaker postpones a vote. This would also mean the progressives are still in charge, and who knows when they'll let the Speaker hold the vote. Daniel Henninger called it Nancy Pelosi's hell week. As it began, this week's House agenda read like the to-do list of a madhouse. Vote on a $1 trillion infrastructure bill. Vote on a $3.5 trillion spending reconciliation bill. Vote on a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown until they decide the details inside the 2,465 pages of the spending bill. Vote to

increase the U.S. government's debt ceiling, now at $28 trillion. Keep in mind what the Byrd rule governing reconciliation is or was. Conceived in 1985 by Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, its purpose was to discipline the substance of spending and taxes inside a budget process that had been wrecked by the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. Chuck Schumer has made a mockery of Robert Byrd's reform. Discipline is dead because it is in the way. The result is legislative chaos. Last week, when Speaker Pelosi and Mr. Schumer said they and the White House had a framework for the revenue to pay for this spending,

their Democratic colleagues, Senators Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner, said they had no idea or the foggiest what the two were talking about, Henninger said. The country's president, Joe Biden, weighed in the next day with the assertion that his spending plans, by now heading north of $6 trillion, would, quote, cost nothing, end quote. Washington is in the fantasy land, and Mr. Biden has become Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, crooning, when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. All right, so that is it for what the right is saying. Here's the left's take on this. Much like the Democrats in Congress, the left is split. Some want the bipartisan infrastructure bill to pass and to take the win, while others want progressives to hold strong and try to get the entire Biden agenda through at once. In his Substack newsletter, Bloomberg's Noah Smith insisted that Democrats, quote,

pass the damn infrastructure bill. I'm no expert on the politics of fiscal legislation, but this seems insane to me, Smith said. First of all, the optics feel terrible. Having convinced Mitch McConnell and the Republicans to support a major government spending initiative, Democrats are now threatening to torpedo that impressive achievement. Not only does that make Democrats look like an incompetent, divided party that is incapable of governing, but it takes the wind out of Biden's legislative agenda and denies him at least one important victory, possibly two. It also seems utterly unlikely to achieve the goals the

progressives want, Smith added. Manchin and Sinema would like to pass the infrastructure bill, but they don't care about it so much that they'd do anything to save it. Nor would they be likely to take the brunt of public anger if the bill got killed. After all, they voted for it. Americans are not going to accept a complex progressive narrative about how Manchin and Sinema are actually the ones who killed the bill because they didn't accede to this and that demand from progressives. Instead, the people who failed to vote for the infrastructure bill

will be the ones who are perceived to have killed the infrastructure bill. In the Washington Post, Katrina Vanden Heuvel asked if corporate Democrats will derail Biden's agenda. The $3.5 trillion plan contains reforms that enjoy overwhelming public support, she said. In its current form, it improves families' lives by sustaining the monthly child allowance, investing in daycare, providing universal pre-K, and guaranteeing paid family leave. It makes community college tuition free. It extends Medicare to cover hearing, vision, and dental expenses. It lowers prescription drug costs to help seniors and save the government over $500 billion. It makes the first serious investments addressing the threat of climate

change. And these measures would be paid for largely by raising taxes on the richest and corporations, at or below the rates before the 2017 tax cuts, cracking down on tax avoidance and curbing fossil fuel subsidies. What's not to like? Much of the press portrayed the democratic conflict as pitting moderates against progressives, the former threatening to vote against the reconciliation package, the latter demanding passage of both bills or neither. But the dissenters are far from centrists or moderates. They oppose the plan of the president of their own party, a lifelong moderate who was just elected with a record number of votes. The few dissenters more accurately should be labeled as corporate Democrats. They enjoy lavish support from corporate lobbies mobilized to oppose all tax hikes and reductions in industry subsidies. Their objections

are informed by deep pocket interests that pay for their campaigns. For example, Democrats have long campaigned to allow Medicare to negotiate bulk discounts on drugs, yet the reform was torpedoed in committee by three House Democrats who have hauled in roughly $1.6 million in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. Joining them is Senator Kyrsten Sinema, another leading recipient of Big Pharma donations. The USA Today editorial board called for Democrats to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill, then negotiate on the reconciliation package. With every Democratic vote in the Senate and nearly everyone in the House a prerequisite for passing the largest spending bill in history, a handful of moderates have made clear they will not vote for anything costing $3.5 trillion over

a decade. The proposal is so chock full of ideas, it has come to be known only for its price tag. It's so much money that even with a welter of tax hikes on corporations and the wealthy, the legislation could still add to the national debt. We propose that the final package focus on the future of America and its children, the board said. Biden's plan would dramatically slash U.S. emissions. His clean electricity plan would use incentives and fees to compel power companies into transitioning to renewable energy. Another vitally important element would provide universal preschool, which research has shown delivers dramatic results in preparing children with language and social skills. The package also would significantly improve the quality and pay of

