Nancy Pelosi snubs bipartisanship

  • oeb11
  • 08-18-2021, 11:31 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...Yyx?li=BBnb7Kz


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On the critical issue of infrastructure, the public witnessed a historic breakthrough last week as a bipartisan team of U.S. senators, led by Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, shepherded a $1.2 trillion infrastructure plan through the Senate. Over a third of the Republican caucus, 19 senators, joined the Democrats — practically a "Kumbaya" sing-along for a legislative body that has grown accustomed to either near-unanimous votes on uncontroversial legislation or bitter partisan splits from slim Republican or Democratic majorities.
© Provided by Washington Examiner In short, the bill is a win for bipartisanship, provoking rare headlines such as “Dems, GOP come together.” This is something that people say we want from our elected officials.

It’s also a win for pragmatic senators such as Sinema and Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who have dared to call for compromise in an era when “owning” someone on Twitter is valued more than policy outcomes.
The bill has the right enemies. Both the far Left and reactionary Right are griping about it; progressive Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has picked repeated fights with Sinema, while former President Donald Trump has blasted it. Due to significant GOP input in the bill’s origins (it came out of a balanced, bipartisan working group), it’s a better product than would have existed had it been written by Democrats only. Most voters seem warm to it.
But like a deranged in-law treading up the driveway to ruin Thanksgiving dinner, behind the bipartisan detente lurks a threatening specter: an additional $3 trillion-$4 trillion of “human infrastructure” spending (a newly coined term), which Democrats in Congress, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, plan to pass on a party-line vote. They will do this by enabling Senate Democrats to blow up the budget reconciliation process and by holding the bipartisan bill hostage in the lower chamber until the Democratic megabill passes the Senate.
“Let me be really clear on this,” Pelosi declared. “We will not take up a bill in the House until the Senate passes the bipartisan bill and a reconciliation
bill. …. There ain’t gonna be no bipartisan bill unless we have a reconciliation bill.”
She reiterated that promise this week.
This places Pelosi, and the congressional Democratic caucus, squarely in opposition to what the public wants from our government — and in a precarious electoral position, if a recent swing district poll from bipartisan outfit No Labels is to be believed. Does she care?
Federal spending is skyrocketing, and a supermajority of voters are worried about inflation. Households are feeling the effects of our government burning through too much money too quickly as families struggle to purchase gas, groceries, and clothing, which are growing pricier as incomes stay flat. And economic indicators traditionally tail policy, which means that by the time vulnerable members of Congress are up for reelection in November 2022, the political mood could be soured by runaway inflation.
That is not to mention the prospect of voters seeing their children straddled with ever more government debt, which amounts to about $220,000 per household or well over three years’ salary for the median family. Another $3.5 trillion would equate to $27,000 in government spending per household, equivalent to over four years of food costs for an average household blown away due to the short-term priorities of a narrow congressional majority.
In sum, Pelosi has made an ultimatum: The country will either get a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a much larger Democratic megaspending bill or neither. Her majority will be the collateral.
The problem with our politics is that the fringes have become far more emboldened, and more powerful, than the broad middle (center, center-right, center-left) that does still exist in U.S. politics. The enemy of this broad middle, and all who yearn for pragmatism and compromise in politics, has a name: Nancy Pelosi.
Albert Eisenberg (@Albydelphia) is a millennial political consultant based in Philadelphia. He focuses on urban and diversity issues from the Right and is a founder of Broad + Liberty.



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