Tangle - The progressives strike back.

Episode Date: October 4, 2021

Heading into Friday, there was a quiet confidence on Capitol Hill that Democrats in the House were going to be forced to pass the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by their leadership, which would’ve effectively detached it from the larger $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill and handed moderates a victory (if you need to catch up on this whole dynamic, you can read our coverage of this from last week).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. Today is Monday, October 4th. I'm coming to you live from Brooklyn, New York, where fall is starting to settle in, and there is a lot going on in the political world. And unlike a lot of weekends, this weekend, the last few days, Friday through Sunday, brought quite a few relevant, important updates for us. We're going to jump into that today with our main story, which is like Thursday about the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the $3.5

trillion reconciliation bill that are currently navigating their way through Congress right now. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start with some quick hits from the weekend. All right, first up on our quick hits is a pretty sad milestone here in the United States. More than 700,000 people in the U.S. have now died of COVID-19. That makes it the deadliest pandemic in United States history and comes in the context of 5 million people who have now died worldwide from the virus. Number two, reporting on a cache of financial records dubbed the Pandora Papers was released once again by a global consortium of journalists this weekend, revealing secret tax havens of world leaders and celebrities. Number three, an estimated 126,000 gallons of

heavy crude oil has spilled into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southern California after an underwater pipeline leaked. Number four, the Supreme Court denied a New York City teacher's request to block the city's vaccine mandate for educators. Number five, Alex Jones was found legally responsible in two lawsuits for damages caused by his false claims that the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut was a, quote, giant hoax. All right, those are our quick hit stories. And before we jump into today's topic, I just want to remind you guys once again, which I will continue to do, that if you'd like to, you can support this podcast by going to the episode description and clicking the link to go become a monthly pledge donor, whatever you want to call it.

As you might notice, we don't yet have advertisers on this podcast. We might do that down the road, but right now to keep things rolling, we really need listener support. So please consider becoming a pledge donor person. Thank you. All right. And today's topic is actually the progressive caucus of the Democratic Party. And more specifically, it's how they dug in last week. Heading into Friday, there was a quiet confidence on Capitol Hill that Democrats in the House were going to be forced to pass the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill by their leadership, which would have effectively detached it from the larger $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill and handed moderates a victory. If none of that makes

sense to you, I suggest you go listen to or read some of our previous coverage on this bill and the dynamics of these bills that we published last week. Essentially, by Thursday night, it seemed as if this would go one of two ways. Either one, progressives would fold and pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill and give up their leverage on pushing through the larger $3.5 trillion spending package. Or, two, they would dig in, sink the infrastructure bill, and put President Biden's entire agenda at risk. Given the stakes, the whispers from Capitol Hill were that progressives would almost certainly fold and that Pelosi, that's Nancy Pelosi, the House leader, would have to keep her promise to hold a vote on the bill. Instead, though, the nearly 100-member Progressive Caucus repeatedly insisted that it would not budge, prompting a rare visit from President Biden to Congress.

And that is when things got interesting. On Friday night, President Biden did something very few presidents have ever done. He whipped up votes against his own bill. Biden told lawmakers not to vote on the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill he had helped negotiate until there was an agreement in place among Democrats on the larger $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. The move essentially puts the bills back on the two-track process, but also marked another turning point in a broader democratic narrative. Progressives, in a moment when they might have historically backed down, are instead wielding their growing power. Now, there are some major caveats here. Most notably, Biden said over the weekend and on Friday that the $3.5 trillion

reconciliation bill was going to be reduced to somewhere closer to the $2 trillion range. This is, in some sense, a major win for moderates, in their view, because they've said all along that the bill's top line price was just too high. For progressives, though, linking the fate of the two bills back together is a major win too, even if the top line prices come down, because it means if they get one of the bills, they'll get both of the bills. So where are we now? Basically, the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill that will invest in roads, bridges, water pipes, public transportation, and broadband internet is now once again tied to the larger reconciliation bill, which can pass in the Senate with only

Democratic votes. That bill is going to fund universal pre-K, two years of free community college, expand the child tax credit, maybe make it permanent, expand Medicare, lower the price of prescription drugs, create fees for polluters, and a lot more to do with climate change, child care, education, etc. Democrats won't pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill until they have an agreement on what's going to be in that larger spending bill. Then they're going to try and pass both simultaneously. That's because the bipartisan infrastructure bill has already passed the Senate, so all they'll need is to pass it in the House, then give it to Biden. The reconciliation bill,

meanwhile, they need an agreement in the Senate, and then for the Senate to pass it, and then it'll come down to the House. So right now, the fight is going to be over what's in the $3.5 trillion bill, and how do they get it down to $2 trillion? What will they cut? What spending tricks will they use? And will all of that be enough to win over the votes of Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are critical to passing the bill in the Senate. Democrats have extended the highway funding that was set to expire coming up this month and given themselves enough runway to break the impasse by the end of October. Now they basically have a new deadline for passing these two bills, which is the end of this month. So we're going to take a look at some of the reactions to these latest developments from the left and the right, and then my take.

