Today, Explained - Democrats play chicken

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

Moderates and progressives are threatening to vote down different parts of their own party’s agenda, all while a government shutdown looms. Vox’s Li Zhou explains why. Today’s show was produced by Will Reid with help from Miles Bryan, edited by Matt Collette, engineered by Efim Shapiro, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and hosted by Haleema Shah. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Leigh, is it still infrastructure week? We have actually moved from hot infrastructure summer to budget reconciliation fall. Budget reconciliation fall sounds less sexy. Yeah. But really, what is happening in Congress right now? So this week is huge for Congress and for Biden's agenda. And what's happening is Democrats are finally trying to get through these two pieces of legislation that they've been working on for months.

Failure is not an option. There is too much at stake. We need both of these bills. The country needs both of these bills. Americans need both of these bills. So the first piece is that bipartisan infrastructure bill, which includes about $550 billion in new spending for things like roads, bridges, water infrastructure. It's been decades, decades since Congress passed such a significant standalone investment. And I salute the hard work that was done here by everybody.

The second bill that they're trying to get through is that $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation measure, which includes expansive funding for social programs. Early education, paid family leave. Free community college, child care, tax credits. Climate change. As well as something that could be the equivalent of a carbon tax. The issue that we're running into now is the bipartisan bill has gotten through the Senate, and now moderates are insisting that because that's already been done,

it needs to be passed through the House first. So infrastructure before the big social spending bill. You can't hold one up, this infrastructure bill, while you're working on the other one. That just doesn't make sense for the country. The fear that progressives have is if that bill gets through the House with no guarantees around reconciliation,

the budget bill is effectively dead because there's no motivation or incentive or leverage for moderates to then come back to the table and work on this budget bill, which they haven't been so keen on very publicly already at this point. You know how it goes. If we get the infrastructure bill done, the pressure gets taken off and we'll never be able to deliver child care, paid leave, everything else to the American people. And so the issue now is that progressives are, you know, holding the bipartisan bill hostage in order to try to make sure the budget bill gets considered and moderates in turn are kind of stalling on the budget bill. So who has been the most vocal in their support and opposition for the budget bill, a.k.a. the social spending package? It's a lot of people that you would expect.

It's Joe Manchin. It's Kyrsten Sinema. It's moderates in the House, including Josh Gottheimer, all of whom who've said $3.5 trillion is too much money. He will not have my vote on $3.5, and Chuck knows that, and we've talked about this. What number are you looking at? What number are other moderate Democrats looking at? Well, we're all talking, I mean, obviously I'm not going to negotiate here on television, but we're all actually sitting at the table and talking.

On top of that, they have concerns about certain policies within the bill. So Joe Manchin, for instance, is not keen on something similar to a carbon tax and also concerned about how this bill could get paid for. So Democrats have suggested that they would raise tax rates like the corporate tax rate. Joe Manchin has also signaled an issue with that and the scale that Democrats want to do it at. So there's a couple different layers of disagreement there and still an open question of exactly what moderates would be willing to accept. How do these bills poll? What do the people think? The people love infrastructure. Infrastructure, I think, polls extremely well. It's probably one of the most popular provisions. You know, you see upwards of 70 to

80 percent support for almost every measure in the infrastructure bill. And then you see slightly less support for things like social spending programs. But still, everything from like paid family leave, child tax credits, those things are extremely popular. So it's definitely not an issue of lack of public support. There's like widespread public interest in a lot of these programs coming to fruition. And it's more about kind of the politics of the thing and trying to appear, you know, like fiscally moderate, fiscally conservative. So if the social spending package is popular, though not as popular as infrastructure, why has it been so hard for Democrats to agree on some version of a social spending plan? I think the larger issue is trying to figure out what priorities that people can both get on board with. And the issue is that with moderates, they haven't necessarily proposed

a concrete counteroffer of any kind. And so all we've heard so far is won't accept $3.5 trillion, has concerns and qualms about certain policies, but not necessarily this is what I'll take. What's happening this week is that conversation. Like, what can both sides of the party actually agree on and manage to pass? And we'll wait and see if they can actually come to an agreement. And progressives and moderates both using their leverage essentially looks like both of them holding each other's bills hostage. And you would think that Democrats would want to take advantage of this really rare opportunity they have of controlling the House and the Senate and the White House. I mean, why isn't that happening?