child care providers with assistance to make high-quality child care affordable for low-income families. The United States lags the left and right's take. Here are my thoughts on this. So in early August, when Joe Biden got the infrastructure deal through Congress, I wrote that I couldn't believe Biden was getting away with tying these bills together, that I didn't think House Democrats had the chutzpah to tank the agreement if they didn't get their reconciliation bill, and that there were still plenty of traps ahead for the bill to fall apart. Then, a couple of weeks into the news cycle in mid-August, I wrote that Pelosi should be cautious about calling the progressives bluff and that the hardest part of passing these bills is still to come.

Now we're here. Frankly, my relatively accurate predictions from last month aside, I have no idea how today or the rest of this week will play out. It looks like Democrats are going to keep the government open and deal with the debt ceiling crisis next week. Images of Nancy Pelosi having an urgent phone call during the congressional baseball game last night basically sum up where things seem to be. It's a total scramble, and I don't think anyone, Manchin, Sinema, Pelosi, Biden, or the Progressive Caucus really knows how this ship is going to dock. But I can tell you what I think should happen. I think the Democrats should take the infrastructure deal. First, I'll concede that Katrina Vandahouvel is right. Much of the opposition on the left to the reconciliation bill right now is coming from the corporate

Democrats who are being lobbied against this bill by big money interests like the pharmaceutical industry. And I think it's perfectly reasonable to debate whether calling them moderates is an accurate representation. Being lobbied doesn't mean their position is inherently wrong, but it does point to some of the deep fractures in the Democratic Party. It's also one of the reasons Republican populism is so popular right now. They have found resonance with the idea that Democrats have sold out to corporate America and globalism. Still, I've written supportively about the bipartisan infrastructure bill in the past, and there's a reason it got backing from Republicans in the Senate.

It's a good investment, and it's chock full of funding which should have been allocated years ago, like money to replace all the lead water pipes in the country, a basic health necessity so absurd it's tough to put into words. So I'm not going to spend much time rehashing whether the bipartisan bill is good or not. I've already made my position clear on that, and the bill hasn't changed. Even more interesting to me, though, is to analyze what the Democrats should do with the presumption they want Biden's agenda enacted. If you're a progressive, I see the bipartisan bill as a huge win. And right now, the party and Biden could use a huge win. The bill is brimming with progressive priorities and the exact agenda Joe Biden ran on. Hard infrastructure repairs, expansion of broadband internet, electric vehicle charging stations, climate resilient

infrastructure, and public transit funding. On the whole, it's also a pro-growth bill, something Democrats politically and ethically should embrace. And from a progressive perspective, I still struggle to see the game plan. I think it makes the most sense to pass the bill now. If progressives sink this infrastructure bill, that will be the headline. Bernie and the squad sink the bill. If progressives support Biden's agenda, all eyes turn to Sinema and Manchin on the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. That's where you want the focus. Will Sinema and Manchin vote to expand the child tax credit? Will they vote for universal pre-K? Will they expand Medicare? Will they pass legislation that will reduce the cost of prescription drugs? As other legislators have

asked, what do you cut? Suddenly, it's Manchin and Sinema holding up Biden's agenda, the one that he actually ran on, and keeping these things from voters. You want those questions being asked of the politicians you're trying to pressure, not those who already agree. If you sink this bill, the questions won't be on them. They'll be on the progressive caucus. The turmoil will go into category five hurricane status, and the dysfunction will just snowball. If you take the win, you can ride that win. You can move on to the next agenda item with a little momentum. Traditionally, historically, that's how successful administrations have worked. That's how they get stuff done. So regardless of what democratic faction you're in, I'm not seeing the rationale for sinking this bill. Pretty much

the only reason to tank it would be to prove you have a spine and punish the Democratic leadership for not keeping a promise. But the results of that chest puffing could legitimately end any chance of the full agenda coming to pass. It seems to me we're seeing the liabilities of a bad progressive plan coming home the roost, and now it's time to take the rational exit ramp. Pass the bill. Today's question comes from Brent in Texas. Brent asks, can you explain why we need to give Israel $1 billion for the Iron Dome system? I don't get it. That's a ton of money when we have other needs at home. Is part of it that the money will be spent with U.S. defense contractors and therefore help the economy like any other spending bill? So I suppose it kind of depends on who you ask. Fundamental reason from the U.S. congressional perspective is because it protects an ally. Israel is our oldest and staunchest ally in the Middle