All right, first off, we'll start with the left. So the left is supportive of Democrats negotiating more and avoiding the potential failure of both bills. In the Washington Post, James Downey said progressives finally have the political bulk to stand up to moderate and conservative Democrats. Poll after poll shows Americans support President Biden's Build Back Better agenda, hence a broader shyness from Sinema and Manchin to explain what specific parts of the reconciliation package they want cut, Downey said. And, as demonstrated on Capitol Hill in the past few days, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has the numbers to derail bills it doesn't like, or in this case, force moderates to stick to the original two-track agreement that the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package passed together. The only stunt here is the one being

pulled by the moderates who are trying to pretend the two bills aren't linked. To claim otherwise is to ignore months of news coverage repeating the link, coverage that, until recently, moderate Democrats made no real effort to rebut. Instead, it's clear that a small minority of the caucus hoped to string the rest of the party along until the fall in the hope that various deadlines would force progressives to abandon the reconciliation bill. A few years ago, that might have worked, but not anymore. In Jacobin Magazine, David Sirota and Andrew Perez attacked Representative Josh Gottheimer, the Democrat from New Jersey who is the moderate leading the opposition to the $3.5 trillion bill. The Democratic congressman leading the charge to undermine his party's two-track strategy to pass President Joe Biden's economic agenda was the U.S. House's biggest recipient of campaign cash from the private equity industry,

whose executives could lose lucrative tax loopholes should that agenda become law, they said. Representative Josh Gottheimer has spearheaded a media tour and legislative campaign to pass a business-backed infrastructure bill separate from Biden's reconciliation package, a maneuver backed by corporate lobbyists seeking to kill the latter because it will likely be paid for by taxes on the wealthy. In all, Blackstone executives have funneled nearly $200,000 worth of campaign cash to Gottheimer since 2015, and his wife, Marla Tusk, works for a lobbying and consulting firm that lists Blackstone as a client. Tusk works for a lobbying and consulting firm that lists Blackstone as a client. In the latest election cycle alone, Gottheimer received more than $450,000 from donors in the private equity

and investment industry, making him the U.S. House's top recipient of that money during the campaign. That's according to data compiled by Open Secrets. In Vox, Li Zhu said that after weeks of talking past each other, Democrats finally have to negotiate. At stake is a massive social spending bill that includes dramatic expansions to Medicare, funding for free community college and universal child care, and huge investments in clean energy, Zhu wrote. Given the ongoing negotiations, it's unclear what the reconciliation bill will include, what its total spending will be, or how long it will take for a deal to come together. That talks are happening at all, though, marks some kind of progress. Progressives have stood by a bill totaling $3.5 trillion and outlined five key priorities they want the bill to include. Lowering prescription drug prices, investments in affordable housing, investments in climate jobs, funding for child care subsidies

and paid leave, and a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, including DACA recipients. All right, that is it for the left's take, and now we'll move over to what the right is saying. The right is criticizing moderate Democrats, saying they have been abandoned by the party. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called it the humiliation of the House moderates. Josh Gottheimer was certain the House would vote Thursday to pass the Senate Public Works bill, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi had promised, the board wrote. How certain? 1,000%, the New Jersey congressman told CNN. By the end of Thursday, with no vote looming, Mr. Gottheimer was still confident that a vote Friday would save the day. It ain't over yet, he tweeted. This is just one long legislative day. We literally aren't adjourning.

Negotiations are still ongoing and we're continuing to work. As I said earlier, grabbing some Gatorade and Red Bull. That wasn't the only bowl he was drinking, the board added. Friday came and went with no vote. To adapt Bruce Willis and Die Hard, welcome to the Democratic Party, pal. The progressive left isn't merely a small faction. It is the dominant faction, as Friday proved. Contrary to Mr. Gottheimer, Mr. Biden also doesn't seem to think the left is destroying his agenda. He made a special visit to Capitol Hill on Friday and told Democrats he was fine with no infrastructure vote.