Yeah, I think it is absolutely jarring to see because they have a trifecta of power. And so it is wild to see them not being able to agree on advancing something that they could probably tout during the midterms as an accomplishment that the party has brought together and almost been solely responsible for doing. And I think what happens is for some of the moderates, especially in the House, of trying to make sure that they appeal to independent and Republican voters, they are trying to project this image of we are more concerned about things like the debt. We are more concerned about raising tax rates. And that's something that they're thinking about for their own, you know, political fortunes and is kind of, you know, messing with how these negotiations are going. What's going on on the other side of the aisle? I think Republicans are just like thrilled.

They just have popcorn. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think the Republicans who wanted to get a win in the Senate with the bipartisan bill already have. And then the House has been pretty vocal that they are not interested in the bipartisan bill. And House Republican leadership is actually actively whipping against it because they say it's tied to reconciliation. It's tied to this idea of massive government spending. And then, of course, on the kind of the larger bill, there's absolutely no Republican support in either chamber. So what happens next? Now we wait to see how the negotiations this week go. So what we've heard is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is planning to hold a vote

on the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday. And thus far, around 60 House progressives have said they will vote against that legislation unless budget reconciliation also gets a vote, which we have not heard any kind of agreement on. So what you could see is that bipartisan bill actually failing if there is not enough evidence that progressives get of Manchin and Sinema agreeing to something real, something concrete on the budget bill that they're willing to move forward with. I think what Democrats hope is that they will come to an agreement before then so that they'll have the votes for the bipartisan bill on Thursday, and then in the next couple weeks, they can hash out the details of what that budget bill will include. Lee, is there a world in which both sides lose, like a world in which we have no infrastructure law and no social spending law during a time when Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House? I think it's totally possible. And I think that's also why this two track plan was so risky to begin with, because you are weighing all of these competing interests against each other. I think what is kind of maybe

reassuring is that in this case, both groups have an incentive to want something. So I do think the moderates who are supportive of the bipartisan bill, they genuinely do want that to pass. And similarly, progressives genuinely want the budget bill to pass. So you do have actual skin in the game versus like moderates being able to just walk away and be happy with nothing. Well, that's a lot on Congress's plate, right? Good thing that this is all they have to agree on this week. Well, actually, the government could also go into a shutdown.

Oh, boy. Let's get to that after the break. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Thank you. directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate.

She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Lee, before the break, you mentioned the government might shut down.

What do you mean? So every year by the end of September, the government has to pass a series of spending bills that fund all the different agencies, fund government services. And so far, they haven't done that. And they have until Thursday at midnight to pass either those spending bills or a short-term funding measure that will keep the government open. And so we only have a couple more days, and thus far, they have yet to make progress on this front. When government shutdown is a possibility, we oftentimes see, like,

stopgap measures, ways to kind of put off the shutdown? Has that been attempted at all? Yes, there's been one stopgap measure that Democrats have put forward already passed the House. And then it failed in the Senate on Monday evening. And what that did was it would keep the government open for a couple more months. And then it would have also suspended our national debt limit for a couple more months. And then it would have also suspended our national debt limit for a couple more months. This legislation also meets other important priorities, helping American families devastated by recent natural disasters.

And the problem there was Republicans said they are down to keep the government open, which is something. But they don't want to help Democrats suspend the debt limit because they believe Democrats are trying to spend a ton of extra money on a lot of these bills we've talked about. And they think that they should own that and that they should be the face of, you know, suspending debt or adding to our national debt. My advice to this Democratic

government, the president, the House, and the Senate. Don't play Russian roulette with our economy. Step up and raise the debt ceiling to cover all that you've been engaged in all year long. The issue with that argument is, of course, that it's not true, that the national debt is something that's been accrued across presidents, Democrat and Republican, and it was actually suspended three times during Trump's administration. So this is not a uniquely Democratic problem, but Republicans really want to make it look that way. So that's why they voted down the legislation on Monday. And then this Friday, federal funding will expire. So what happens if Democrats are unable to pass any additional funding by then?