East, and the Iron Dome is a defensive system used only to shoot rockets out of the sky that protects Israeli citizens. Funding it is a sign of support for Israel, yes, and it is one element of a larger geopolitical alliance in which we get a lot in return, namely military technology, intelligence on the ground in the Middle East, and of course military forces we can access whenever we need to. Frankly, I'm not sure the recent debate in Congress where progressive Democrats temporarily quote blocked Iron Dome funding end quote is actually much about the Iron Dome. It's much more about our relationship with Israel and the debate surrounding that, Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and what many on the left want to change about that dynamic in the Middle East right

now. The Iron Dome is, in my opinion, as good of a military investment as there could be. It's purely defensive and it doesn't just save Israeli lives, it also occasionally saves Palestinian lives when Hamas indiscriminately shoots rockets that often land in Palestinian territory. That being said, a better critique is about what the money is actually doing right now. The Iron Dome doesn't need this funding imminently, so it's basically just going to a military slush fund in Israel. As former Senate staffer Dylan Williams noted on Twitter, this is on top of annual missile defense aid to Israel and contextually is more than the U.S. spends on non-proliferation, anti-terrorism, and demining assistance globally, which is about $890 million in 2021, and more than twice what we spend on direct contributions to NATO, about $420 million in 2019, and the entire

Peace Corps, which is about $410 million in 2020. So you could definitely make an argument that we are overfunding military equipment and underfunding other peace forward initiatives. And yes, American contractors are definitely getting a bite of some of that pie. But again, I don't think this is really a debate about whether the Iron Dome deserves our support so much as it is a debate about our relationship with Israel more broadly. Remember, if you want to ask a question, you can simply reply to our newsletter and write in or fill out a form that's also linked to in the newsletter. All right, that brings us to our story that matters. This is a story that normally I think would be kind of boring, but in this case, the Washington Post has made it extremely interesting. Ships off the coast of California

are basically unable to unload their cargo right now. Truckers on America's highways are overworked and overwhelmed, facing unending traffic. Rail yards are clogged, with one group of trains backed up 25 miles outside a Chicago facility. In short, America's supply chain is teetering on the edge, and nobody seems to know how to fix it. This month, the median cost of shipping a standard rectangular metal container from China to the west coast of the United States hit a record $20,586. That's almost twice as what it cost in July, which was twice as what it cost in January. The Washington Post has a story that makes a mundane but critical issue interesting right now, how our supply chain is broken and what it might mean for the future.

And that brings us to our numbers of the day today. We have a few numbers about this bill, the infrastructure bill, and then two really fascinating polling numbers out of Texas. $65 billion is the amount of money the bipartisan infrastructure bill will put toward expanding broadband internet in rural America. $55 billion is the amount of money the bipartisan bill will put toward replacing lead pipes and upgrading our water infrastructure. $15 billion is the amount of money in the bipartisan infrastructure bill that will go toward building electric vehicle charging stations and school buses. $550 billion is the amount of new spending in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

$256 billion is the amount of money the bipartisan infrastructure bill would add to the debt, according to the Congressional Budget Office. 77% is the percentage of Texas voters who say that abortion should be legal when a pregnancy is caused by rape or incest. That's according to a new Quinnipiac poll. 72% is the percentage of Texas voters who say it's a bad idea to enforce the new abortion laws by allowing private citizens to sue someone they suspect violated the law. And that brings us to our Have a Nice Day section. This one is about Carleen Knight.

She is one of seven patients with a rare eye disease who volunteered to let doctors modify their DNA by injecting the revolutionary gene editing tool CRISPR directly into the cells while they were still in their bodies. Previous experiments had been done only after cells were removed, edited, and then re-infused in the patients' bodies. Now, Knight says that her once non-existent vision is rapidly improving. On Wednesday, researchers revealed for the first time that this approach might be working. While many more patients need to be followed to determine the efficacy and safety of this approach to treat certain congenital eye diseases, it's a very encouraging start. NPR has the story.

All right, everybody, that wraps it up for today's podcast. As always, if you want to subscribe to Tangle, you can go to readtangle.com. And as we've been mentioning all week, and we'll continue to mention, our podcast needs your support. If you go down to our episode description page, there's a link there that says support this podcast. If you click the link, it will take you to our anchor website where you can become a monthly pledge supporter. Please consider doing that. It means a lot to us. And remember, if you want to get a Friday edition of the newsletter, you need to subscribe, readtangle.com. To remember, if you want to get a Friday edition of the newsletter, you need to subscribe.

ReadTangle.com. To do that, you need to be a paid subscriber. We will be back in your ears on Monday. Looking forward to it. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn, and music for the podcast was produced by Diet75.

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