He tanked the vote on his bipartisan bill by linking it to the partisan multi-trillion dollar reconciliation bill. Mr. Gottheimer's humiliation was merely the most public among House moderate liberals who made the mistake of trusting the speaker. In Fox News, Liz Peek asked why Joe Biden has focused on cinema and mansion and not progressives in his persuasion efforts. Why not sit down with Representative Pramila Jayapal, the Democrat from Washington, the head of the uber-liberal caucus that has stymied progress on his infrastructure bill? Why no late-night calls to Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist who is clearly the shadow president and who has resisted calls to trim Biden's monster spending package? We know why. There's no point. The progressive wing of his party is immune to

persuasion. They are ideologues who, through a bizarre twist of fate, suddenly hold the reins of power in our nation's capital. What now? Joe Biden has bit off more than he can chew and is now trying to swallow reality, Peek said. His visit to Capitol Hill, which many commentators took to signal that Democrats had struck a deal, was a major flop. The bipartisan trillion-dollar infrastructure bill being held hostage by progressives who insist that they will not vote for it without getting a vote on their giant social infrastructure package is still on hold. Biden's presence embarrassingly changed nothing. Not getting a bipartisan infrastructure bill across the finish line because progressives stand in the way is the ultimate humiliation for a president who famously promised to work across the aisle. Biden probably didn't imagine

that it would be his own party and not Republicans who might torpedo his agenda. In the National Review, Philip Klein put his sights on Joe Manchin, who he called a fake fiscal hawk. On Wednesday, Manchin released a fire-breathing statement, much of which could have been mistaken for a National Review editorial, Klein wrote. But here's the reality. Manchin has already voted in favor of trillions of dollars in new spending in two bills this year alone. First, there was the $1.9 trillion spending bill passed in March. Though pitched as a COVID relief, only about 5% of the bill directly focused on pandemic-related spending. It funneled hundreds of billions of dollars to state governments, many of which were facing surpluses, and pumped more money into the insurance industry through an Obamacare expansion.

None of the spending was paid for. He then led the charge for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes $550 billion in new spending. The bill, according to the CBO, would add $256 billion to deficits. In other words, Manchin has already voted for nearly $2.5 trillion in spending, of which just about 12% was offset, with the remaining $2.2 trillion being added to the debt. Keep in mind, this is on top of the $4.1 trillion in deficit spending on COVID-19 bills during the last year of the Trump presidency, all of which Manchin voted for. All right, so that's it with the left and the right takes, and here is my take. So it's clear the dynamics of the Democratic Party are shifting. On top of everything else we learned in the last few days,

one of the most notable pieces of breaking news was the leak of a document showing Senator Manchin signed an agreement with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in July. In the one-page agreement, Manchin calls for a $1.5 trillion top line on the reconciliation bill. He also conditions it on all COVID-19 and American Rescue Plan funds being spent. Schumer signed the bill with a note saying he would attempt to dissuade Manchin on many of his red lines. The implications of that agreement were that Schumer, Manchin, and many House moderates always thought they'd be able to decouple these two bills, steamroll progressives in the House, and then negotiate the reconciliation bill in a vacuum. Manchin's red line was drawn months ago, and

negotiations moved forward with everybody knowing this would be a bridge they had to cross eventually. But most observers, certainly most of the moderates in the House, thought they'd roll over the Progressive Caucus. Turns out they were wrong. I said last week I had no idea how this would play out, though I floated the idea of a delay in the vote as a potential, if not likely, outcome. It looks like that's where we are now. After weeks of promising the two bills were linked together, Democrats had a brief few days where it looked like the two-track process might break. The Democrats who want to scale down the $3.5 trillion bill will celebrate the fact they're getting the top line number down, but make no

mistake about this. This is a huge win for the Progressive Caucus. They now have the numbers and critically the unity to shake down the President, Pelosi, and even the Senate. Of course, that too is an odd way to frame this whole thing. After all, the Progressive Caucus is simply trying to pass the agenda Biden ran on in 2020, all the stuff he promised when he wasn't slamming Trump. And Biden seemed to approve of their tactics, at least based on the leaks we're getting from behind closed doors on the Hill. So after a week of jockeying for position, the most likely outcome once again seems to be that these two bills will pass together. $1.2 trillion of infrastructure,

and then a major fight over where and how to spend something in the ballpark of $2 trillion on a bill that will need zero Republican votes to become law. Democrats have less than a month to sort out the details and get on the same page, but it could be their last chance to make any major reforms before they lose the chamber in Congress. All right, so that's it for our main story today. But we do have a question from James in Houston, Texas. And it's a question that I think is actually tied pretty closely to our topic today. James asked, at what point do you think these interparty divisions result in fracture? What would AOC and the progressives lose by setting up like Bernie?

