The Democratic Party’s sweeping domestic policy agenda — from sizable climate investments to drug-pricing reforms to Medicare expansion — is under growing threat from the inside as right-wing members backed by corporate cash aim to tank or pare back central components of a multitrillion-dollar reconciliation plan.
Conservative Democrats’ increasingly coordinated effort to gut their own party’s legislation — and a top priority of President Joe Biden — has led to an increasingly tense confrontation with progressive lawmakers, one that has major implications for the United States’ tattered social safety net and the nation’s response to the existential climate emergency.
Increasingly concerned that the reconciliation package is on the verge of collapse, progressives are working to salvage the legislation by promising to vote down a priority of conservative Democrats: a $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill that Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W-Va.) helped negotiate with their Republican counterparts in the Senate.
In an interview on Tuesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that “more than half” of the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ 96 members are committed to voting against the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure package unless the not-yet-complete reconciliation bill moves simultaneously. Whether 48 progressive “no” votes are enough to tank the legislation will depend on how many House Republicans are willing to support it.
Asked by reporters to respond to conservative Democrats who believe progressives are bluffing, Jayapal said, “Try us.”
“The Biden agenda — our Democratic agenda — is at stake,” Jayapal, the chair of the CPC, tweeted Tuesday night. “It’s progressives who are fighting to pass it in its entirety and deliver long-overdue investments in child care, paid leave, healthcare, climate action, and more. Let’s get this done.”
House Progressive Caucus Chair @RepJayapal promises that “more than half” of her members will vote down the bipartisan infrastructure agreement on September 27th if it’s not accompanied by the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. pic.twitter.com/0pKaKMKE3q
— The Recount (@therecount) September 21, 2021
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), the CPC whip, echoed Jayapal’s message, warning that corporate interests are pulling out all the stops to undercut the Democratic Party’s legislative aims.
“Big Pharma, Big Oil, Wall Street, and their foot soldiers in Congress are doing everything in their power to kill President Biden’s agenda,” Omar said. “We are trying to save it.”
“Simply put: If we don’t pass the Build Back Better agenda, Dems will have broken their promise to the American people,” she added. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and we have to meet the moment.”
Last month, in an attempt to thwart a brewing revolt by right-wing Democrats, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) agreed to bring the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the floor for a vote on September 27 in exchange for conservative members’ support for a budget resolution that set the stage for the reconciliation package.
But it appears increasingly likely that the reconciliation package — portions of which have been mired in lengthy and contentious mark-up sessions — won’t be finished on September 27, raising questions as to whether Pelosi will follow through on her promise to bring the bipartisan bill to the floor by that date. Some conservative Democrats have vowed to kill the reconciliation package if a House vote on the bipartisan bill fails or is delayed.
“I don’t think the speaker is going to bring a bill up that is going to fail,” Jayapal told reporters after meeting with Pelosi on Tuesday. “Our position has not changed.”
The reconciliation package represents Democrats’ effort to pass significant investments in green energy, child care, education, paid family leave, housing, and other areas without needing any Republican support. But the majority party’s narrow margins in both the House and Senate mean corporate-friendly Democrats have leverage over the size and scope of the package.
While progressives have secured impactful victories in committee fights over the reconciliation bill — including a universal child care subsidy that some conservatives wanted to means test — right-wing Democrats have imperiled their party’s drug-pricing plan, specifically a proposal to let Medicare negotiate prescription medicine costs directly with pharmaceutical companies.
After a dark money group bankrolled by the pharmaceutical industry ran ads on her behalf, Sinema threatened to join conservative House Democrats in opposing the Medicare negotiation measure, which progressives are still working to include in the final package.
Meanwhile, Manchin — a major ally of Big Oil and a coal profiteer — is “preparing to remake President Biden’s climate legislation in a way that tosses a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry,” the New York Times reported over the weekend, noting the West Virginia Democrat’s role as chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
The Intercept’s Ryan Grim and Sara Sirota argued earlier this week that Sinema and Manchin’s “maneuvers risk — or are intended to cause — a complete sabotage of the Democrats’ once-in-a-generation chance to address pressing climate, healthcare, and immigration issues.”
“Because the bicameral, multicommittee process is one of the party’s only shots to enact its agenda without grappling with the filibuster, everything is getting thrown into it — including immigration and labor reform,” Grim and Sirota wrote. “That structure is now reaching a breaking point. Over the weekend, the Senate parliamentarian, a staffer who serves in an advisory role that Democrats treat like a magistrate, warned that their version of immigration reform ran afoul of reconciliation rules. Democrats are able to move forward against her guidance if they wish but would again need buy-in from Manchin and Sinema to do so. Something’s gotta give.”
On Wednesday, Biden is expected to hold a series of meetings with Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to discuss the state of the reconciliation package and the Senate-passed bipartisan bill, which the president has also endorsed.
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), a CPC member, stressed late Tuesday that progressives’ stance has “been clear all along: the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal and the Build Back Better bill must move in tandem.”
“I’m looking forward to voting for the Senate deal if, and only if, we also pass a reconciliation bill that meets this moment,” Jones said.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.