If they don't pass more funding, the government goes into a partial shutdown, and this most concretely affects federal workers. If Congress can't agree on a plan to avert a partial government shutdown by Friday, that will leave about 800,000 government workers without a paycheck. It also, as we saw in 2019, affects federal services. So things like national parks, immigration courts, food inspections, a lot of these processes would be slower or get stopped entirely or get closed. And so a shutdown does have massive impacts on people's lives. It costs the GDP. It makes delays in when people get paid. And so there's a lot of

uncertainty that it adds, especially during a global pandemic that we're still trying to recover from. But yes, the government goes into a shutdown if these funding bills don't get passed. How does a government shutdown make a pandemic worse? I think it makes it worse most concretely for government employees who are relying on, you know, stable employment and a stable paycheck, as many people are. And it also makes it worse for people who might be dependent on federal services that get slowed down or that get closed as a result of the shutdown. And so it just adds a lot of uncertainty to a situation that is obviously already very tenuous.

Lee, why does it feel like every few years we end up here where we're talking about the government shutting down? It is something I think that's gotten worse over time. Congress has always procrastinated and is known for procrastinating, but this issue has gotten worse. And also, historically, there have been examples of this, but, you know, we saw President Donald Trump say, I won't sign these funding bills unless I get funding for my border wall. The federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only, because Democrats will not fund border security. And that type of demand is not super common, but does set a precedent for how you could see must-pass spending bills used in a way for leverage for either either political party or for the president to make

demands. In this case, that's not necessarily what we're seeing. I think the reason we're seeing this lag is because of the decision to tie the debt ceiling to the funding bills and Republicans' opposition, as we discussed. Given that government shutdowns are like a looming threat under almost every president, is there a way to avoid being in this position in the future? There have been a lot of ideas proposed to try to prevent this. So for a government shutdown, there's been bills introduced that would basically pass an automatic CR if, you know, Congress doesn't arrive at some type of resolution. And that would mean the government would never run out of funding. It would just constantly be funded and like the risk of a shutdown would be absolutely eliminated.

On the debt ceiling front, there's also been a ton of ideas where it's like, you know, Congress can ignore the debt ceiling. Joe Biden can say the debt ceiling is unconstitutional. And there's also been like more fun ones, too, or more kind of interesting ones where, you know, the Treasury can actually mint a $2 trillion coin and deposit that in the Federal Reserve. And that can be a way to kind of, you know, navigate this larger conflict with the debt. So what does a $2 trillion coin do? It basically is just something that if we default on the debt ceiling, that means we can't pay our bills. So by minting a $2 trillion coin, that would be a way to get around that and help cover those expenditures. And that's something that's allowed and possible.

The U.S. government can print new money, but under law, there's a limit to how much paper money can be in circulation at any one time. There are also rules that at least limit the denominations that gold, silver and copper coins can be in circulation at any one time. There are also rules that at least limit the denominations that gold, silver, and copper coins can be, but there is no limit on platinum coins. The president can issue a platinum coin in any denomination. Treasury can mint it and then just print on it $1 trillion. Part of the reason it's never been seriously considered is because it is so goofy. What does it say about this country that minting like a giant, I don't know, platinum coin could be easier than solving congressional gridlock? I think that just shows you probably how bad it's gotten in Congress, where there was never a time where things were, you know, like as perfect as I feel like they can be projected as. But a lot of the must-pass things used to get passed in a way that made sense.

Things like keeping the government open, things like suspending the debt ceiling. And increasingly, a lot of things are becoming points of contention because of disagreement between the political parties. And so that's why we're seeing ongoing conflicts around all of these different areas. Lee, what if someone stole the Bitcoin? I honestly don't know what would happen in that case, but that would be like an insane heist, you know, endeavor. It would have to be an inside job. Yeah, yeah. That would be like Janet Yellen.

Janet Yellen, the next Robin Hood. Yeah. Lee Zoe, politics reporter at Vox. Thanks so much. Today's episode was produced by Will Reed with help from Miles Bryan. I'm Halima Shah filling in for Sean Ramoswaram. It's Today Explained. Thank you.