They don't seem to gain much from being Democrats, and they definitely seem like a risk for the party agenda more often than not. So this is a great question, James, and something I've picked up on from talking to readers and voters across the country is that I think there's kind of a general misconception about where the Democratic Party is right now. When someone says progressives, most people seem to think of the squad or Bernie Sanders or this handful of Democrats who are, quote, running the party or holding it hostage. It's sort of this framework where these few small progressives are kind of taking over the party

and driving the agenda and all these things, but that's really not true. The Congressional Progressive Caucus is a real thing. It has 95 members in the House of Representatives, and that's out of 220 Democrats total. That means in the House, there are nearly half the entire party. Of course, the CPC only has Bernie Sanders in the Senate, but there are plenty of deeply conservative senators. Elizabeth Warren, Sherrod Brown, Alex Padilla, John Ossoff, Ed Markley, John Hickenlooper, on and on and on. There's a lot of nuance here, obviously. I mean, Democrats owe their majority in Congress to the, quote, moderate Democrats who won in districts that have a lot of ideological diversity among voters. Mattie Iglesias recently wrote, and he's right,

that your median American voter is a white person in their 50s with no college degree. We often forget that. But the progressive caucus is standing behind the very agenda Biden ran on. Medicare expansion, climate change legislation, free community college, pre-K, parental leave, etc. If you believe Biden's win was about more than just anti-Trump sentiment, then there's a good case their agenda is representative of a huge swath of the country. Polling does tend to support this too. In other words, the progressives aren't all that extreme, and they're not outliers either. There's no reason they should break off from the party rather than just become the party.

As for when those fractures actually come, I'm surprised they haven't already. But as I've said before, the two-party system is deeply ingrained, and support by the entire infrastructure for campaign funding, the way the media frames red versus blue, and so on, it's extremely difficult to break out of that two-party framework. And whichever party fractures first would be conceding defeat in the near term. If Republicans broke in half, then they would just lose every election they went to when it came to presidential or Senate races. So neither party is really

willing to do that right now, at least not yet. All right, and that brings us to today's story that matters. This is usually, you know, the story that I think is kind of falling under the radar, something that I think should get more attention but is drowned out by the noise. Today's story that matters is about the Dollar Tree. Yes, the retailer, the dollar store. It sells nearly everything for a dollar, as in its namesake, and it plans on adding more products at slightly higher prices now. This is being taken as a sign of increasing costs for a range of goods. A combination of supply chain snarls, which we covered last week, a tight labor market, and inflation are pushing costs of

goods higher. And the retailer said the addition of more above $1 prices is a response to those rising costs and consumer feedback on tests of higher price items in the store. Makers of products from diapers to cars face higher costs for materials, transportation, and workers, the Wall Street Journal reported. In many cases, manufacturers and retailers are raising prices, but some are hesitant to pass along these costs to shoppers. Some are betting inflation is a passing challenge or that consumers lack the appetite to absorb price increases. Many companies are working to negotiate with their suppliers further to shoulder more of the financial burden. The Wall Street Journal has a great piece about

this. You can go check it out on their website. All right, and that brings us to today's numbers section. We found a few interesting ones for today's podcast. $6.3 billion is the amount of money Congress approved to fund the resettlement of roughly 95,000 Afghan refugees. 18,000 is the number of vaccine shots given to New York City school employees ahead of the vaccine deadline. Negative 28% is the drop in average daily cases of COVID-19 nationally over the last 14 days. That's according to the New York Times tracker. 25,833 is the number of

new COVID-19 cases that were reported in the U.S. yesterday. 285,058 is the number of new COVID-19 cases that were reported in the U.S. yesterday. 285,058 is the number of new COVID-19 cases that were reported in the U.S. on September 13th, just about three weeks ago. 20 is the number of military aircraft China sent to Taiwan's airspace yesterday, the second such incursion in less than 24 hours. All right, and as always, we'll finish up with our have a nice day section. Today's story is about David Julius and Artem Petapoutian, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for identifying how people sense heat, cold, touch, and their own bodily movements.

The knowledge is being used to develop treatments for a wide range of disease conditions, including chronic pain, without the use of things like opioid painkillers. The mechanisms underlying our senses have triggered our curiosity for thousands of years. For example, how light is detected by the eyes, how sound waves affect our inner ears, and how different chemical compounds interact with receptors in our nose and mouth, generating smell and taste, the Nobel Committee wrote. Now, these scientists have opened up the door to a whole new understanding of how we interpret our environment physically. The New York Times has a great story about the Nobel Prize and why they were awarded it today. I encourage you to check it out. It is really cool and super

encouraging about the future of how we might treat chronic pain. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you're enjoying this and you're listening on an app where you can rate podcasts, please give us five stars. It helps a lot. It helps a lot. As I mentioned at the top of the show, we now have a link to pledge your support to the podcast in every episode description. Please check that out and consider doing it. Please, please, please. It means the world to us and your support will keep this project going. Thank you, everybody.

And we'll see you tomorrow. 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. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com.